Trigger Warning - mention of suicide & violence & sickening greed / minor spoiler alert “You know what it is,” says Ash. “It’s the free jazz. If that gets out…” In the concluding episode of Joseph Bullman's new docuseries Dirty Business , Ash speaks in hushed tones with James about the burglary of his home. In the midst of his disquieting investigation into Thames Water's conduct in the River Windrush, his lighthearted jest feels misplaced. It calls back to one of the opening

Student loans are in the news again. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to freeze the repayment threshold of Plan 2 student loans for 3 years after April 2027 has caused an uproar  among students who will now face higher repayment costs. This only adds insult to injury for those who borrowed from the government’s Student Loans Company between 2012 and 2023. As it stands, the vast majority of students will already be unable to pay back their Plan 2 student loan before the 40-y

In 2016, Lord Heseltine spent several months in the Tees Valley area, producing an extensive 91 page report titled ‘ Tees Valley: Opportunity Unlimited ’. He concluded, despite the fact that “Four miles of the south bank of the Tees is a scene of desolation, a memory of industrial activity now gone...” that the “Tees Valley has an exciting future.” A decade on from this report, how are things looking for the region? In 2024 Lord Houchen was voted in as Mayor of the Tees Valle

Across Europe, a striking consensus has taken hold. Quiz a passerby on the streets of Paris, Berlin or London on the state of society and you are likely to hear all too familiar lamentations concerning the declining state of both government performance and social cohesion. The cost of living continues to rise whilst wages stagnate and public services buckle, politics is brittle and the future looks more precarious than the past. This transnational belief , one which has been

If we were to ask whether the UK Wealth Tax Movement was successful last year, an instructive litmus test might be the frequency with which the topic appeared in BBC headlines. This is undoubtedly a major feat, but only half the battle.  Commentators everywhere, like coiled springs , raised their concerns about how effective and feasible the tax would be, rattling off the list of unintended consequences. The media asserted – the Wealth Tax cannot be introduced until all conce

From the federal United States to the hyper-centralised UK, and even in the tightly state-directed system of China, local government is increasingly constrained and hollowed out. The slow-building emergency in government debt is not only on a national level but on a local level too. Across advanced and emerging economics, local governments have taken on growing responsibilities without the fiscal tools to fund them, undermining service provision and political trust without tr

Donald Trump’s unprecedented attack on the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has been met with an equally unprecedented defence composed of Ex-Fed chairs, central bank governors, and titans  of global finance. Central to this alliance’s criticism of Trump is an ominous warning of disaster to come should the Fed’s independence be violated. For example, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde emphasised the role central bank independence played as a “corner

On December 9 th  an inconspicuous press release  by Huntington Ingalls Industries   (HII) and Babcock International quietly announced a huge shift in US defence procurement. For the first time the US nuclear submarine program will manufacture significant components outside the states. The announcement confirmed that complex hull assemblies for the new US navy’s (USN) Virginia block VI nuclear submarines  will be produced in Babcock’s Rosyth dock in Scotland.  For defence obs

From a distance it is hard to see why Vladimir Putin did not accept December’s peace plan for the Ukraine war, to prevent it entering its fourth year. The deal would have forced Ukraine to secede far more territory to Russia than the actual inroads made. Ukraine would have to hold elections, be forbidden from joining NATO, and reduce the size of its army. These were all crucial war aims for Russia before the beginning of the ‘special military operation,’ so it is mystifying

Economic woes, largely originating in our productivity problem , underscore much British political discourse today. The productivity problem  boils down to the notion that the amount of additional value generated per average UK work hour underwhelms compared to our economic peers  and superiors, like France, Germany, the USA , and perhaps soon Poland .  The UK has recently seen record work absence  due to sickness , is consistently low on comparative worker engagement  scores

Ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary elections, Frederick Graham examines eighteen years of Scottish Nationalist rule and the state of Scottish politics.  In Westminster and Europe, recent election cycles have revealed an increasingly consistent pattern: governing parties have become exposed to sharp electoral punishment. This trend has cut across ideologies. After four years the centre-left “traffic-light” German coalition was decisively punished at the ballot box. Acros

In his Debt: The First 5000 Years , anthropologist David Graeber provides a series of insights that, when properly understood, challenge the central tenets of conventional economic thought. Most significantly, Graeber’s claim that all money is debt, and by extension a social relation, fundamentally undermines decades of economic orthodoxy which claims that the government must balance its books and, more generally, that ‘one must pay one’s debts’ . Indeed, if all money is debt

To Have or To Be?  turns fifty in a few days. Written by Erich Fromm, a German social psychologist, it analysed the corrosivity of ‘late capitalism’, an epoch most obviously characterised by consumerism. Consumerism comes with constituent attitudes. It encourages us, for instance, to value assets based on their saleability. Entrenched in our consciousness, via the unconscious, Fromm argued that many of these attitudes altered our understanding of ourselves, our contemporaries

Like Barbie, Trump has a great day every day. And who wouldn’t?! Waking up in his golden Dreamhouse (ballrooms sold separately), Trump gets to decide his truth, the truth, on any given matter at any given time! In Trump Land anything can happen!  The latest from Trump Land is that the American economy has never ever been better! Kicking off the battle for the 2026 midterm elections at a rally in north-east Pennsylvania – his first in five months – Trump united the crowd behin

Since Labour reclaimed power last summer, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has borne the brunt of much of the criticism directed towards the government. The decisions to scrap  winter fuel payments  and  inheritance tax exemptions on  farms struck deep; this was an electorate unprepared for such change and a media that underestimated the UK’s first female occupant of the role being so combative right from the onset.  This front-footedness prompted a swift response. Hacks bayed

Season's greetings, Karl (and to you, my esteemed reader). There’s just something about self-verifying utopianism that doesn’t quite hit the spot the rest of the year , but it’s Christmas, so let’s cut Marx some seasonal slack. This isn’t solely an assault on the long-since-dead ideologue, but rather a repository of festive feedback, reflecting not only on Marx’s conceptualisation of surplus value and capitalism, but our conceptualisation of Christmas, too. Though undoubtedly

Ah, the annual budget - that glorious spectacle of political theatre through which pompous chancellors attempt to justify their political survival. Tax cuts, spending commitments for public services, and the odd solemn promise to lift the burden off working people have all been used to extend the life of a chancellor's political career, or if a budget goes well enough, propel them next door into Number 10. Yet, this time seems to be different. Instead of championing taxpayers

They called it a contract with the people to signify that promises made before the 2024 general election would be kept to their voters. Last Monday they finally put what was left of it in the shredder. With budget speculation having been at fever pitch in Westminster for well over a month, and expected to boil on at such heat for at least another three weeks (opting for a far later date than usual will do just that), Reform’s silence on economics had become one of the larger

The public murder of Charlie Kirk rattled the American political establishment , and was met with a variety of responses from its pundits, journalists, and elected officials. For many in the Republican Party and on the right of American politics more broadly, Kirk’s death was the pretence required to pursue an official clampdown  on freedom of speech, as opposed to the less systematic, yet no less brazen , attacks the White House had been carrying out up to that point. Citize

A few months ago, I published part one of this article , when Spain’s housing reforms were still nascent. I am glad now to see that, fulfilling previous promises, the Spanish PM has honoured his word and taken substantial steps towards implementing public housing policies. From making the purchase of houses for non-residents more difficult, to facilitating young people’s renting and buying of residences, and unifying countrywide and regional initiatives, much has been done re