Kester Brewin

One of the sources I quote a number of times in Other is The Spirit Level – Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The thrust of their thesis is very simple: by collating hundreds of studies over a long period of time they have concluded that the [...]

Jonny has posted a very comprehensive review of ‘Other’ on his blog, which is well worth a read. He admits that he found it tricky to get right given the back-and-forth we’ve had recently over the issue of institutions, but I think he’s done a good job. It seems that the book is causing quite [...]

As promised yesterday, a post about a brilliant piece by Porter Fox in this month’s Believer about the micro-nation ‘Christiania.’ Christiania began when a group of Danes broke down fences to a long-abandoned military base in the centre of Copenhagen and started to use some of the space as a playground for their children. Covering [...]

(Brown writes his letter wishing David Cameron well – from a great set of photos on his last hours here) The waiting is over. We have a new government, what some are calling the ‘ConDems’. My feelings are mixed. They range from huge disappointment and concern at the return of a Conservative administration, to relief [...]

Change is the word you’ll have heard most around this election. It’s actually become a fetish – something that people are obsessed with, without rationally thinking exactly what the kind of change it is that they want – as I blogged about in a series of posts beginning here, and as Bill Bailey has put [...]

Interesting piece on the Today programme this morning, re-visiting the constituency of Smethwick – a safe seat in which was notoriously won by the vile Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths in 1964 following his campaign which ran under the slogan ‘If You Want A Nigger For  A Neighbour, Vote Labour.” Smethwick reacted to chuck out the [...]

So the General Election that we all knew was coming is finally out in the open. How should you vote? How should we decide how to vote? I think that there is a single issue that we should all be asking our prospective representatives about: income equality. If you get a chance to speak to [...]

News International confirmed today that their papers in the UK will move to a subscription-based service in the coming months, starting with The Times and moving on to other titles such as The Sun. I’m no supporter of Murdoch or NI at all, but I do have some sympathy for the model they are trying [...]

Interesting video with Bill Nighy talking about the ‘Robin Hood Tax‘ that would see 50p raked off all financial transactions that didn’t include members of the public. This would raise around £200bn globally each year which could be put into projects helping the poor: Obviously raising money to help the poor is a wonderful idea, [...]

Craft: Kraft: Enough said.