LIVING TOGETHER – Thoughts on Politics & Society

George Monbiot (George Monbiot) is a British journalist, author, environmental and political activist. He writes a regular column for The Guardian. Peter Hutchison is a critically acclaimed filmmaker, New York Times bestselling author, educator and activist. In this book the authors argue that we live under an ideology that dominates every aspect of our lives: our education and our […]

Widespread rejoicing at the magnificent Tory landslide on 12th December 2019 has scarcely abated in Clydesdale during these last few days before Christmas. Epic drinking, feasting and splurges of spending have been bacchanalian. Champagne corks could be heard popping wildly in all the douce villages squatting like frogs around the foot of Tinto. Life can

We look around Lanark at Christmas 2018. Perhaps we assume that our local amenities and quality of life is a simple given, inevitable, all that can be expected. Notwithstanding the heroic efforts of The Lanark Community Development Trust, however, it’s a largely deteriorating picture. The disgrace of a rotting hotel at Lanark’s centre presents an

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. (https://www.fastcodesign.com/1669244/by-2050-70-of-the-worlds-population-will-be-urban-is-that-a-good-thing) (https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/aug/18/percentage-population-living-cities) There is a complex web of factors accounting for this staggering fact. If you want to understand the human future, then have a long hard think about cities. In this book, Jane Jacobs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs), building on the work of her debut, The Death

This widely influential 1966 book by Mary Douglas (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/may/18/guardianobituaries.obituaries) should be on the shelves of anyone interested in cultural theory or anthropology. The line of inquiry in Purity and Danger traces the meaning of ‘dirt’ in different contexts. What is regarded as dirt in a given society is any matter considered out of place. Douglas clarifies the differences

Some years ago, one began to hear people say ‘too much information’. Additionally one’s state of awareness on any matter was confined on a ‘need to know’ basis. Both phrases acknowledge that the totality of human knowledge (especially specialist scientific knowledge) so vastly exceeds any one mind’s capacity to absorb it that the hapless individual

Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Goldstein (http://www.amygoldsteinwriter.com/) spent years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin where America’s oldest operating General Motors plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession, two days before Christmas of 2008.  With intelligence, sympathy, and insight Goldstein describes what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval. Her reporting takes

There are a number of measurements of wealth among nations. One standard is ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (GDP) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product). Currently the UK lies 6th in a list of 191 nations (with the United States at the top and Tuvalu at the foot) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)). Scanning tables such as this convinces one what enormous disparities in material wealth

It’s been 20 years since the first publication of Virginia Postrel’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Postrel) influential book ‘The Future and it’s Enemies’ in 1998. Much of the author’s analysis of contemporary global culture has been borne out. Postrel argued that the old political labels of ‘left’  and ‘right’ no longer carry much meaning, and that it’s better to