Podcasts about weekly economics podcast

Nurses struggling without PPE, the frantic search for hospital ventilators, even the dreaded ping from NHS test-and-trace. To most of us, these memories represent some of the worst of the Covid pandemic. But for a select few companies, they were an opportunity to make millions. Consultancy firms won over seven hundred million pounds worth of government Covid contracts to do things like run the test-and-trace system and vaccine rollout. This February, ministers dropped restrictions on Whitehall spending on consultants, allowing these firms to potentially rake in millions more. So why is the government so dependent on consultants? Whose interests do they serve? And how worried should we be about their effect on public life? Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Rosie Collington, co-author of 'The Big Con: How the Consultancy Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilises Our Governments and Warps Our Economies'. Grab a copy of The Big Con out now https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451193/the-big-con-by-collington-mariana-mazzucato-and-rosie/9780241573082 ----- Music by A. A. Aalto and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Produced by Becky Malone, Margaret Welsh and Katrina Gaffney. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

You can't paint your walls, you can't have a pet, you can't guarantee you'll have somewhere to live in six months time. Millions of us are paying sky-high rents but struggling to make a home in a housing system where safety and security takes second place to landlords' profits. Some private tenants face mould and broken boilers but daren't complain. According to Shelter, complaining to your landlord about conditions in your home more than doubles your chance of being evicted. How did private renting become so prevalent? Why are the rights of tenants so weak? And what does this mean for our ability to make a home? Ayeisha is joined by Vicky Spratt, housing correspondent at the i and author of Tenants, and Kieran Yates, journalist and author of the upcoming All the houses I've ever lived in. Further reading: - Grab a copy of Vicky's book Tenants https://profilebooks.com/work/tenants/ - Kieran's book All the houses I've ever lived in is out on the 27 April https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/All-The-Houses-Ive-Ever-Lived-In/Kieran-Yates/9781398509832 - Kojo Koram's book Uncommon wealth is available here https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/kojo-koram/uncommon-wealth/9781529338652/ - Find out more about about the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's work on home-owners and poverty https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/home-owners-and-poverty ----- Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Produced by Becky Malone, Margaret Welsh and Katrina Gaffney. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

On a sunny day in January, a ghostly figure covered in green ribbons appeared on a moor in south-west England. It was a person dressed as Old Crockern, the guardian spirit of Dartmoor. He was greeted by 3000 people who had gathered to protest a court ruling that took away the right to wild camp in the area. It was the biggest countryside access protest in living memory. The ruling reignited a long-running concern over land in England: who owns it? And who is allowed to use it? The aristocracy and landed gentry still own around thirty per cent of English land, and half of England is owned by less than one per cent of the population. How did we get here? What does land ownership have to do with wealth and power? And is there another way? Ayeisha is joined by Nadia Shaikh, naturalist, conservationist and land justice activist with Right to Roam and Frances Northrop, associate fellow at the New Economics Foundation. Further reading: - Find out more and get involved with Right to Roam https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/ - Listen to the Land for Who podcast series sharedassets.org.uk/resources/land-for-who-land-justice-podcast-series - Find out more about the Ecological Land Cooperative https://ecologicalland.coop/ - Read the Sold from Under You investigation https://council-sell-off.thebureauinvestigates.com/ ----- Music by Chad Crouch and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. With thanks to Katrina Gaffney. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Last year the UK had three different prime ministers, four different chancellors and five different housing ministers. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister for close to a decade, recently announced her resignation - and it's not clear who will replace her. British politics now seems to be permanently tumultuous. And with a general election peeking over the horizon, political parties are gearing up to win over the public. What are the big ideas influencing UK politics? How much appetite does the public have for change? And what will be the key battlegrounds at the next general election? Ayeisha is joined by Anoosh Chakelian, Britain editor at the New Statesman, and James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum. - James' new book The Cost of Living Crisis (and how to get out of it)is out next month versobooks.com/books/4259-the-cost-of-living-crisis - Read Anoosh and Ben Walker's piece on the “the new social groupings of the inflation age” newstatesman.com/economy/2023/02/britain-cost-of-living-classes - More on Scottish independence in this article by Jonathon Shafi jonathonshafi.substack.com/p/after-sturgeon-a-new-era-in-scottish - Listen to James' podcast Macrodose patreon.com/Macrodose - Latest from the New Statesman podcast here newstatesman.com/podcasts ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. With thanks to Katrina Gaffney. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Note to listeners: this episode was prerecorded in September 2022. Over the last five episodes we've looked at how the UK is being torn apart. Our economy is built on huge inequalities: between working people and big business, between families and fossil fuel giants, between tenants and landlords, and between marginalised groups and law enforcement. Are such massive divisions in our society inevitable? Can we share the wealth hoarded by the rich? And what do we need to do to build a better future? Ayeisha is joined by Jeevun Sandher, head of economics at the New Economics Foundation, and political economist and author of The Case For A Green New Deal Ann Pettifor. - Subscribe to Ann's substack, System Change, here: https://annpettifor.substack.com/ ----- Music by Chad Crouch and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Note to listeners: this episode was prerecorded in September 2022. This summer, on a small road in south-east London, a crowd of people prevented immigration officers from detaining a local man. Protestors sat on the ground in front of the van he was held in for hours, shouting “Let him go!”. From Pollokshields to Peckham, over the last couple of years we've seen how people can come together to physically stop immigration raids in their communities and protect their neighbours. But with the government giving the police more powers to crack down on protests, will actions like these be able to continue? What is happening to civil liberties in the UK? And who is fighting back? Ayeisha is joined by Zehrah Hasan advocacy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) and Charlie Whelton, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty (@zedhas3 and @cwhelton on Twitter). Want to join the movement? You can get involved with groups like: - JCWI jcwi.org.uk - Liberty libertyhumanrights.org.uk - Migrants Organise migrantsorganise.org - SOAS Detainee Support soasdetaineesupport.co.uk - Stop Deportations @StpDeportations on Twitter - Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants lgsmigrants.com Further reading: - Who's Paying The Price? The Human Cost Of The Rwanda Scheme by Medical justice medicaljustice.org.uk/whos-paying-the-price-report-released/ - The gal-dem guide to stopping a deportation flight by Zehrah Hasan gal-dem.com/guide-stopping-deportation-flight-immigration/ ----- Music by Chad Crouch and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Note to listeners: this episode was prerecorded in September 2022. The cost of living scandal could force 1.7 million households into homelessness this winter, according to the charity Crisis. In the UK, we can no longer rely on social housing to protect people from sleeping rough or sofa-surfing. If you were alive in 1979, you had a 40% chance of living in an affordable council home. Today, that figure is just under 8%. What happened to all our council houses? Did Thatcher's right to buy policy create the housing crisis we see today? And how would our lives be different if we could depend on warm, comfortable social homes? Ayeisha is joined by Becki Winson, NEF senior organiser and Suzanne Muna, secretary of the Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) (@RebeccaWinson and @Muna_Suz on Twitter) -Join NEF's Homes for Us Campaign https://homesforus.org.uk/ -Find out more about SHAC and get involved https://shaction.org/ ----- Music by Broke for Free and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Note to listeners: this episode was prerecorded in August 2022. 2022: a year of extremes. During the 40 degree summer heat, roads melted and railway lines buckled. The London Fire Brigade had its busiest day since the Blitz as record temperatures led to hundreds of fires across the city. When it finally rained a month later, the Met Office warned of flood risk. But after a dangerously hot summer, we're now worrying about whether we can afford our energy bills during a long, cold winter. This was the year that the climate crisis collided with the scandalously high cost of living. But how are the two related? Why are fossil fuel companies making bumper profits while the rest of us are worried about paying our bills? And can we stay warm while making sure oil and gas stay safely under the North Sea? Ayeisha is joined by Mika Minio-Paluello, climate and industry lead at the Trades Union Congress and Tessa Khan, environmental lawyer and founder and director of Uplift. -Want to join a union? You can find the right one for you on the TUC website: https://www.tuc.org.uk/joinunion - Get involved with the Stop Cambo/Jackdaw and Warm this Winter campaigns: https://www.stopcambo.org.uk/ and https://www.warmthiswinter.org.uk/ ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Note to listeners: this episode was prerecorded in August 2022.  As the first week of rail strikes came to an end in June, Google searches for the phrase “join union” had increased by 184%. News channels and politicians didn't seem to know what to make of the broad public support for the striking rail workers. Inspired by the RMT union, the unrest spread: criminal barristers, BT workers, posties and teachers are just some of the people exploring strike action. After decades of union busting, wage stagnation and decimated rights, are workers finally saying enough is enough? Why has the public suddenly got behind striking workers? And what would happen if we held a general strike? Ayeisha is joined by the TUC's Sian Elliot and Sarah Jaffe, journalist and author of “Work Won't Love You Back”(@SianCElliott and @sarahljaffe on Twitter). -Find out more about Sarah's work at https://workwontloveyouback.org/ -Want to join a union? You can find the right one for you on the TUC website https://www.tuc.org.uk/joinunion ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

