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Showing posts from July 10, 2022

British Economy: Stagnation Nation

Key Facts 1. Low growth: real wages grew by 33 per cent a decade from 1970 to 2007 on average, but this fell to below zero in the 2010s. 2. High inequality: income inequality in the UK was higher than any other large European country in 2018. 3. The toxic combination: low- income households in the UK are 22 per cent poorer than their counterparts in France, and typical household incomes are 9 per cent lower. 4. Stalled progress: 8 million young workers have never worked in an economy with sustained average wage rises, and those born in the early 1980s were almost half as likely to own a home as those born in the early 1950s at age 30. 5. Levelling up: income per person in the richest local authority – Kensington and Chelsea (£52,500) – was over 4 times that of the poorest – Nottingham (£11,700) – in 2019. 6. Brexit Britain: fishing output could shrink by 30 per cent by 2030 as a result of Brexit, but food and beverages manufacturing output could increase by more than 5 per cent. 7. The...

Music and Politics

Rayya El-Zein has written about how the framework of neoliberal orientalism has built a fantasy about  the Arab rapper . She explained that Western mainstream media are “eager to imagine Arab youth in non-threatening modes of resistance that are directly related to American culture. The rapper speaking truth to power is a very easy character for audiences to imagine; at the same time, he is a totally benign figure that caricatures authoritarian regimes as all the same bad guys.” El-Zein has argued that when the West focuses on creative youth, it does not have to understand how Western powers are complicit. After the Arab uprisings (Part 1) After the Arab uprisings (Part 2)