How advertisers got people shopping in two-tonne trucks
New study shows three quarters of ‘off road’ SUVs sold in towns and cities and calls on ad agencies to drop polluters We are far less in control of the things that we buy, such as cars, than we think. In a new study, Mindgames on wheels we show how marketing created...
Re-Green the Village
It's time to put the secateurs, herbicide and peat compost away and let the over-manicured English village return to nature. Thirty years ago we bought a rather rat infested - alright, very rat infested – cottage, and have enjoyed it ever since. It’s where we’ve spent...
A practical solution to the other permanent pandemic
By Edgar Cahn and Christine Gray Like Covid, social isolation spreads its harms to families and neighbourhoods within nations round the globe, striking people across the age spectrum from birth to old age, undermining their health and well-being, even leading to early...
‘Super’ tax break for the company sucking life from high streets
The Chancellor’s recent ‘New Towns’ deal - £1bn for 45 towns (of which 40 just happen to be in Tory constituencies) is welcome. So is the £150m to help communities take over pubs, theatres and other local institutions in their areas which have a unifying social effect...
Global heating – a glimmer of light in the gloom?
More bad news was brought in January looking back over the previous year. Unsurprisingly, 2020 was either the hottest year ever recorded, according to NASA, or – the UK Met Office determines – it was just squeezed into second place by 2016. What is not in doubt is...
100,000 dead
On the morning of Sunday 24 January, 97,329 lives had been taken by the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, according to Government statistics. By some estimates, the country had already passed 100,000 deaths 11 days earlier. Marking this milestone is in some sense...
Economic prospects for 2021: New Weather and the FT survey
Each year the Financial Times newspaper investigates the UK’s upcoming economic prospects with a survey of economic analysts. New Weather’s Andrew Simms took part. The survey’s predictions often prove highly accurate but after such an extraordinary year, and with...
We can still bring high streets back to life…
By David Boyle, Lindsay Mackie and Andrew Simms “We created 400 clone towns nobody loves. We shouldn’t get upset - job losses aside - about changing them.” So said Mark Robinson, co-founder of landlords Ellandi and chair of the government’s High Streets Task Force, on...
“A pandemic spreads” – what are we learning about failed neoliberal economics?
Andrew Simms and Sarah Woods reflect on the accidental relevance of their performance-lecture Neoliberalism: The Break-Up Tour for the launch of Digital Theatre+'s new filmed discussion. “A pandemic spreads'' are the first three words of our participatory show...
Bye-bye Kier Group, and Serco, G4S etc…
Outsourcing and privatisation died at 15:18 on Wednesday 4 November 2020. Or thereabouts. That was of course a misquotation of the great architectural critic Charles Jencks who passed judgement on the failures of inhuman, modernist buildings. It was also when the...