Donald Trump’s first week in office, and particularly his decision to temporarily ban people entering the US from predominantly Muslim countries, proves something – we are all now engaged in a battle to protect civilised values, wherever we live in the world. The nauseating stench of fascism had been hanging around his campaign for some
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Like many people, I’ve been watching the reports of the destruction and terror in Aleppo with a sense of utter horror. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the situation is a feeling that I’m unable to do anything useful about it. And as someone who helps charities show people how to take action and make
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“Politics has failed through a lack of competing narratives (to neoliberalism). The key task now is to tell a new story of what it is to be a human in the 21st century. It must be as appealing to some who have voted for Trump and Ukip as it is to the supporters of Clinton,
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The world is in a chaotic state at the moment. 2016 has felt like the most negative year I’ve experienced on this planet – and partly for the toxic and negative political atmosphere that has enveloped western democracies in the last few years. It’s reached its nadir (so far at least) with the rise and
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Yesterday I was at the launch of a new initiative, called the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). The event was chaired (and the centre is run) by Professor Tim Jackson, one of the country’s leading thinkers on sustainable economics, and the author of one of the best (and most accessible) books on
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Acquisition anxiety – how our constant need to acquire things is hurting us Picture the scene. You’re walking through a beautiful village in the countryside. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the whole scene is idyllic. What is the first thought that enters your mind? Is it something along the lines of
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There’s been a lot in the press about tax recently. The leak of data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca confirms my view that tax is more of a moral issue than a practical one – and that paying tax fairly is a moral duty. Let’s start by defining what tax is. It’s about
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Poor old Prince William. He obviously cares about the conservation of wildlife but his views have been shaped by his own uniquely privileged, hunting-tradition background and this makes him vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy. His latest well-intentioned but mistaken intervention was to suggest that trophy hunting of animals could be condoned in certain circumstances: “when
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I’m in the process of writing a booklet for our forthcoming ‘Story of Energy’ project at Life Squared, and my suspicions are proving correct – it’s almost impossible to find a simple description of what a real 1 planet lifestyle would look like for the ordinary individual. Fill in a footprint calculator (like Bioregional’s) and
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One of the important features of modern life that Life² helps people to deal with is the increased level of complexity within which people live. One example of this complexity is the chain of processes, people and impacts that sit behind even the most simple products or services we consume. As I noted in ‘Modern
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