In this mini-series of the New Economics Podcast, we'll discover how our economy has been run over the past few years - and look at the key battlegrounds for those fighting to change the rules. Over the last few years, neoliberalism – the economic model that has dominated since Margaret Thatcher was PM – has taken a hit. Big spending and state intervention have been the name of the game, as the government scrambled to get to grips with the pandemic. While Boris Johnson gets ready to pack up his things, we still don't know who will be replacing him in Number 10. The two final contenders, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, have been described in the press as “channelling the blue-suited ghost of Thatcher”. So, have the last few years solidified a new kind of economic mainstream? Or will Johnsonism be swept aside once the new PM has unpacked their toothbrush? In the first episode of this special mini-series we're asking: has neoliberalism hit the buffers? Ayeisha is joined by Ellie Mae O'Hagan and Laurie Macfarlane (@elliemaeohagan and @L__Macfarlane on Twitter). -Read Laurie's piece with Christine Berry for Renewal on the Conservative's political economy: https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/renewal/vol-30-issue-2/abstract-9553/ -More on the Race Class Narrative here: https://classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/the-uk-race-class-narrative-report ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Families are bracing for less and less money to get by as energy bills rise this spring. In the fifth richest country in the world, pensioners are skipping meals so they can afford their heating bills, and parents are only switching the heating on when their children are at home. At the same time, fossil fuel companies like BP and Shell made their biggest profit in years. What do these two things have to do with each other? Why are energy bills soaring? And what can the government do to make sure everyone can afford to heat their homes? We're no longer the Weekly Economics Podcast because episodes will now be coming to you every fortnight. But as always we'll be discussing the more important economic issues with a variety of interesting voices. For the first episode of the New Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Dr Joseph Baines, senior lecturer in international political economy at King's College London and Abby Jitendra, principal policy manager on energy at Citizens Advice. -If you're worried about paying your energy bills, you can get in touch with Citizens Advice on their website: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/ -To get involved in NEF's campaign to retrofit Britain's cold and draughty homes, head over to the Great Homes Upgrade website: https://greathomesupgrade.org/ ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Bobby Richards and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The New Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Coronavirus cases are once again rising in Europe and across the world. The World Health Organisation has said that countries shouldn't be giving out booster jabs for the rest of the year, but in the UK we're offering third shots to people as young as 40. Meanwhile, only 3% of people in low-income countries have had a single dose. Covid vaccines may have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths in the UK, but who is missing out on the global vaccine rollout? Why can't poorer countries get hold of the Covid vaccine? And how can we change the rules of our international economy so that everyone is protected during the pandemic? For the last episode of the series, Ayeisha is joined by Achal Prabhala, writer, researcher, and coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, and Saiorse Fitzpatrick, advocacy manager at STOPAIDS. - Listen to a previous episode on vaccine nationalism with Miriam Brett and Tahir Amin https://neweconomics.org/2021/02/weekly-economics-podcast-vaccine-nationalism - Read more about the WTO proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily waive intellectual property on Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and related technologies. Talks on this due to take place in Geneva on the 30th November have now been postponed. https://www.twn.my/title2/intellectual_property/trips_waiver_proposal.htm - Support the People's Vaccine https://peoplesvaccine.org/ - Follow STOPAIDS on Twitter - the hashtag for the ice cream action Ayeisha mentioned in this episode is #Iscreamvaccine https://twitter.com/STOPAIDS - For more from Achal, head to the AccessIBSA website https://accessibsa.org/ - For more on Covid-19 vaccines, the TRIPS waiver and more, go to the Third World Network website https://www.twn.my/ ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Asthmatic Astronaut and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

