Home Truths

The Blair government's failure to deal with the housing crisis is, perhaps, the best example of New Labour having wasted a great opportunity to alter the political landcape of Britain.

My latest piece on Comment is Free looks at the housing crisis and suggests some policy ideas which could, over the long term, begin to address the enduring problem of homelessness.

The nanny state

There's a great article by Simon Jenkins in today's Guardian on the overbearing efforts of the Health and Safety Executive to make our lives utterly risk free. Jenkins make the point that sometimes accidents just happen and there is not always someone to blame when things go wrong. I think there is something sick about a culture that has to find a culprit whenever something bad happens. The old legal term, 'an act of God' seems to have fallen into disuse. While perhaps not entirely accurate, it always seemed to me a useful device for apportioning responsibility when no one was at fault.

I have long thought that we are all becoming a little bit complicit in this emerging blame society: there must be complex changes going on at an individual pyscholgical level which are reflected in the slow process of cultural change.

Midterms voter turnout

Last week's midterm electioms in the US which, although they don't include a vote for the Presidency, are pretty much equivalent to a general election here in the UK are reported to have seen an improvement in voter turnout to just over 40 per cent. Well at least it's an improvement, even if the turnout, as is usually the case in the US, is staggering low.

The level of media interest in the midterms this side of the Atlantaic has been unprecedented, and surely reflects the importance of what happens in American politics for the rest of the world. But I haven't seen much comment on the implications of such poor participation in the democratic process in the US, a country which frequently holds itself up as an exmaple of the merits of democracy. It seems to me that the Americans need to put their own democratic house in order before they start telling others how to things should be done.

Global problems demand global solutions

Some time ago I came across the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (website here) which campaigns for global solutions to global problems, and has devised an intriguing mechanism for forcing coordinated international action to tackle climate change and other pressing global challenges, through existing democratic institutions.

You can get more information and sign up as an 'adopter' of simultaneous policy at the UK website which is here, and I strongly urge you to do so.

I discuss the initiative in my lastest post on Comment is Free and that piece refers to a longer essay I have written on the topic which is available here.