The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY
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Debt, a core tool of capitalism
Far from being opposed to it, capitalism depends on debt as a way of enforcing loyalty to the profit system from those that have the least to gain from it, explains JOHN GREEN
The debt phenomenon is not just found in the housing market and the student loan business, but everywhere you look. Capitalists depend on selling ever more products; if they can’t sell, they make no profit. That is why we are urged to buy ever more consumer items by slick advertising and seductive publicity.
Taking a brief look at who the US president surrounds himself with reveals a team dedicated to the complete erasure of Palestine, not justice and civil rights for its people, writes TERRY HANSEN
As the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women begins in Beijing, it’s clear that China has fulfilled its commitments set 30 years ago and delivered amazing progress in women's education and equality, writes YU BOKUN
Following comments made by Robert Jenrick about the people of Handsworth, the TUC, together with 12 trade unions representing members who live and work in the area, have issued a joint letter calling for the Conservative Party to take immediate action
With the rise of Reform and the flag-raising phenomenon, it’s hard not to recall my family’s struggles with racism, from Teddy Boys attacking my pregnant mother to me being told to ‘go back to the jungle’ at only five years old, writes ROGER MCKENZIE
The move to restrict exports of the important rare earth metals that China has a 90% monopoly on has provoked Trump to declare a 100% tariff on Chinese exports and other retaliatory measures, reports DYLAN MURPHY
BEING in debt and being unable to pay it off is one of the recurring nightmares for so many people and it has been the basis for many tragic lives in novels — most famously in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
In David Copperfield, the clerk Wilkins Micawber was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison after failing to meet his creditors’ demands. His long-suffering wife Emma stood by him, despite his financial exigencies that forced her to pawn all her family’s possessions.
Micawber’s name has become synonymous with someone who lives in hopeful expectation but is always financially on the edge. This has formed the basis for the Micawber Principle: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”
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JOHN GREEN has doubts about the efficacy of the Freedom of Information Act, once trumpeted by Tony Blair
JOHN GREEN is enchanted by the story of women’s farm work, both now and the the 1940s, that brims with political and social insight
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist
Despite the primitive means the director was forced to use, this is an incredibly moving film from Gaza and you should see it, urges JOHN GREEN