A record number of employees have quit their jobs in recent months, in what's been dubbed the Great Resignation. Newspapers report that it's part of post-Covid demand for flexible working and better work life balance. After last year, where up to a quarter of the UK workforce was paid not to work through the furlough scheme, are we reassessing our relationship to our jobs? How does work impact our health and sense of self? And should we improve our working conditions - or try to abolish work altogether? Ayeisha is joined by Amelia Horgan, assistant lecturer at the school of philosophy and art history, University of Essex, and author of Lost in Work. - Grab a copy of Amelia's book: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340913/lost-in-work/ - Listen back to past episodes on outsourcing and the impacts of the economy on mental health: https://neweconomics.org/section/podcasts - Read Ayeisha's piece for the second issue of the New Economics Zine: https://neweconomics.org/2020/10/this-is-your-brain-on-neoliberalism - Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is available here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/103/1038399/the-second-sex/9780099595731.html - Find out more about Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism: https://www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-optimism - Take a look at the Antiwork subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/ - Read Capital Realism by Mark Fisher: https://bookshop.org/books/capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative/9781846943171 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

In August this year Jake Davison, a 22-year-old from Plymouth, went on a shooting rampage that left six dead, including his mother and himself. In the aftermath it emerged that Davison had been a member of ‘incel' forums online. He's not the first mass shooter to have links to online groups espousing extreme hatred of women. Since Elliot Rodger killed six people in California in 2014, self-proclaimed ‘involuntary celibates' have carried out multiple mass murders, mostly in North America. What's driving this extreme misogyny? Is incel ideology on the rise? And are Big Tech companies to blame for allowing these groups to thrive online? Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined Debbie Ging, associate professor in the school of communications at Dublin City University. - Find out more about Zizi Papacharissi's work on affective publics oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/1…999736 - Michael Kimmel's book Angry White Men is available here uk.bookshop.org/books/angry-white…era/9781568589619 - Read Amnesty's report on Toxic Twitter www.amnesty.org/en/latest/researc…-women-chapter-1/ - The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism by Ben Little and Alison Winch is available here www.routledge.com/The-New-Patriarc…ok/9780367260156 - Find out more about Debbie Ging's work www.dcu.ie/communications/people/debbie-ging ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Chris Zabriskie under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

If you read mainstream media coverage of the issues facing transgender people in the UK, you'll see a lot of fevered discussion of pronouns, bathroom access, and confusing legislation like the Gender Recognition Act. The media tells one story - but the other side of the coin is that half of trans people in the UK are unemployed and one in four have experienced direct healthcare discrimination. When we focus on bathrooms and pronouns, what other conversations are shut down? What are the economic issues facing trans people today? And is trans liberation really a class issue? Ayeisha is joined by Nim Ralph, community activist, writer, trainer and facilitator. - Read Fergal O'Dwyer's interview with Nim in the third issue of the New Economics Zine: neweconomics.org/2021/08/why-trans-liberation-is-a-class-issue - Read the Albert Kennedy lgbtq+ youth homelessness report: https://www.akt.org.uk/report - Find gal-dem's investigation into transphobia in the gender-based violence sector here: https://gal-dem.com/transphobia-in-sexual-violence-services/ - Grab a copy of Shon Faye's new book, The Transgender Issue: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315/315349/the-transgender-issue/9780241423141.html ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Chris Zabriskie under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

At the height of the pandemic, politicians promised to do whatever it took to keep the economy going, and introduced emergency support like the furlough scheme. But now those measures have been cut and the conversation has turned to “fixing the public finances”, ending “reckless borrowing'' and preventing “soaring debt”. The word austerity hasn't featured yet but it's all feeling a bit familiar, isn't it? So, what do these phrases actually mean? Should we really be worried about things like government borrowing and public debt? And what are some of the alternative ways of thinking about our economy? Ayeisha is joined by Dora Meade, head of messaging at the New Economy Organisers Network (NEON), and Frank van Lerven, senior economist at NEF. ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Christian Bjoerklund under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

In a few weeks' time, 25,000 people will descend on Glasgow. They are coming for the UN climate summit, also known as Cop26. The delegates might not have the pleasure of sampling the city's mac-and-cheese pies or a dram of whiskey. Instead they will meet with others from around the world to try and agree new ways to bring down greenhouse-gas emissions. So what happens at a UN climate conference? Are negotiators in an events centre really going to stop runaway climate change? And what should we look out for once the Glasgow conference begins? Ayeisha is joined be Nathan Thanki, co-coordinator at the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice. - Find out more about the COP26 Coalition: https://cop26coalition.org/ ----- Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

