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

Weekly Economics Podcast

What really happens at a UN climate summit?

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

The Great Homes Upgrade

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

Will living standards be frozen this winter?

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

Where did our immigration system come from?

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

Fighting the climate crisis in the courts

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

Fast Fashion

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

How can we tackle the climate crisis while levelling up?

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

A climate conversation between two generations

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

Greenwashing

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

The Police Bill

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

Culture Wars

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

What will Biden’s America look like?

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

Changing the rules of our economy to stop environmental breakdown

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

How can we make sure everyone has enough to live on?

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

Why should we care what big tech does with our data?

Award-winning podcast about the economic forces shaping our world, with Ayeisha Thomas-Smith and guests. Brought to you by the New Economics Foundation – the independent think tank and charity campaigning for a fairer, sustainable economy. New episodes on Mondays.

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Weekly Economics Podcast

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