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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The possibility of Donald Trump becoming the world’s most powerful person may have seemed like a joke a year ago (at least, to anyone but him), but now the reality is dawning that it might actually happen. He looks like a shoe-in for the Republican nomination now and will certainly give Hilary Clinton a run
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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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A short post this time – just to flag up a very good article from Owen Jones in The Guardian about the various ways that the Tories have successfully manipulated the truth in various issues over recent years. My favourite quote from the article is below: “Illusions are what the Tories excel at. They back Labour’s spending – down
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The General Election result in May 2015 was a shock for anyone of a vaguely progressive bent. It was more than just a shock though – it brought about a sense of profound dread as to what this group of Conservatives would do to our country and society once they had disentangled themselves from the
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I’ve just caught up with a very interesting post by Neal Lawson on OpenDemocracy today. The article asks how the Labour Party should move forward in the light of it’s devastating defeat in the 2015 General Election – not simply as a votewinning machine but as a true political force that can deliver a progressive,
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Change can be difficult to achieve. Change on a global scale can be very difficult to achieve – perhaps even impossible. And, despite what we may want to think as campaigners, we may not be in control of all the levers that need to be pulled to achieve the change we want – in fact,
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I like what the School of Life is trying to do – bringing philosophy, wisdom and broader thought into our daily lives. Indeed, Life Squared shares a similar aim in much of its work. Where we differ (apart from size, finances etc!) is that Life Squared is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to offer its
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I went to an interesting talk at the RSA today by James Wallman who has just published a book called ‘Stuffocation’. His basic argument was that in the society of scarcity of around a generation ago, what mattered in life was having more stuff – i.e. in a society of scarcity, materialism is not a
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