The UK has the draughtiest and oldest housing in Western Europe. And our gas boilers pump out twice as much carbon dioxide as all of the country's power stations. Do we need to upgrade the UK's homes? Why is our housing powering the climate crisis? And how can we make sure everyone's home is warm, clean and green - whether we rent a flat or own a castle? Ayeisha is joined by Chaitanya Kumar, head of environment and the green transition at NEF, and Martin Heath, director of Basingstoke Energy Services Co-op. - Find out more about the Great Homes Upgrade campaign: https://greathomesupgrade.org/ ----- Music by Candlegravity and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Over 11m people have been furloughed in the last 16 months, and almost 6m are currently on universal credit. But over the next week, the government's main emergency policies to help people through the pandemic will end. People on furlough will find out if their jobs are still waiting for them, and people on universal credit will find their benefits cut by £20 a week. The government seems to be acting like we're out of the woods of the pandemic - but are we really? With over a million people still furloughed, energy bills going up, and benefit cuts kicking in, what kind of winter are we facing? And how can we make sure everyone has enough to live on for the rest of the pandemic and beyond? Back with a brand new series, Ayeisha is joined by Kate Bell, head of rights, international, social and economics at the TUC, and NEF senior economist Sarah Arnold. - Read the TUC's proposal on a more progressive way to fund social care here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/new-deal-social-care-new-deal-workforce - Read Sarah's piece on reforming our social security system here: https://neweconomics.org/2021/09/beyond-the-20-uplift-options-for-reforming-uc ----- Music by Chris Zabriskie and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

This week a controversial deportation flight took off for Jamaica. Legal challenges meant that only a tenth of the 90 people due to be deported were on the plane. The planned deportation included people whose lawyers said they had a right to stay in the UK under the Windrush rules, or who had arrived in the UK as children. Critics say that our immigration system is unnecessarily cruel. But what is its origin story? How has it changed over time? And what does it have to do with Britain's colonial history? In this final episode of the series, Ayeisha is joined by Ian Sanjay Patel, LSE fellow in human rights and author of We're Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire. You can grab a copy of Ian's book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3700-we-re-here-because-you-were-there ----- Music by Blue Dots Session and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we're spending five episodes this series looking at pressing climate issues. In this episode we're talking about taking the fossil fuel industry to court. Last week, a government spokesperson said that we should freeze leftover bread and stop rinsing dishes before we put them in the dishwasher to tackle the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the government has approved a new oil field in the North Sea that we'd need to reforest the whole of England in order to offset. Greenpeace has threatened the government with legal action over the new oil field, and they're not the only ones trying to fight the climate crisis in the courts. So what legal challenges should we be paying attention to? How do they work? And what do they have to do with the climate movement at large? Ayeisha is joined by Tessa Khan, international climate change and human rights lawyer, and founder and director of Uplift. -Support the Stop Cambo (https://twitter.com/StopCambo) and Paid to Pollute (https://twitter.com/paidtopollute) campaigns -Read up on the successful lawsuit against Shell in the Hague https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/26/court-orders-royal-dutch-shell-to-cut-carbon-emissions-by-45-by-2030 -Find out more about the ongoing case against RWE https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/04/global-heating-to-blame-for-threat-of-deadly-flood-in-peru-study-says ----- Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we're spending five episodes this series looking at pressing climate issues. In this episode we're talking fast fashion. Summer is here and Love Island is all over the telly. The show's sexy singles are competing for big prize money, and the inevitable sponsorship deals with fast fashion brands like Shein, Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing. But these companies have been accused of exploiting their workers and polluting the environment. Our t-shirt label might say ‘made in China', but the raw materials and finished product have often travelled around the globe before it ends up in our wardrobes. How have we ended up with such a complicated system? What are the costs for our environment, and the people who make our clothes? And what can the fashion industry tell us about how our global economy works? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Maxine Bédat, director of New Standard Institute and author of Unraveled: the life and death of a garment. - Grab a copy of Maxine's book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611479/unraveled-by-maxine-bedat/ - Find out more about the New Standard Institute: https://www.newstandardinstitute.org/ ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we're spending five episodes this series looking at some of the biggest climate issues. In this episode we're talking about a just transition. Last week, the prime minister travelled to Coventry to set out his post-pandemic vision for the country. It was anticipated as a flagship moment for the government's ‘levelling up' agenda, but critics decried the speech as all talk, no action. This comes a month after the Committee on Climate Change said the UK is facing a similar problem when it comes to achieving our net zero targets: lots of ambition, but no detailed plans to get there. So, we need more action on tackling inequality and the climate crisis, but can we do both at the same time? How do we ensure communities aren't left behind in the move to a low-carbon economy? And what does a successful green transition actually look like for workers in high-carbon industries? Kirsty Styles is back in the presenting seat covering for Ayeisha. She's is joined by Luke Murphy, head of the environmental justice commission and associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and Rebekah Diski, senior researcher at NEF. - For some similar themes, listen back to the episode with Alice Bell on Greenwashing https://soundcloud.com/weeklyeconomicspodcast/greenwashing - Find out more about IPPR's Environmental Justice Commission https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/fairness-and-opportunity - Read NEF's analysis on potential job losses in aviation https://neweconomics.org/2020/06/at-least-70-000-jobs-in-aviation-and-aviation-supply-chains-at-risk#entry:17302@1:url - Read NEF's report Powering the Just Transition https://neweconomics.org/2021/06/powering-the-just-transition ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we're going to spend five episodes this series looking at some of the biggest climate issues. We kicked things off last week with Alice Bell explaining everything you need to know about greenwashing. This week the conversation is about the climate movement with activists from two generations. The modern environmental movement has been around for over 50 years. And over the last couple, it's been reinvigorated by a new generation of young student climate strikers. After a deadly heatwave swept the western US and Canada, and temperatures in Jacobabad, Pakistan soared to a life-threatening 52 degrees last week, how can activists communicate the connection between these events and the climate crisis? Is the new wave of activists more willing to talk about colonialism and capitalism? And what challenges is the climate movement facing today? This week, we're hosting a conversation between climate activists from two different generations. One is Ann Pettifor, director of PRIME and the author of The Case for the Green New Deal, and the other is Izzy Warren, teenage climate activist and member of the UK Student Climate Network. - Find out more about the Green New Deal Group https://greennewdealgroup.org/ - Read The Case for a Green New Deal by Ann Pettifor https://www.versobooks.com/books/3102-the-case-for-the-green-new-deal - Visit the Rainforest Action Network's website https://www.ran.org/ - More on the Jubilee 2000 campaign here https://www.advocacyinternational.co.uk/featured-project/jubilee-2000 - Read Izzy Warren's blog on the Science museum occupation https://www.climatechangenews.com/2021/06/21/greenwashing-shell-science-museum-failing-young-people/ - More from Ann Pettifor on the Prime Economics website https://www.primeeconomics.org/ - Follow the UK Student Climate Network (@UKSCN1) and the UK Student Climate Network London (@ukscn_london) on Twitter ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we're going to spend the next five episodes of the podcast looking at some of the biggest climate issues – starting this week with greenwashing. Last month 20 young people and scientists attempted to occupy London's Science Museum. They were protesting the fact that a new exhibition on the climate crisis was being sponsored by Shell. Protestors accused Shell of using their sponsorship to ‘greenwash' its reputation. The occupation ended after the museum swiftly called 40 police officers out to remove them. Greenpeace has recently said that we're living in “a golden age of greenwashing” and the Treasury set up a new group to clamp down on the practice in the financial sector. But what is greenwashing? Why are companies like Coca Cola and H&M suddenly desperate to prove their green credentials? And is it lulling us into a false sense of security that we're tackling the climate crisis? Ayeisha is joined by Alice Bell, director of communications at Possible and author of the upcoming book, Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis which is available to pre-order now: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/our-biggest-experiment-9781472974778/ ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Throughout the spring, hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched, signed petitions, and spoke out against the catchily-titled Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Critics say the Bill would curb our freedom of speech and assembly by giving the police new powers to crack down on protest. The Bill was successfully delayed - but it's due to resurface in Parliament next week. So what's actually in the Police Bill? How will it affect Black and other people of colour? And why is the government pushing it through Parliament now? Ayeisha is joined by Zehrah Hasan, barrister, & founding member and director of Black Protest Legal Support and Becka Hudson, PhD researcher at UCL and Birkbeck, and criminal justice campaigner. -Read Who dreamt up the police bill? The police, of course by Same Knights https://novaramedia.com/2021/03/25/who-dreamt-up-the-police-bill-the-police-of-course/ -Find out more about Black Protest Legal Support and follow them on Twitter https://blackprotestlaw.org/ @blkprotestlegal -Follow Legal Sector Workers United (UVW) on Twitter @LSWUnited -For updates on Kill the Bill actions, follow Sisters Uncut @SistersUncut and Black Lives Matter UK @ukblm -Find out more about the 4FRONT project https://www.4frontproject.org/ ----- Music by Candlegravity, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

