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UK: Debt and Disadvantaged Areas

No wonder why some people turn against asylum seekers and immigrants as a scapegoat in an advanced capitalist country. “The number of people on Sheppey who have a higher education level qualification, 16.8%, is half the England average. “ With dimmed prospects and little money , some are turning to crime. Criminal activity on Sheppey is twice the Kent average, with high levels of violent and sexual assaults. Shoplifting is also a problem. “Seashells family hub, which helps up to 400 children a week - some of whom struggle for a meal at home - had its funding cut by almost 90% in 2025 by Kent County Council.”
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The Coming ‘Global’ Food Crisis

Excerpts from an article by Adam Hanieh on the FT “The new high-yielding varieties of the Green Revolution, by contrast, could only deliver their promised output through large and repeated applications of industrial fertilisers, especially nitrogen-based products such as urea and ammonium nitrate. Since many of these fertilisers are derived from natural gas, the Green Revolution meant that the world’s food production became ever more closely tied to a constantly increasing supply of hydrocarbon inputs.  “Doubts have long been expressed about the sustainability of this fossil fuel-based food system. But as oil and gas prices have risen steeply amid the US-Israeli war on Iran and a significant part of the global fertiliser trade has been brought to a standstill, its potential vulnerabilities have been made clear. “The current moment differs from those earlier crises in one crucial respect. During the past two decades, Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Em...
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Non-Profit Organisations in Context

Tehila Sasson’s “argument is, roughly, that international aid organisations – influenced by a long tradition of voluntary service, a desire to find a role after empire and a dislike of the supposed soullessness and impersonality of postwar state-led development and planning – devised programmes and campaigns that relied on and promoted entrepreneurialism, consumerism, individualism and anti-statism. Non-profits weren’t simply too weak to defend against those forces of financialisation, marketisation and privatisation that we lump together under the term ‘neoliberalism’, but embraced them. This is the sense in which they were part of the ‘making’ of neoliberalism after empire, with damaging results. As Sasson puts it most strongly in her conclusion, the non-profit sector ‘helped cement post-imperial inequalities and new divisions of labour between Third World producers and British consumers. In a period marked by deindustrialisation and a crisis of unemployment, the solidarity economy ...
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Let’s Abolish the IMF on Its 80th Birthday

Well, the appeal would not resonate with a few of my students who want to work in institutions such as the IMF. They think of job prospects, but a few also believe that the IMF is still one of those institutions that could help ‘development’. Students at the age of 20 to 25 who have enrolled in elite institutions and who have only begun to know about the world, have an interest in believing in such a ‘liberal institution’ of imperialist domination.  Hardly any of those students has ever systematically studied the historical and global working of the capitalist system. On the contrary, even when they are introduced to an alternative, they cannot escape thinking of whether the alternative conflicts with their professional ambitions/careers in managing the system. Public Administration, for instance, is one of the disciplines they enrol in. Ironically, although I don’t have data to support my argument, a few of them end up in debt if the parents are not able to pay the full fees thus ...
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The Polycrisis of Capitalism in the 21st Century

There is a focus on capitalism in the UK .  I don’t understand what Michael Roberts means by three socio-economic systems. Is it not capitalism the socio-economic system of our era?
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UK: Inside Gigademia

University and College Union (UCU) is involved in a prolonged dispute about the pay, pensions and conditions of its 120,000 members. Planned: The University and College Union (UCU) has announced a total of 18 days of industrial action during    February and March. Strikes are planned for February  1, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 21,22, 23, 27, 28 and March 1, 2, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22.
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A Stagflation Debt Crisis Looms

According to a leading liberal, new Keynesian economist, “The next crisis will not be like its predecessors. In the 1970s, we had stagflation but no massive debt crises, because debt levels were low. After 2008, we had a debt crisis followed by low inflation or deflation, because the credit crunch had generated a negative demand shock. Today, we face supply shocks in a context of much higher debt levels, implying that we are heading for a combination of 1970s-style stagflation and 2008-style debt crises – that is, a stagflationary debt crisis.”
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Global Capitalism

“This weekend, the  G20 leaders’ summit takes place  – not physically of course, but by video link.  Proudly hosted by Saudi Arabia, that bastion of democracy and civil rights, the G20 leaders are focusing on the impact on the world economy from the COVID-19 pandemic.” G20: the debt solution
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