Positive thinking

Richard Sambrook, Cardiff University The BBC faces a hostile government seeking to end the licence fee in favour of advertising. Meanwhile, political polarisation has undermined consensus about its role, it faces increased competition and technology is rapidly changing viewing habits. And there is serious criticism of its editorial performance. I’m not talking about today – although all of the above apply – but the mid 1980s when the Thatcher government set up the Peacock Committee to report on the BBC’s finances with the expectation it would recommend advertising. Meanwhile home video recording was presenting challenges to viewer numbers and there was fierce public controversy led by government over its coverage of Northern Ireland. The BBC responded by promoting finance director Michael Checkland to director general and bringing in former London Weekend Television boss John Birt as his deputy and anointed successor. The Peacock Committee decided the licence fee was “t...

Jon Fairburn, Staffordshire University Poor air quality is responsible for over half a million deaths in Europe every year, but not everyone is equally at risk. Our new review found that across Europe , the most deprived people have the worst air quality. This means that the people already experiencing multiple deprivations because of their social class, ethnicity or gender, also have the unhealthiest environments to live in. In Wales, deprived areas have the highest levels of major pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, from traffic exhausts, industrial pollution and wood-burning stoves. Particulate matter forms a fine mist of toxic debris that affects more people than any other type of pollution . Inhaling it can contribute to heart attacks and respiratory diseases, including lung cancer. For the very smallest particles, there’s no safe threshold below which “ no damage to health is observed ”, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). ...

Paul Gregg, University of Bath   Jeremy Corbyn has signalled that a new Labour government under his premiership would drop social mobility as a policy goal and replace it with a focus on social justice. Labour said it would replace the current Social Mobility Commission with a Social Justice Commission, claiming the move would be a break from 40 years of political consensus around social mobility. But Corbyn’s speech at an education policy event in Birmingham in early June was part sense and part nonsense. He argued that social mobility was the idea that “only a few talented or lucky people deserve to escape the disadvantage they were born into” and it had resulted in “the talents of millions of children being squandered.” Yet the pursuit of social mobility in policy and research has never just been about the opportunities of a few bright poor kids. Such an argument is like arguing that gender equality is merely about getting more women on the boards of FTSE 100 com...

Danny Dorling, University of Oxford and Sally Tomlinson, University of Oxford   It was a man called Reginald Brabazon, Earl of Meath, who in 1903, two years after the death of Queen Victoria, suggested that her birthday, May 24, should be renamed Empire Day and become a day for patriotic celebration. His idea began to take off the following year and slowly spread in popularity. In 1909, Brabazon attended a day in Preston where a crowd of 20,000 people watched boys and girls parade past in what they were told was the national dress of each colony. When World War I patriotic fervour was at its height, in 1916, the government gave in to calls for the day to be marked with an official state ceremony. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that the official celebrations really began to take off, and in May 1926, Empire Day became closely linked to the work of the newly established Empire Marketing Board . British school children all received a free mug and cake and were routinely ...

Nicholas Beuret, University of Essex American congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently shook up environmental politics by releasing a broad outline of a Green New Deal – a plan to make the US a carbon-neutral economy in the next ten years, while reducing both poverty and inequality. Lauded by many as a radical and necessary step, president Trump responded in typical style: "I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military - even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!" 15:21 - 9 feb 2019 - twitter The Green New Deal doesn’t directly call for people to consume less meat. But the argument that solving climate change means changing our diets is widespread, and Ocasio-Cortez herself has made the link . Yet Trump’s tweet was actual...

Kate Pickett, University of York and Richard Wilkinson, University of York   To end austerity and make the economy work better for the whole country requires transforming the tax system. It is time for the UK to have a grown-up, national conversation about tax, to gain support for a radical tax regime that will allow it to end austerity, adequately fund public services and reduce inequality. And we need tax records to be publicly available. It’s time to end the British coyness about money. We have written extensively, in our books The Spirit Level and The Inner Level , about the damage caused by income inequality to population health and social cohesion, and the need to reduce inequality as part of a transition to a sustainable economy that maximises well-being rather than GDP. But the UK already has a policy framework and (theoretical) commitment to reducing income inequality, as this is in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The UK signed up to those g...