This week, the front page of the Daily Mail screamed “Outrage as Oxford students plan to axe queen”. In reality, a group of postgrads voted to take down a portrait of the queen in a single common room, in a single Oxford college, because of the portrait's association with the UK's colonial history. Whether it's the interior decor of student common rooms or athletes taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter, by the time you listen to this podcast, new outrages are constantly emerging. How did we get here? In the middle of a pandemic, why do these debates take up so much media space? And how should progressives respond? The Weekly Economics Podcast is back and for the first episode of the new series, Ayeisha is joined by Hanna Thomas Uose, principal consultant at Align and David Wearing, senior teaching fellow at SOAS and associate lecturer at Birkbeck. -Read the report "Divide and Rule: How the 'culture wars' are a reactionary backlash constructed to distract us, and how to respond" by NEON and Align https://neweconomyorganisers.org/divide-and-rule-how-the-culture-wars-are-a-reactionary-backlash-constructed-to-distract-us-and-how-to-respond/ -For similar themes, listen back to the Weekly Economics Podcast on the future of conservatism https://neweconomics.org/2019/07/weekly-economics-podcast-the-new-prime-minister -Watch Akala discussing knife crime on GMB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvS78MlAXAQ -Read the Parekh Report by the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain https://www.runnymedetrust.org/companies/29/74/Future-of-Multi-Ethnic-Britain-The.html -Grab a copy of David's book "AngloArabiaWhy Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain" https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509532032 ------ Music by Blue Dot Sessions under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

There’s a new president in the Oval Office and he’s ready to make some changes. Joe Biden wants the start of his presidency to be defined by rejoining the Paris climate agreement, vaccinating the country against Covid-19, and pulling the American economy out of a crisis. But will this be enough to tackle the problems that led to the Trump presidency? Is Biden too concerned about building bridges with the Republican Party? And is America finally ready to start taking the climate emergency seriously? In the final episode of this series, Ayeisha is joined by Kate Aronoff, staff writer at the New Republic, and author of the upcoming book Overheated: how capitalism broke the planet - and how we fight back. Kate's book is out in the UK on the 13th May: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kate-aronoff/overheated/9781568589473/?lens=bold-type-books ----- Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

There are just eight months left until the UK hosts the UN Climate Conference. And despite Boris Johnson’s insistence that we will have a green recovery from the pandemic, in the last month there have been a number of climate related controversies, including around the construction of a new coal mine in Cumbria, the Leeds Bradford airport expansion, and plans to cut air passenger duty on domestic flights. Why can’t the economic status quo deal with the climate emergency? What has the fresh attention on climate actually achieved? And what can the pandemic teach us about the climate crisis? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Laurie Laybourn-Langton, co-author of the new book Planet On Fire, and NEF trustee. -Planet on Fire by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton is out on the 20th April, you can preorder a copy on the Verso website: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3702-planet-on-fire -Find out more about Laurie's work here: https://laurielaybourn.com/ -Head to the Common Wealth website to read about all the work Mathew Lawrence is doing on democratic ownership: https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/ ----- Music by Christian Bjoerklund and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Last week a video circulated of 800 people queuing for a food bank in Wembley. Volunteers at the London Community Kitchen said that the number was not uncommon. In Rishi Sunak’s recent budget, he announced that the furlough scheme and the temporary £20 increase to universal credit would continue until the autumn. But even with these measures, it’s obvious that huge numbers of people in the UK are struggling. Furlough has held back a wave of unemployment - but what happens when the scheme ends? Will some jobs not come back after the pandemic? And what about the estimated 3 million people who’ve fallen through the cracks of the government’s Covid support? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by NEF CEO Miatta Fahnbulleh and Sonali Joshi, co-founder of Excluded UK. -For more on NEF's work around strengthening our social security system, head to our website: https://neweconomics.org/campaigns/living-income -More on info about Excluded UK available on their website https://www.excludeduk.org/excluded-uk-an-inclusive-alliance-for-the-excluded ----- Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

