Shortly before the pandemic hit, there had been a wave of protests against inequality in Chile, that seemed to go on and on, growing all the time and increasingly disrupting everyday life. At one point, in the capital Santiago, a message was projected onto the side of a building which read: “We won’t go back […]
economy
Andy Colvin, a resident of Kilmarnock, says many who are self-employed are not getting the support they need. Andy highlights the case of his friend, Sandy Hillan, who has been at the heart of the community response to the crisis but is under severe financial pressure personally. I’M getting a little tired with announcements on […]
The rhetoric and the reality
The new “test, trace, isolate, support” strategy announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon yesterday was an important milestone in Scotland’s Covid-19 crisis. The paper sets out a distinctive Scottish approach to community tracing and testing, and thus is the first strategic disjuncture from the UK response to this crisis. As Common Weal head of policy […]
“Track, train, employ”?
When the inevitable inquiry takes place into what’s happened in care homes in Scotland during this crisis, there will undoubtedly be myriad reasons identified for why the necessary protections were not in place when they were needed. But as one Source Direct subscriber who has had experience of a family member in a care home […]
Nourishing the care economy
“The economy is not some mechanistic computer that can simply be turned off and on again so we should be prepared for a substantial amount of rebuilding as we come out of the crisis.”
Turn it off and on again
“Whether our future builds on rediscovered human and ecological values and community connections, as so many hope, will depend on what we do now – not after the pandemic is over, when it will be too late. We don’t want to go back to ‘their normal’, but the alternative might be a whole lot worse.”
Sarah Glynn: After the deluge
A flurry of forecasts of economic doom arrived yesterday, though there’s good reason to think they were over-optimistic in their doom-mongering. The IMF have predicted a 3 per cent slump for the year globally, presuming the world can get out of lockdown by summer without a second spike. In the UK, the Office for Budget […]
Forward to the hibernation economy
“The future is not destined to be worse. It is certain to be different, but if we embrace the difference and shape it we can be much happier.”
Robin McAlpine: After this crisis, our lives and economy can be better – if we have principles
Let’s develop a little scorecard on where we are with the economic measures in the UK and Scotland to cope with our new pandemic-world. For corporations, we have 80 per cent of the wages they owe workers affected by Covid-19 covered by government. That’s a significant drop in their costs, overnight. For banks, we have […]
The bailout scorecard
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a wise man if ever there was one, described hope as “being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness”. Where do I see hope in our global Pandemic? In the struggles of people who are realising their own power to shape their lives and the society around them. In the […]