The festive period owes Charles Dickens a monumental intellectual debt. A Christmas Carol largely invented the festivity as we continue to celebrate it today. But his tale also reminds us of the power of magic and restitution in the blizzards …
Why America stopped dreaming
I set off last Wednesday on a three-week road trip around the United States. I had high expectations drizzled in nostalgia, since I was repeating a project I’d done exactly nine years before: the idea, then and now, was to …
Why America stopped dreaming
I set off last Wednesday on a three-week road trip around the United States. I had high expectations drizzled in nostalgia, since I was repeating a project I’d done exactly nine years before: the idea, then and now, was to …
Britain is addicted to poverty porn
What’s your deprivation fetish? Does the sight of a single mother pushing a pram with one hand while horsing down a Greggs sausage roll get you going? Perhaps the spectacle of a homeless person punting knocked-off earbuds on a street …
How to escape the debt trap
Debt is like minor toothache; you can get worryingly used to having it but will rarely forget it’s there. And for increasing numbers of us in the UK, it’s how we fund our day-to-day lives. Yet, no one talks about …
Big Tech is tyrannising Indian workers
When Abhishek Kumar goes to work in India’s eastern state of Bihar, he has to upload a time-stamped and geotagged image of himself to log in and out. If he doesn’t, he won’t get paid for that day. It’s all …
Scotland deserves better than this circus
You know something serious is about to go down when London lobby journos start saying things like: “We should pay attention to what’s happening in Scotland.” Many of us up here are not only resigned to our junior status in …
Has Xi Jinping bankrupted China?
It is hard to tell when a crisis in a dictatorial regime, such as the sudden breakdown of China’s economic model, is not about this or that, but about the regime itself. My own experience in this regard is very …
Durham has become a land of zombies
I was illiterate until my mid-thirties. I’m 57 now and my first book has just been published. It’s tradition for your publisher to deliver the first few copies from the printer’s press to the author. A local courier, James, delivered …
The Left must reclaim JS Mill
A century and a half after the death of John Stuart Mill, it is easy to think that we have had enough of him. Although William Gladstone once posthumously canonised him as “the saint of rationality”, many contemporary thinkers believe …
Skegness is drowning
In the bright spring sunshine, Skegness is preparing for the season. The smell of fresh paint churns into the stench of the fish and chip fat as it sizzles. The metal shutters protecting the seafront booths from the bitter North …
Welcome to Britain’s Hungry Twenties
Last spring, Elsie, a 77-year-old widow asked ITV’s Good Morning Britain to solicit any advice that Boris Johnson might have about coping with poverty. It was duly explained to the then-Prime Minister that Elsie only ate one meal a day …
Rural Scotland is dying of cold
Lindsay lives in a council house in Kirkwall, the largest town in Orkney, a starkly beautiful archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. Now in her mid-fifties, Lindsay has lived in her one-bedroom house for 17 years. She’s tended the …
Why food should be more expensive
Jeremy Clarkson has finally said the unsayable. Ahead of the launch of the second series of Clarkson’s Farm last week, Britain’s most famous farmer declared: “Food is far too cheap. I know you can’t say that, but it’s far too …
Jack Monroe: The acceptable face of poverty
For many of us, early January is a difficult time. Credit card and tax bills are looming, waistlines are bulging, and it’s dark by 4pm. As I write, the cost-of-living crisis is hitting hard and strikes are paralysing public services. …