Good Society Debate
Why traditional Party Structures are still relevant
For some, like the former President of the Italian Democratic Party Walter Veltroni, all nowadays’ fragmented and allegedly ‘liquid’ societies want from a party is an attractive narrative. The rest of the party organising task can be limited to primary elections and electoral volunteering. I do not share this view.
We still need a modernised version [...]
Restorative Business – An alternative Business Model to accelerate Sustainable Development
On launching the 2020 new economic vision for Europe, the President of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso, opened with these words:
‘The crisis is a wake-up call, the moment where we recognise that “business as usual” would consign us to a gradual decline, to the second rank of the new global order. This is Europe’s moment [...]
Ecosystems – Not an Election Issue
Sustainability questions have hardly featured at all in the course of the British general election campaign. Although many Conservative candidates deny the existence of climate change, no-one high-profile has spoken up for that view, and therefore climate has not been an issue in the campaign.
However, climate is on the political agenda these days in [...]
Tackling Inequality and Poverty at Source: The Importance of Child Well-being
UNICEF UK’s vision is a world in which every child’s rights are fully realised. So, as the UK General Election, due to take place on May 6th, draws nearer, we are calling on politicians to pledge their support for children’s rights and policies which help to ensure these rights are fully realised. It is reassuring [...]
Taming the Tiger – The Challenge for European Social Democracy
Can social democracy hold the tiger of capitalism in check or is global capital now too liquid for any social democracy to control? Is the carefully managed European balance between people and capital becoming unsustainable and should we be looking for alternative, more humane, economic strategies?
Capitalism has brought many benefits to western Europe and the [...]
The ecological Cost of human Inequality: Why only a better Society can save the Planet
One of the most promising developments in these otherwise challenged and war-ridden times, is the new wealth of data on the material effects of human wealth-inequalities.1 Inequality is no longer “just” a moral issue; it entails specific, physical harm. This changes the whole political game. But one massive dimension of inequality has not, so far, [...]
Real political Change comes from organised People
As the parties revealed their manifestos last week, there was an unseemly battle over who first introduced the living wage. David Cameron (wrongly) claimed that the living wage was a Conservative policy brought in by Mayor Boris Johnson. This prompted former Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone to remind Mr. Cameron that it was his administration that [...]
Letting Action inform Theory
All agree, the Good Society is sustainable, but what about the force needed for its realisation? The Good Society Debate was launched in response to many crises but also as an attempt to rise to a more profound challenge –the deafening loss of direction on the European left.
A lack of leftwing imagination is much lamented [...]
Sustainability will not be delivered without Equality
Global warming and climate change pose ever more urgently the question of how the world shares its resources. Environmental constraints mean the old capitalist trick of making and promising an ever increasing cake will not work any more, or not for much longer anyway.
The question of how the cake is shared has to be addressed [...]
The European Economy and the OPEN Project
The impact of the European economy is now nearly three times larger than what is required for a sustainable world.
Today Europe uses 20 per cent of what the world’s ecosystems provide and yet is home to only 7 per cent of the world population. If present patterns of production and consumption continue unchecked, the human [...]
Put Advertising on the Political Agenda
The problems of advertising have not been high up the political agenda in many countries, yet it seems to me that we should try to tackle them much more firmly, responding to advertising’s important role as essentially a form of political and cultural bias in mass communications.
The problem now is not so much that advertising [...]
‘Social Democracy’ is no Such Thing
Rewind twenty five or thirty years and we would find an argument raging about the difference between social democracy and democratic socialism. This was perhaps before the former found its voice in our modern economy and was at a time when the real idea of socialism still enjoyed credence in mainstream politics. We now know [...]
