World Development Movement blog

May Abdalla

As Gordon Brown makes his visit to Her Majesty to call a UK election, there is a parallel campaign unfolding in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana.

Here in the UK, the review of legislation on dangerous dogs has caught media attention – how some dogs are being bred as weapons to intimate others and at times have attacked vulnerable people like children. It’s a strange analogy, and one which I probably would not have made myself, but this morning European campaigners wanted to make a point that EU trade policy is like a dangerous dog - it’s predatory, aggressive and dangerous to the poorest people in the world.
 

Yesterday the Fairtrade Foundation launched the start of their annual campaigning event: ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’ with the news that the value of Fairtrade sales, was up on 2008 by 12% to an estimated retail value of over £800m.

So far the US and Europe has managed to find $3 trillion to bail out the banks, more than $1 trillion of which has gone to the UK banking sector. The financial crisis, caused by the banks themselves, has cased significant increases in poverty and inequality in both the developed and developing world.

Earlier this week, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) announced a new programme to support teaching on trade policy and ‘WTO-related matters’ in universities in developing countries. This programme would fund teaching, research and outreach on trade issues à la WTO.

This is a guest post by Adam Ramsay who writes for the blog brightgreenscotland.org

It was President Eisenhower, I think, who coined the phrase “The Military Industrial Complex”. West Wing geeks know why he did so: if he couldn’t dismantle the monster he had helped create, he could at least describe it.

Tim Jones, used to be policy officer

From Copenhagen

Last night I had my first decent sleep since Sunday. Having been stuck in the Bella Centre for most of the week, yesterday was the first time I had been out in daylight since last Monday.