Retired Professor of Political Economy
(Lancaster University, UK - retired 2021)
(also #ProfDJ across the Lune Valley)
Contributor: North West Bylines #NoBridge
Just in case you had any doubt that the current global political economy is run by the rich for the rich, here is some data to remind you who is benefitting from the transfer of wealth around the system driven by right-wing governments, forms of governance normally called #neoliberalism (I have some problems with this term but that's for another time) & the shift to normalised #austerity....
The rates of #cancer among #millennials are growing, with a major element being growth in gastrointestinal cancer(s). Researchers believe this may be linked to shifts in diet & nutrition in the new millennium, but as yet cannot be sure.
This may be better detection & tightened awareness in the young, but nonetheless points to a worrying development for individuals & for #healthcare across the world.
Q. is this one more problem caused by hyper-processed food?
The #EdenProject today switches on its 5km deep #geothermal heat source to help power its climate control in the biomes (reducing their #energy bills by around 40%).
While there're issues of network connectivity (long delays currently) & expense (drilling these shafts is not cheap), the solution that has worked in #Iceland so well, may offer some benefit in our #renewableenergy mix....
so lets home we don't wait another 37 years for the next major geothermal project!
This afternoon, I've been reading a biography of Jacob Kramer, a contemporary of Mark Gertler, CRW Nevinson et al at The Slade in the early C20th, and came across this amazing portrait (self-evidently influenced by Kramer's 'hero' Van Gogh).
Last year around 10,000 #women seeking to escape #domesticabuse were turned away from alternative housing (inc. refuges);
given what we know about how domestic abuse can be the first sign of women becoming victims of fatal violence, we are (once again) failing women who find themselves in the proximity of #toxicmasculinity & gender based violence.
yet one more area where #austerity is exposing the vulnerable to fatal consequences!
For those of you who've been following the debates (in my timeline & elsewhere) on the Q. of #inflation, #greedflation, #profits & #interestrates, here's a nice summary from Prem Sikka of his views (which complement what I've been saying):
the roots of current inflationary problems are in corporate enrichment not in any (mythical) wage-prices spiral;
This week I've been mainly reading, No. 68. For a book group where I'm the token male, I've just read Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry (2022). This is a wonderfully angry book built on a wide-ranging criticism of #sexism in 1950s/60s #America. The main & side characters are well rounded (including the dog) & its story of #female striving against the odds is just this side of believable. While the ending feels a little rushed, it is logical, but overall this is really excellent! @bookstodon
For my erstwhile friends in #HigherEducation, their work to try an reign the #plagiarism epidemic will not be made easier by a report that at #Cambridge University, a Associate Professor in the #history department has retained his post despite having being found to have lifted around a page of material for a journal publication from an undergraduate's essay submission;
its not use telling students academic 'offences' are v.serious when staff are left to commit plagiarism with impunity!
One of the defining myths of our (external) view of #America is that it is a country with a significant level of internal (geographical) mobility - people moving to where economic opportunities are etc.
Well, interestingly what the data shows is this idea of a #UnitedStates on the move is wrong - America's population in more often staying put, even if this is involuntarily due to difficulties with the #housingmarket.
Which for some #economists may be a factor in the US' relative decline?
Here's something from the LSE blog on comparable movement in the UK, which would seem, on my quick reading to be lower (which is what I would have expected); my guess is that mobility may have risen within the EU as integration continued?
Hmmm.... I was more interested in the dynamic of change; the EU seems to be becoming more mobile (albeit for a low base), while the US less so (but from a much higher proportion).... still you are right to also highlight the absolute numbers, thanks
Sorry for sullying your feeds with the monumental shite spewing from the mouth of Richard fucking Tice.
"Boris was wrong, it wasn't a kangaroo court, it was a lynch mob. 'If anything has truly undermined democracy it is this shameful political lynch mob'." #Complicity#UKPolitics#PrivilegesCommittee
What I find really distasteful about these sort of comments is the reality of the lynch mob in history - #BorisJohnson is not hanging from a tree multilated by an angry mob of racists... no he is just paying the price for his incessant lying & bulls*t - each time this phrase comes up we/they normalise the terrible history of #racerelations (especially in the American South) - it makes me physically ill!!!
In my recent reading of the #Exapnse series (ongoing) & other #sciencefiction in my (relatively recent) return to the genre, I have noticed a general use of the term the 'gravity well' as a way of describing mostly #Earth (but occasionally other planets/objects with strong gravity)... anyone any idea who first used this term?
'Broken promises, missed opportunities & a failure to see the bigger picture: that’s the story of the west’s approach to developing countries in recent years'
Larry Elliott sums up (rightly, starkly & concisely) the relationship between the developed & the developing world ahead of #EmmanuelMacron's summit in #Paris...
Our (perhaps understandable) focus on our own troubles has prompted a lack of interest for how the rest of the world is suffering (often much worse)!
I missed that the HoC Privileges is now going to produce a further report on the attacks & intimidation it was subject to while preparing the #BorisJohnson report;
this is starting to have the feel of a proper spring clean around the political practices of the Johnson era.
is this the beginning of the end for the most caustic elements of the #Tory party?
yes, there is a pretty constant expression in my timeline of the position that #KeirStarmer's Labour Party is a form of #Tory-lite one-nation centre-rightism... I'm not sure I totally agree (I think we need to wait to see what the actually do, not what they tell the right wing press they'll do), but I can see exactly what brings people to draw that conclusion!
Kim Stanley Robinson is pretty good on the clash between these two tendencies (as part of his sci-fi).... and if you want something more analytical, Lewis Mumford wrote some interesting stuff on how any technology may be used for either (or both) democratic & authoritarian purposes
