Tis the season to be evil? A fitting end to 2016 – bring the kids
Next week (starting 28th Nov) I’ll be pestering the US about How Change Happens (actually, I think they might already be wondering about that). Events in Washington DC, New York and Boston. Will try and get a list of event links up on the book website in the next couple of days.
My twitter feed has been crammed with some musings on the deeper significance of /what happens next after the US elections. Some of my favourites have been Sina Odugbemi, in the custody of angst, Kieran Breen on Hypernormalisation and building a global movement for change, Robert Skidelsky on whether this is a 1914 moment and how to avoid what followed and Shashi Tharoor on the end (or at least decline) of US soft power. Bill Easterly reckons it’s time to end the alliance of the War on Poverty with the War on Terror (hard to argue with that). While Jonathan Glennie concludes that after Brexit and Trump, the aid and development sector must pay more attention to domestic (i.e. northern) issues.
What else should I be reading on the ‘how change happens’ of the US elections, on my plane this weekend? Advice welcome
Meanwhile, in these angst-ridden times, how about some good news?
“The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday” should have been the headline every single day in the last 2 decades.
Scandinavia fines people for traffic violations according to their incomes, so Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman recently had to cough up $54,000 for going at 65 miles per hour in a 50 zone. How cool is that? [h/t Max Lawson]
Proud Dad spot: props to East London Community Land Trust & its co-Director Calum Green for producing low cost homes whose price is linked to local average wages
Global deaths due to terrorism fell by 10% last year. Don’t suppose that will be on many front pages
And GSK tops a new Big Pharma league table on access to medicines in developing countries