Review of Building: Isaiah Berlin’s Letters
In their introduction, the editors say: “If this is not one of the best letter-writers of the 20th century, we are ready to eat our respective hats.” Gentlemen, you can leave your hats on.
ReadTag: Politics & society
The murdered Good Samaritan
Christ’s original question was: “Who is my neighbour?” Today we are less likely to ask that of our potential saviours than we are of the people we might help, directly or through our taxes. Yesterday’s news feeds our fear that our neighbours are more likely than not to be bad eggs: benefit fraudsters, bogus asylum seekers, paedophiles or jihadist terrorists
ReadWhy are allotments becoming less popular?
Allotments are a wonderful British institution that should be protected and extended. Demand may have fallen but it is still very high. But let’s not kid ourselves they reduce food miles or increase food security. The case for allotments is spiritual and psychological, not economic or environmental.
ReadIs the digital economy a threat?
Imagine being young and having to do up to seven years of unpaid work experience before you could get gainful employment. This is not a doom-laden prediction for the future but a factual description of a lot of apprentices from the middle ages to the industrial revolution
ReadWhat Money Can’t Buy
Sandel has raised a much-needed alarm, and even if how we respond to it may not be clear, respond we must. To do so, Sandel argues we need a serious public debate about what values we want our politics to build and defend. That means dropping the illusion that politics is about no more than efficient management of the economy: it’s about nothing less than competing visions of the good society.
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