From the A-level algorithm scandal, to parents taking on YouTube, to making Facebook and Google pay for news, people are fighting back against the way big tech companies and governments use our data. So what are companies like Google and Facebook actually doing with our personal data? Is the pandemic being used to surrender our data to private companies? And what role can big tech workers and users play in fighting back? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Duncan McCann, senior researcher at NEF, Carissa Veliz, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University and Cori Crider, lawyer, investigator and co-founder of Foxglove. -You can read more about Carissa's work, including a survey she did with Siân Brooke on privacy-related negative experiences, on her website https://www.carissaveliz.com/research -Read the article in Glamour Magazine on the risks of 'sharenting' https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/child-privacy-social-media-risks -For more on some of the issues discussed, listen back to this episode of the podcast from 2019 with Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression https://neweconomics.org/2019/05/weekly-economics-podcast-algorithms-of-oppression-live -Duncan's work on data and privacy can be found on the NEF website https://neweconomics.org/profile/duncan-mccann -Watch James Bridle's TED talk on the way YouTube is targeting children with its content here https://www.ted.com/talks/james_bridle_the_nightmare_videos_of_children_s_youtube_and_what_s_wrong_with_the_internet_today -Read more about Duncan's case against YouTube for the above https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54140676 -You can preorder Carissa's book Privacy is Power now https://www.carissaveliz.com/books -Head to the Foxglove website to find out more about how Cori and others are standing up to big tech https://www.foxglove.org.uk/ ----- Music by SANMI and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

We were supposed to have cast off the shackles of EU rules around farming and fishing. Brexit was sold as a ‘sea of opportunity’. And yet, tonnes of British meat have been left rotting at European ports, while Scottish fishers have had to make a 72-hour round trip to land their catch in Denmark. The PM has said these are just “teething problems”. But are they really? What’s it been like for UK fishers and farmers since we left the EU? And is there a chance we can use Brexit to make our food system better? In this episode, Ayeisha is joined by Chris Williams, NEF Associate Fellow. -To hear more from small-scale fishers on their hopes and concerns for the industry post-Brexit, watch this video: https://neweconomics.org/2018/10/fishing-after-brexit-voices-from-the-coast -You can also listen to Chris talking to fishermen about their experiences on this Radio 4 documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rm92 -Find out more about the Eastbourne Fishing Quay on our website: https://neweconomics.org/2020/08/light-on-the-horizon-the-story-of-the-eastbourne-fishing-quay -If you just can’t get enough Brexit chat, make sure you revisit our Brexit episode from last series, with Marley Morris of IPPR: https://neweconomics.org/2020/10/weekly-economics-podcast-whats-going-on-with-brexit -For fishing puns and more, Chris is on Twitter at @MarineEconomics ----- Music by Blue Dot Session and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

By the middle of January, 49 wealthy countries had administered 39 million doses of the Covid vaccine. But the world’s poorest countries had only done 25 jabs, all of them in just one country: Guinea. Not 25 million, not 25,000 - just 25. Why can’t some countries get hold of the vaccine? Why are rich countries buying more doses than they need? And are we seeing the rise of ‘vaccine nationalism’? In this episode, Ayeisha is joined by Miriam Brett, director of research and advocacy at Common Wealth and Tahir Amin, co-executive director of Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge. -For more, read Common Wealth's report on what's wrong with our IP system: https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/interactive-digital-projects/ip-infogram -And Tahir's piece for Foreign Affairs is available here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2021-01-29/folly-hoarding-knowledge-covid-19-age ----- Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Meagre food packages for kids on free school meals. A £22bn track and trace system that isn’t fit for purpose. And people asked to travel hundreds of miles for a Covid test. What do all of these things have in common? They’ve all been outsourced to the private sector. But why are these vital services being run by the private sector? Are the allegations of cronyism true? And who’s making money out of all this? Ayeisha is joined by New Statesman’s Britain editor, Anoosh Chakelian and David Hall, founder of the Public Services International Research Unit at the University of Greenwich. For more on this area, you can listen to a previous episode we did with Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It campaign, Hilary Wainwright, co-editor of Red Pepper magazine and Sahil Dutta from Goldsmiths University on Public Ownership: https://soundcloud.com/weeklyeconomicspodcast/public-ownership-20 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

