If someone ever criticises your tidiness, show them this, the New York Review of Books office. Ht Padraig Belton
States are Far Less Likely to Engage in Mass Violence Against Nonviolent Uprisings than Violent Uprisings
How Costa Rica Gets It Right by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Nice piece on ideas for avoiding boring time-suck meetings. My favourite suggestion, everyone in an organization should have a capped annual meeting budget = salary of those attending x length of meeting.
Brilliant from Branko. The 3 critical junctures that made Marxism a lasting influence: Engels, the First World War/October Revolution and Global Finance Capitalism
Forty countries now have shrinking working-age populations, (defined as 15- to 64-year-olds), up from nine in the late 1980s. China, Russia and Spain joined recently; Thailand and Sri Lanka soon will.
How to find surprising development successes. New paper developing a more rigorous methodology to identify and understand outliers. Please note, all positive deviance fans
Is the Bangladesh garment miracle unravelling? New research shows women garment workers are are paying too high a physical and emotional price. And from 2013-16/17, female manufacturing jobs dropped from 3.78 million to 2.86 million ht Arjan de Haan
I’m really enjoying IDR Online – a great Indian development blog. Here’s Dr Abhay Bang on how he discovered the power of research in changing policy, and why top-down research doesn’t work And an interview with feminist activist, poet, author and social scientist, Kamla Bhasin: ‘The villagers only agreed to the literacy centre because they didn’t know what connections I had. They were used to development workers coming to their communities for 6 months and then disappearing. Saying ‘yes’ to me was a way to stay out of trouble.’
Oops, one for the media training courses…..Watch Sainsbury’s CEO sing “we’re in the money” while waiting to talk about the £12 billion merger with Asda – he’s since apologised for his “unguarded moment”