The pandemic has been a master class in systems thinking on a global, national and community level. Social renewal is vital. This will seem but a utopian distraction from urgent…
14 Aug, 2020
05 Aug, 2020
Transformative Green Deal Politics
The urgency of the climate change challenge has been visibly growing, dramatically illustrated by the bush fires that swept across much of Australia at the end of 2019. The emergence…
28 Jul, 2020
Sociocracy. What is it and what happens when we use it?
Ever been spoken over at work? Or excluded from a decision-making process because of arbitrary classifications of authority in the workplace? I have. It struck me as both annoying and…
23 Jul, 2020
Modern slavery: a prism into our world
“Although the Covid-19 crisis has caused grim new problems for Leicester’s garment workers, the exploitation detailed in the report is not new. Concerns about working conditions and illegally low pay…
20 Jul, 2020
Corbynism and Electoral Reform: will Labour ever back PR?
June 2020 saw voting reform take place. This reform was not a change to the voting system for Westminster elections, but how one third of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC)…
15 Jul, 2020
Privatisation has failed, we need public ownership
The coronavirus crisis has made it heartbreakingly obvious that we are all connected. Boris Johnson himself, still recovering from the virus, felt the need to contradict Margaret Thatcher, saying ‘there…
14 Jul, 2020
#BuildBackBetter: You know it makes sense, but how do you do it?
The article was originally published at Vulnerability 360. Throughout the lockdown, and now an extended lockdown, in our home city, Leicestershire cares staff have been working with a range of…
06 Jul, 2020
A national community support plan
Community resilience is a vital component of social and economic recovery. Communities themselves have risen to the occasion magnificently. But to enable them to sustain this high level of involvement…
03 Jul, 2020
Don’t just stand there, sit down!
The blog was originally posted on https://ideasforlife.blog. Mindfulness has been largely appropriated by the Western cult of the individual and science-led therapeutic interventions. The concern is that mindfulness acts as…
29 Jun, 2020
Mindful 45˚ Politics
The article originally appeared in Political Mindfulness: Fresh Perspectives on Multiple Crises’, a Compass publication edited by Phil Cohen. In his pamphlet 45˚ Change, Neal Lawson warns that ‘in all…
15 Jun, 2020
The coronavirus gives humanity one last chance – but for what exactly?
Many of us who are awake to the climate nightmare cycle through periods of despair on the one hand and desperate hope against hope on the other. We veer between…
12 Jun, 2020
A People’s Inquiry?
As the first empirical comparative study (published by the OECD) into deliberative democracy emphatically shows that citizen participation in public decision making delivers better policies, strengthens democracy, and builds trust,…