From Sports Direct warehouses to nail bars, awareness-raising campaigns warn that modern slavery is happening all around us. Over Christmas, fashion brand Boohoo cut ties with 64 garment suppliers in Leicester after it came out that factories were paying their workers as little as £3.50 an hour. And this month the foreign secretary said he would clamp down on companies who used forced labour in their supply chains. But how useful is the concept of ‘modern slavery’? What kinds of exploitation does it disguise? And what does it say about how we’ve designed our economy? For the first episode of a new series of the Weekly Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Emily Kenway, author of new book The Truth About Modern Slavery. Grab a copy of Emily's book, out now with Pluto Books: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341224/the-truth-about-modern-slavery/ ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Joe Biden has defeated Donald Trump to win the US election. Test results from around the world suggest that a coronavirus vaccine is on the horizon. Over the past month there have been more bright spots than usual in a difficult, painful year. At the same time, with the number of coronavirus deaths at their highest since May, many parts of the country still subject to severe restrictions and unemployment skyrocketing, many of us are hesitant to declare that the worst days are behind us. So, how has this year affected our mental health? How can progressives stay well enough to fight for change? And have we forgotten how to feel hopeful? Ayeisha is joined by researcher and author, Christine Berry and Farzana Khan, executive director and co-founder of Healing Justice London. If you have been affected by anything discussed in this episode, you can contact the Samaritans for free at 116 123 or visit https://www.samaritans.org/ Further reading/watching from this episode: -The Impact of COVID 19 on Disabled Women from Sisters of Frida: http://www.sisofrida.org/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-disabled-women-from-sisters-of-frida/ -Healing Justice London: https://healingjusticeldn.org/ -Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/hope-in-the-dark-untold-histories-wild-possibilities/9781782119074 -Joanna Macy, Active Hope https://uk.bookshop.org/books/active-hope-how-to-face-the-mess-we-re-in-without-going-crazy/9781577319726 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Chris Zabriskie under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Setting up a desk area in the kitchen, Zoom call-induced headaches, or getting furloughed and paid to not do any work - this year has shaken up the world of work like never before. The pandemic has made us reimagine how work fits into our economy and our lives. So, with 79% of business leaders and nearly two-thirds of the public open to bringing in a shorter working week in light of the pandemic, should we be thinking more about working less? Could a shorter working week help us recover from coronavirus? Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Alfie Stirling, NEF Director of Research and Chief Economist, and Anna Coote, Principal Fellow at NEF to discuss their new book with Aidan Harper, The Case for a Four-Day Week. The book will be out on the 27th November, go to the Polity website to grab a copy https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509539642 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said that Britain faces new tax rises in the wake of the pandemic. But over the summer Labour’s shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds warned against increasing taxes during an economic crisis. Meanwhile, new research has found that increasing numbers of Tory voters are in favour of higher taxes. So, what do Labour and the Conservatives think about tax rises? Should we be changing the tax system during a recession? And if taxes do rise, who should be paying the most? Ayeisha is joined by Robert Palmer, executive director of Tax Justice UK and Anoosh Chakelian, Britain editor at the New Statesman. -Find out more on Tax Justice UK's work on tax and public opinion here: https://www.taxjustice.uk/tax-and-public-opinion.html -Read the report Living on Different Incomes in London: Can public consensus identify a 'riches line'? https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/publications/can-public-consensus-identify-a-riches-line/ ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Ketsa under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

The US presidential election is less than a fortnight away - and Donald Trump and Joe Biden are pulling out all the stops to get the votes. But after a chaotic debate forced moderators to cut the candidates’ mics to stop them interrupting each other, it’s hard to get a grip on what messages they’re trying to get across. How have the different campaigns been selling themselves? Will Biden’s attacks on Trump be a winning strategy? And how should progressives be pushing for change? Ayeisha is joined by communications expert and principle at ASO Communications, Anat Shenker-Osario. Resources available at https://asocommunications.com/ and https://raceclassnarrativeaction.com/ ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Chris Zabriskie under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Brexit - remember it? Way back in the distant past of 2019 it felt like it was all the newspapers could talk about. It might feel like it’s done and dusted, but the process is still rumbling on. We’ve got an Internal Market Bill that the government itself admits will break international law. MPs just voted through a Bill refusing to guarantee food and farming standards after we leave the EU. And apparently we’re moving the UK border to Kent. So, what exactly is going on? What will happen when the transition period ends on New Years Eve? And what does it all mean for the UK economy? Ayeisha is joined Marley Morris, Associate Director for Immigration, Trade and EU relations at the Institute for Public Policy Research. ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Christian Bjoerklund under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

“We want to build back greener as we recover from Covid-19” - that was the message this week at the Prime Minister’s Conservative Party Conference speech. But in all the talk of wind turbines and technology, the place of care in our economic recovery didn’t really get a look in. Why is care often so overlooked when we think about the economy? And how would our lives change if we put care at the centre of our economic decisions? Ayeisha is joined by Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City University of London, Marion Sharples, Project Manager and Researcher at the Women’s Budget Group and NEF Senior Economist, Sarah Arnold. The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence is available on the Verso website https://www.versobooks.com/books/3706-care-manifesto Read the final report of the Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy https://wbg.org.uk/commission/ ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Our track-and-trace system will be “world-beating”. The development of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine is “months ahead” of its competitors around the world. This is how politicians and the media have been talking about our lines of defence against the coronavirus pandemic. But when facing up to a global problem that connects us all, why is competition the only language we have to talk about it? How has competition come to define our economy and society? What do we miss out on when we focus on competition? And is there a way out? Ayeisha is joined by Michelle Meagher, author of new book, Competition is Killing Us and Grace Blakeley, staff writer at Tribune and author of upcoming book, The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic will Change Capitalism. Grab a copy of Michelle's book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315/315772/competition-is-killing-us/9780241423011.html Grace's book is out on the 27th October https://www.versobooks.com/books/3723-the-corona-crash ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Amid the coronavirus crisis, the number of people becoming members of a union has skyrocketed. Unison reported 65,000 new members since the start of the year, and in the last six months, 50,000 people have joined the National Education Union. The TUC worked with the chancellor to create the furlough scheme, and teaching unions were partly responsible for the government U-turn over face masks in schools. It certainly looks like union influence has had a boost, as they fight against redundancies and for the health and safety of their members. But what about outside of the workplace? Can unions and their members change the rules of the economy? Ayeisha is joined by Alice Martin and Annie Quick, authors of Unions Renewed: Building Power in an Age of Finance. Grab a copy of the book at https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509539116&subject_id=2 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Poddington Bear and David Hillowitz, used under Creative Commons licence. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

It’s a cliche by now to say that Covid-19 has upended our economy. Industries have ground to a halt, and are only just beginning to start up again. Just this week the UK plunged into recession, with the worst drop in GDP of any G7 nation. But what about outside the G7? How have the effects of Covid ricocheted around the global economy? In the last few episodes we’ve heard how Covid-19 has affected government spending, unemployment, and the hostile environment in the UK. For this episode, we want to look farther afield at how the pandemic is affecting economies across the world - especially in the Global South. Ayeisha is joined by Dr Tobias Franz, Lecturer in Economics at SOAS and Shreya Nanda, Economist at the Centre for Economic Justice at the Institute for Public Policy Research. ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

