The UK has not invested enough in public infrastructure, but attempts towards rectifying this lack in investment look likely to confront skilled labour shortages in construction.
Not only did Brexit reduce the number of migrant workers entering the sector, a lack of investment (interest) in skills training (i.e. via FE colleges) compounded by health-related retirements of older workers means there are too few UK-national with skills to fill the gap(s).
Hmm.... I think it may show more the centralisation of construction investment in London.... the figures for skills shortage are for all sectors, not just private or public work.... but my guess is many of those coming in from Essex are responding to better pay on offer in London as big projects struggle to find workers - perhaps Essex projects are not getting started, or cannot offer such high wages?
I agree with Kenan Malik; behind the increasingly instrumental view of university education (that it should be judged by what it does for your subsequent career & earning potential), lies a class-based assessment of who should benefit from education at all.
The working class do not deserve the humanistic value of education but rather must be trained in work skills... while the privileged should be able to buy the benefits of enlightenment!
New research from UCL & the International Institute for Sustainable Development suggests that there are now enough sustainable/green energy projects running or in development that no new fossil fuel capacity is required.
As current fossil fuel capacity now degrades/reduces, so green energy capacity can take its place.
This is not how the fossil fuel firms see it, but as emissions keep rising (up 1.1% last year) this must become a crucial pivot point!
Revealing the direction of Tory policy, while (finally) Rishi Sunak has explicitly recognised the tax-raising impact of fiscal drag (the freezing of personal tax allowances, while prices & wages rise)... he only proposes unfreezing the personal allowance for pensioners.
Its a pity (if unsurprising) that he has not previously 'recognised' the impact of fiscal drag on the rest of the population... or more accurately its all too clear that until now he was happy to raise taxes on workers.
Its funny how in the face of losing an election, he started 'realising' all sorts of things - its almost like he was being wilfully 'ignorant' of this stuff....
maybe... but its a bit early to say; the key will be firstly what Labour actually do in government & secondly what emerges from the Tory fractionalism that will follow a major election loss
Yes, it may be a period of inflection (driven in part by the climate crisis).... If I was still lecturing on this stuff I'd be re-writing some of my lectures as we speak 😀
Yes the idea of regulatory capitalism has been alive for some time as a normative position among critical political economists with a political normative mission - see the work of Peter Drahos & John Braithwaite for instance... and indeed its a potion that I was broadly supportive of when I was a functioning professor (before retiring)
In academia there's a clear group of scholars (I guess among which I would have found myself) who do not merely analyse the political economy (critically) but also advocate for structural changes - so when I say 'politically normative' I mean word that doesn't merely say what is happening but takes a position on what ought to happen...
as @RichardJMurphy argues this morning the Starmerist Labour Party seems to have contempt for those on the left.
What is interesting about this to me (as a once functioning politics academic) is I'm reminded of the talk of a politics beyond left & right in the 80s/90s led by people like Anthony Giddens.
We now seem to have got beyond left & right not by virtue of ideological progression but rather by the continued movement (and narrowing) of the 'Overton Window' of what is seen as acceptable,
Someone needs to sit the Guardian editorial team down & explain to them:
Rising house prices are not 'growth' - this is asset price inflation driven by financial instruments & constrained supply... read my lips: IT IS INFLATION!
(just because its excluded from RPI/CPI measure doesn't make it growth!)
And most inflationary areas are not 'best performing' - they are areas of housing crisis!!!!
In the battle for the youth vote we now seem to have some clear blue water between the parties;
Labour is (at least at the moment) offering to lower the voting age to 16 - perhaps hoping that 18 year olds will see this as a positive move for their younger siblings?
Meanwhile the Tories are offering mandatory 'national service' at 18 to build character & experience....
Hmmm... while actually, I'm not sure the Tories idea is nuts, I can't see many 18 year olds going for it.
Yes, for this to have a glimmer of hope, national service would need to be seen much more like a social service - providing young people to work in socially useful roles across the economy... not in the armed forces - as a policy the devil would be in the detail (of course)
For me the purpose of the national social service would be to build community solidarity & cross-class empathy/interaction, towards seeing society not as factions competing for resources, but rather more as a collective endeavour. Clearly this would not be achieved just by this policy, but handled rightly it could create a real social good.... certainly it might not have instrumental worth, but the general social benefits would be great IMHO
The key thing about the compulsive element (and this would need to be class blind - no buying your way out) is that people from diverse backgrounds would physically/socially interact - I'm not convinced that this is achieved online (but then again I'm over 60 & am sceptical about many of the claimed benefits off online 'community')
I'd agree that works for those who want to go to university, although even then it can become quite tribal - but having worked in universities for a quarter of century, it is not what everyone one wants nor is universally beneficial - but I've always been interested in a pre-university (or other route) period when young people could work together in different situations but also across social classes/groups....
So the good news is that the bill to exonerate the SubPostmasters gained Royal Assent last night, freeing up the fixed compensation scheme for those whose convictions are now quashed (or allowing them to apply to have their individual case assessed).
The, perhaps, not so good news, as much legal commentary has been focusing on is the (potential) precedent it sets for governments to reverse the decisions of Courts.
In this case it would seem pretty just, but in the future?
That's a good point; and the timing issue may be crucial.... but overall, as a supporter of the rule of law, I'd have preferred to see a judicial solution - that said, given the time that might have taken, this might have been pragmatically (and in isolation) the most just response