Blog

Ahead of the 2010 UK general election, WDM policy officer Tim Jones gives a snapshot of where the parties stand on issues that affect the world’s poorest people.

WDM and over 100 other organisations have challenged the major political parties to back a development manifesto, Vote Global. So how do the main parties stack up on key global poverty issues?

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.

Earlier today, WDM held a protest outside the Department for International Development to oppose the UK’s plans for how climate finance should be administered; plans that WDM are concerned would lock Bangladesh into further poverty.

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.

Here’s a puzzler: what is the UK’s biggest contributor to climate change? Did you answer coal? Good guess, but no. Transport? It’s a biggy for sure, but not the largest. Farming? A distant fourth.

Give up? OK, Britain’s number one contributor is… the banking industry! And top of the list within the sector is the taxpayers’ very own, and much unloved, Royal Bank of Scotland.

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.

Like many ‘natural disasters’, the earthquake in Haiti may have had a natural cause, but what has made it such a disaster was more political and economic than tectonic.

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.

Kate Blagojevic, Press Officer

The post-Copenhagen showdown has featured politicians, NGOs and commentators like George Monbiot and Mark Lynas slogging it out over whether to blame the US or China, for the lack of progress in Copenhagen. All reminiscent of our 2007 report; Blame it on China?

Tim Jones, WDM policy officer, writes 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.