We’re facing two global crises. We have scientific evidence for how to deal with both of them, but governments aren’t acting quickly enough. They both show how we are all more connected than we previously thought. And to tackle them will require massive changes in how we run our economy. The first problem is Covid-19. The other, though it’s fallen off the front pages, is as urgent as ever: the climate crisis. How do we keep climate in the picture? Should we bail out struggling polluting industries? And how can we make sure our Covid recovery is green? In this episode of the Weekly Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Chaitanya Kumar, Head of Environment and the Green Transition at the New Economics Foundation and Fatima Zahra-Ibrahim, co-director of Green New Deal UK. Read new NEF report on decarbonising the Bank of England's corporate QE programme here: https://bit.ly/30yURpe Vice investigation into company bailouts is available here: https://bit.ly/33HFtcd Write to your MP to stop blank cheque bailouts on the Build Back Better website: https://bit.ly/30yRVZM ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

For most of the last decade, the Conservative government has said they want to cut government spending to balance the books as they rolled out austerity nationwide. But since the start of lockdown, something seems to have changed. The chancellor keeps saying “this is not the time for ideology” as he announces new, expensive schemes to keep the economy afloat. So - what’s going on? It’s not the first time that politicians have announced ‘the end of austerity’. But, with the government paying the wages of up to a third of the UK workforce through the furlough scheme, has something shifted? Has the government truly moved ‘beyond ideology’? Will austerity be back - but by another name? And where does conservatism go from here? In this episode of the Weekly Economics Podcast Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by NEF CEO Miatta Fahnbulleh and Director of Research & Advocacy at Common Wealth Miriam Brett. ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Chad Crouch and Poddington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

It feels like every day there are new dire predictions of the state of the UK economy and jobs. Last week we discovered that the number of paid employees in Britain has plunged by 650,000 since the start of the pandemic. As the furlough scheme winds down, the Office for Budget Responsibility says 1.4 million furloughed people are at risk of unemployment. And almost a third of companies plan to cut jobs in the next three months. So, did the job retention scheme save jobs or just delay the inevitable? How are unions supporting workers during this time? And what can we do to avoid a tsunami of job losses? In this episode of the Weekly Economics Podcast Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Alfie Stirling, Head of Economics at the NEF and Nikki Pound, Policy and Campaigns Support Officer at the TUC. ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Jahzzar, used under Creative Commons licence. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

At the end of June Keir Starmer said of Black Lives Matter protesters in an interview: “Nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police.” At the same time, the UK government announced four new prisons. Olympic athlete Bianca Williams has said she felt like “being black is a crime” after she was stopped and handcuffed by police while driving in London. And last week it emerged that the Met police carried out 22,000 stop-and-searches on young Black men during lockdown. Some campaigners, especially in the US, are talking about defunding the police. But what does that actually mean? Should campaigners be calling for it in the UK? And do police and prisons really keep us safe? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Dr. Adam Elliot-Cooper, research associate in sociology at the University of Greenwich and board member of the Monitoring Group. References: Read "Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Y. Davis https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angela-y-davis-are-prisons-obsolete Find out more about Black Visions Collective https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/ Read the report "Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools" by Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury https://www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/education/racism-in-secondary-schools.html Find out more about United Family and Friends Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/ Visit Community Actions on Prison Expansion's website for more info https://cape-campaign.org/ Go to https://movementforjustice.co.uk/ for more on Movement for Justice You can learn more about JENGbA's work at https://jointenterprise.co/ Cradle Community are fundraising for healing and transformative justice work in the UK. If you donate, you can get an abolitionist package including their new zine "how to be an abolitionist today". More info here https://www.instagram.com/p/CCa1VtVhZXK/?igshid=hgtrn7bhwlc4 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

The end of June marked the anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush Generation in the UK, and sparked renewed conversations about the Hostile Environment. It’s been reported that UK immigration policies have stopped migrants from getting healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite a government exemption from immigration checks and fees. Just this week, MPs passed a new immigration bill which ends freedom of movement and introduces a point-based system instead. So, how has the Hostile Environment affected people, particularly during the pandemic? Have migrants been hit harder by Covid-19? And what does the new immigration bill mean for migrant communities in the UK? We’re back for a new series of the Weekly Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Zoe Gardner, Policy Advisor at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), and Akram Salhab, Advocacy and Campaigns Officer at Migrants Organise. Take a look at the New Deal on Migration on the JCWI's website https://www.jcwi.org.uk/news/we-need-a-new-deal-on-migration Read new research from Migrants Organise, Medact and NEF looking at how the Hostile Environment is preventing migrants accessing healthcare during the pandemic https://bit.ly/38ooewJ More from Migrants Organise on their website https://www.migrantsorganise.org/ Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! Music this week is by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. The award-winning Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation – the UK’s only people powered think tank. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

The death of George Floyd three weeks ago at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sparked a fresh wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the world. In the US, calls to defund the police have won victories and across Europe leaders are taking down statues of slave traders and reviewing national school curricula. Here in the UK, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets, despite government warnings and coronavirus restrictions. So, why has this explosion of protest happened now? Does this mark a new moment in our collective conversation on race, racism and the role of the police? And once this moment of the whirlwind passes, how can protestors make sure we achieve lasting change? For this special one-off episode Ayeisha is joined by Gary Younge, writer, broadcaster, and professor of sociology at the University of Manchester. Read Gary's piece in the New Statesman here: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/06/we-cant-breathe Read Nadine El-Enay's piece in openDemocracy here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/calls-to-make-britain-great-again-are-drawing-on-pseudo-intellectual-defences-of-/ Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! Music this week is by Chris Zabriskie, used under Creative Commons licence. The award-winning Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation – the UK’s only people powered think tank. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org