Words, words, words. In snowbound lockdown I process thousands of them every day, writing them, reading them, tweaking them. And spotting odd patterns, and layers of obfuscation and general slipperiness. Here are a few thoughts (I’m not doing standard devspeak rants here – plenty of those already on the blog), aided and abetted by crowdsourcing on twitter. Sprinkler words Sprinkler

In the run up to digital Davos this year, I got into a conversation with Jenny Ricks of the Fight Inequality Alliance about the huge growth in campaigning on inequality. On the one hand, inequality is clearly an important and pressing issue (I won’t rehearse the arguments here). But it’s also really multi-faceted – wealth, income, but also gender, ethnicity,

Guest post by Florencia Guerzovich, Soledad Gattoni, and Dave Algoso Anyone working for change knows that timing matters. You can see your efforts stall and spin for years, before finally you break through. What made that possible? Sometimes it’s your persistence, wearing down opposition like water carving a canyon. But sometimes it’s a change that came from outside your work—a

African Billionaires and Governments Have a Plan to Save America. Some smart trading places satire A global vaccine apartheid is unfolding. People’s lives must come before profit. Important piece from Winnie Byanyima Five Points for MPs in the UK’s Planned Aid Cut, and an Alternative Proposal for the Government. Good arguments on why the UK needs to reverse its aid

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Guest post by Mitchell Watkins & Professor Mushtaq Khan (SOAS University of London) Our research in Bangladesh identifies two practical ways to make climate change adaptation funding more effective. First, anti-corruption monitoring is more effective when led by locally influential households; secondly and more importantly, their involvement can be increased by designing adaptation projects to maximize ‘dual use’, ensuring that

My LSE Masters module on Advocacy, Campaigning and Grassroots Activism kicked off recently with a great discussion on the nature of power. Tom Kirk, who teaches the course with me, asked each of the seminar groups to buzz on ‘how has your disciplinary background shaped your understanding of power’. Some fascinating patterns emerged. If you come from somewhere ‘interesting’ (e.g.

In October 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to create a new constitution. If Chileans are to capitalise on this historic opportunity, says Maria Carrasco, an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at LSE, they must dare to dream of bold new ways to address their problems and guide our institutions. That includes focusing on the environment, happiness and economies of

On Friday Nikki van der Gaag analysed the disastrous impact of the pandemic on women’s rights. Today she asks what would it mean to build an economy that centres care, not carelessness? Back in August last year, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the only way viruses have been vanquished is via “permanent adjustments” to economics and societies, and added:  ‘We

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The pandemic has eroded women’s rights – but there is a way forward, says Nikki van der Gaag   2020 was not a good year for women’s rights. Women have borne the brunt of the effects of the pandemic, from home schooling to losing their jobs to domestic violence to a drop in girl’s education and a decrease in the

Guest post from Oxfam’s Thomas Dunmore-Rodriguez Applying a theory of change approach is hard, and in the current context just got a whole lot harder. Theories of change tend to be abstract, intangible, and largely hypothetical, so given the unpredictability of the COVID-affected world, are they still useful for activists seeking to strategize for positive social change? Recently a group