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World Development Movement blog

3 September 2010

Howard Reed

The recently published report A Bank for the Future by James Leaton and myself recommends that the government should reform RBS into a Green Investment Bank to provide financial support for the UK's transition to a low carbon economy.

24 August 2010

Howard Reed

The recently published report A Bank for the Future by James Leaton and myself recommends that the government should reform RBS into a Green Investment Bank to provide financial support for the UK's transition to a low carbon economy. In the report we argue that the alternative to a Green Investment Bank – carrying on with 'business as usual' – risks imposing huge costs on the UK economy, in terms of making it more vulnerable to future systemic financial crises of the type that almost brought down the entire banking system.

23 August 2010

Sharon Jordan

Over the weekend hundreds of people concerned about human rights abuses and the environment have gathered outside the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. They’ve set up camp for four days to educate and campaign against the root causes of climate change.

18 August 2010

Tim Jones

Politicians break promises. We are told it is naïve to think otherwise. However, society can only function through the making of promises. It is how we collectively agree to work together.

Anonymous

6 August 2010

Wheat prices have hit a two year high. Prices are again climbing steeply for wheat and, despite claims by some analysts in the media, there is plenty of wheat available and talk of global shortages is unfounded.

The last time prices were higher, there was a food crisis and people were going hungry across the developing world, whilst in the US and UK people were paying more for their weekly shop.

Anonymous

1 August 2010

WDM campaigners James O’Nions and Caroline Griffin are in Kenya to research the effects of food price rises on ordinary Kenyans. James reports on their first visit to Kibera, the huge slum on the outskirts of Nairobi.

29 July 2010

Yesterday afternoon, James, Kiama Kaara from Kenya Debt Relief Network and I drove to Thika, a medium-sized town 40km north east of Nairobi along a bustling road lined with traders, construction workers and shops for a meeting with Zachary Makanya from the PELUM Association.

Anonymous

29 July 2010

Over the weekend we visited Makueni, a market town about two and a half hours drive to the south of Nairobi. Driving first down the main road to Mombassa, then turning off to pass through the regional centre of Machakos, we arrived in Makueni after dark with the crickets signing to us. In the big cities, great poverty nestles next to relative wealth, but the further you go into the countryside, the more poverty keeps its own company.

27 July 2010

The Kibera slum in Nairobi is home to around 1.5 million people. That's half the population of Nairobi, squeezed into just 2.5 square kilometres. On the way there, our driver, Charles described the extent of the violence that erupted in Kibera during the 2007 elections.

Anonymous

26 July 2010

Ingredients
1 full page article in the Guardian newspaper
1 interview on BBC Radio 4 Today programme
1 interview on BBC Newsnight
10 articles across other newspapers
31 articles online
900 sign ups to a phone action,
65 comments on our website

Take all the ingredients and combine well to create heat and froth.

Anonymous

23 July 2010

While I’ve been in Kenya I’ve been reading a new book by Milford Bateman; Why doesn’t microfinance work? The destructive rise of local neoliberalism. Microfinance has been feted as an effective solution to poverty for the very poor for a number of decades now, and in 2006 Mohammed Yunus, the founder of the first microfinance institution, the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

19 July 2010

Kate Blagojevic

Today, we launched a report showing how banks speculate on foods causing their price to rocket, increasing hunger in developing countries. Yesterday the Mail on Sunday revealed that a hedge fund bought over 250,000 tonnes of cocoa beans, a move designed to make millions for the hedge fund but losses for people in the UK who are partial to a Twix or farmers in developing countries who are finding it impossible to plan what to grow when the prices are rising and falling like a yo-yo.

6 July 2010

Rosie Rogers, used to be campaigns and policy intern

Bright-eyed and ready to save the world in one internship, I was ready to take on any challenge! As part of our new commodities campaign. I was asked to find out how to complain about Goldman Sachs (GMS). A simple task I thought…

5 July 2010

I’m really pleased to see that journalist and art critic Johann Hari, described by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain, wrote a piece for the Independent last week urging people appalled about bankers speculating on food prices and causing hunger to get involved in WDM’s food speculation campaign. The article was circulated widely on the internet, including being passed on by Stephen Fry, and also appeared in the Huffington Post on Saturday.

24 June 2010

Tim Jones, used to be policy officer

Some of us may have been surprised to wake up this morning to hear that a hosepipe ban may be introduced soon in north-west England following a lack of rain. For the past few years the ‘weather story’ in the UK has been one of cold, wet summers. Those unable to distinguish between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ have used this story to spread absurd falsities about climate change, such as the Conservative MEP who told me “the world has been in a cooling phase for the last ten years”.

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