New Economics Podcast

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 i...

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...

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-proclai...

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. Whe...

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, i...

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? A...

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...

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 act...

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...

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. Meanwhi...

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...

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,...

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...

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 She...

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...

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 Bl...

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 w...

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...

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...

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 user...

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 fis...

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’? I...

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...

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 th...

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 unemp...