Last week Quorn announced it will invest £30m in its County Durham factory following significant sales growth in recent years. Claire Hoolohan argues that Quorn’s success is a signal to governments, policy makers, academics, and others that the time has arrived to move forward on the sustainable food agenda. Reducing the amount of meat in […]
Archives for April 2014
Time to tackle the big issues in black and minority ethnic mental health
Against the backdrop of continued policy failures, the time has come to do something that fundamentally changes the way African Caribbean people come into contact with mental health services, says Dr Dawn Edge. Decades of research consistently report that African Caribbean people in the UK are at significantly greater risk of being diagnosed with psychoses […]
Wrong, simplistic, unimaginative; dismantling Demos’s take on ethnic voting
Upwardly mobile ethnic minority voters are more likely to turn Tory, claims new research by thinktank Demos. But Dr Maria Sobolewska questions the methodology of the study and the validity of the conclusions. Demos has published a report on whether the Conservatives could avoid Romney’s famous death by demographics, and attract enough ethnic minority votes […]
Statues in the park are not just figures from the past
Statues in our public parks tell us much about the British sense of identity, argues Dr Andrew Smith. Empire is everywhere in Britain, even if it is rarely noticed. Our parks are a case in point. When I walk through Glasgow’s central park, I pass repeated symbols of Victorian imperial glory resting in what has […]
Towards sustainable consumption: start by reframing the questions
Sustainable consumption is all too often framed in terms of individuals’ choices. The social practice perspective offers an alternative model, argue Dr Daniel Welch and Dr Nicola Spurling. “Do you find it easy to follow a sustainable lifestyle? Do you switch off every light? Plan each meal to avoid food waste? Why is behaviour change […]
Ethnically diverse neighbourhoods are safest
Examination of public health data shines a welcome light on which communities suffer the least – and most – violence, explains Ian Warren. People living in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods are less likely to suffer an assault than are residents of areas with little or no racial diversity. This is one of the striking results of […]
Justice – and compensation – denied by new legislation
Victims of miscarriages of justice are having their injustice made worse by a new change of law, argues Dr Hannah Quirk. For all the talk of the much derided ‘compensation culture’ that has supposedly developed in this country, the reality is that most victims of miscarriages of justice are not entitled to any redress from […]
Back to the future; the recurring patterns of flooding in the UK
Flooding is not new in Britain, with major floods recorded throughout history. But with predictions of climate change suggesting such deluge conditions may become more common, Dr Anna Carlsson-Hyslop argues that policymakers must heed some important lessons from the history of flooding. History tells us that central government involvement in flood defence has swung first […]
What is the impact of the ‘bedroom tax’ on children and schools?
A year on from the introduction of the ‘bedroom tax’, Prof Ruth Lupton argues that reducing the incomes of poor families and creating instability for poor children is a nonsensical policy for a government committed to closing the socio-economic attainment gap. One of the Coalition government’s most controversial welfare reform policies, the so-called ‘bedroom tax’, […]
The time has come – but not for votes at 16
In many ways, Andrew Adonis has eloquently argued the case for the voting age to be lowered to 16. But his assertion that the ‘time has come’ simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, argues Prof Andrew Russell. Lord Andrew Adonis’ “Lent Talk” on BBC Radio 4 contained some impressive thinking about young people’s political engagement […]