Tag: Austerity

Economics in the bubble

My plan was to write something following up last week’s Autumn Statement. But what with having to do other things – work and that – I’ve not had the chance. In the interim there has been bucketloads of analysis. So I’m not sure there is more to say […]

Social housing transformations

Last Thursday I toddled up to London to take part in a conference entitled Next Generation Solutions: Housing Transformation, organised by HACT/Northern Housing Consortium. I followed Frances Coppola as part of the final plenary session. My talk on the day was called Social Housing 2.0. But I’m not […]

Reinhart and Rogoff: replication and responsibility

… the actions of economists today bear on the life chances of the world’s population far more substantially than do the actions of the members of most other professions. George DeMartino Replication is an activity that doesn’t attract enough attention, enough credit, or enough effort in the social […]

On local governance and elected mayors

On Friday we published a report on the prospects for an elected mayor in Bristol. It is the first report from the Bristol Civic Leadership Project. The prospects report was based primarily on views collected from around Bristol prior to the mayoral election in November. It drew on […]

Economical with the truth?

The agenda for this year’s Liberal Democrat Spring Conference carries the strapline Stronger economy, Fairer society. Given the parlous state of UK plc, and the deeply inequitable impacts of the Coalition austerity policy, the strapline touches on two of the biggest issues of the day. So the unwary […]

On the horsemeat scandal

The horsemeat scandal has now been with us for over a month. It has morphed from a localised concern about adulteration of one processed meat product at one supermarket chain into a Europe-wide exposé of industrialised food production and lengthy supply chains that are ripe for abuse. Many […]

Housing associations and the impacts of welfare reform

Organisations providing services to lower income households and those receiving social security no doubt started 2013 with some unease, if not a distinct sense of foreboding. For some the money may imminently be running out, as government grants come to an end. The concern there is, for example, […]

Housing and the global financial crisis

One of most interesting dimensions of current developments in the housing market is the way in which global economic events are being refracted through housing policy: how a problem created in the private sector is being used to reconfigure the social rented sector and advance some long-standing objectives […]