SPOTLIGHT

Economy

Labour Economics: Economy in 2020

Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘Economy in 2020’ is admirable for the working class in its principles but ultimately has its flaws. Battered and bruised, with knees rocking after a haymaker, Labour’s current predicament within British politics resembles that of a boxer that has been tactically outclassed for ten rounds, it’s close to a stoppage. Granted, politics has […]

Europe

The UK response to the “refugee crisis” is theoretically sound but practically counterproductive

The UK Conservative government has a strategy for tackling the current “refugee crisis” that is theoretically convincing but practically contradictory. The strategy consists of letting as few refugees onto UK soil as it can get away with, whilst increasing efforts to tackle the source of the crisis. The former is implicit in the numbers: until […]

Sport

Athletics’ Quick Fix: How the politics of doping is taking athletics to the brink of ruin

June 2003 As most sport-crazy 9 – 90 year-old boys do, I began reading my copy of the Mail on Sunday from the last page to the first. But on this particular day, my eyes were strangely captivated by the side column rather than the main headline. “World’s Fastest Couple give birth to baby boy”. […]

Green

The fall of oil and the environment


The Fall of Oil and the Environment Bane or Blessing? The recent rapid decline of the price of oil, from around $115 per barrel in mid-2014 to below $50 per barrel by August 2015 (Brent Crude), has prompted widespread concerns about negative impacts of cheap oil on the environment. These concerns can be roughly divided […]

Human Rights

Rufgee crisis: Lessons David Cameron can learn from Lebanon’s example

In the midst of the current refugee crisis it’s easy to get caught up in numbers. Germany is expecting 800,000 by the end of the year – and 500,000 annually for years to come. Australia says they’ll let in 12,000 and David Cameron announced that the UK will accept 20,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian […]


 
 
 

 

A Confucian noose: China’s universities are serving the state, but failing the people

China’s government has abused a nationalist neo-Confucian ideology to maintain its power in uncertain economic times – to the detriment of the country’s own future. Without a reform of its outdated higher education system...
by Gareth Lewis
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Talk Is Cheap: Can UN Climate Change Summit Turn Rhetoric Into Action?

The world holds its breath: protesters rally on the streets of New York ahead of Tuesday’s United Nations’ Climate Change Summit, 2014.
by Kamleshan Pillay
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International Political Forum

Countdown To The End Of Twitter In Russia

The deputy director of Russia’s chief censorship agency, Roscomnadzor, has threatened that the government could block Twitter or Facebook entirely, in a matter of minutes. Maxim Ksenzov told Izvestia newspaper that Twitter ...
by Kevin Rothrock
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Microcredit—Still Sexy?

Nearly seven years ago, the United Nations (UN) declared that 2005 was the ‘year of microcredit.’ Thirty years after Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus pioneered the phenomenon of microcredit (also known as micro-...
by Tiffany Brittingham
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International Political Forum

Still Unsustainable; Nairobi

Changing weather patterns! Ozone layer depletion! Melting ice caps! This has been the alarming news across the globe last few years. When climate change became a public concern a few years back, the media presented Kenya with t...
by Fridah Mlemwa
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The Iraqi-Kurdish Oil Deal And The Fight Against Islamic State

In early 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began independently exporting crude oil through Turkey, angering the central Iraqi government which “claims sole authority to export oil from the country”. In total, th...
by David Bresnahan-McRae
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