Landing 1/1
Public services and policy
The funding choices and arguments that set the terms for local ventures.
4 pieces, 2012–2020
Four pieces on decisions made in council chambers and parliaments, and on the case made for and against them. The earliest covers the closure of five Glasgow advice offices in 2012, when the city council changed the way it paid for free advice, and where people with benefit, debt or housing problems could still turn.
A 2015 piece traces the UK argument over austerity up to that year’s general election, including what the evidence on fiscal multipliers suggested and why the case for cuts kept its hold on voters. From 2016, a report on Emilia-Romagna looks at a region of Italy with an unusually large co-operative economy, and treats the much repeated figure in its title as a claim to be sourced, not a settled fact.
The newest, from May 2020, considers walking and cycling to school as Scottish schools prepared to reopen after the first lockdown.
2020 1 piece
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Walking and cycling to school after lockdownLockdown has broken the school-run routine. That makes it a rare chance to change how children get to school.
2016 1 piece
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The Italian region where co-ops produce a third of its GDPThe claim that co-operatives produce a third of the region's output is repeated everywhere. The laws and habits behind the sector are more interesting than the number.
2015 1 piece
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The case for cuts: why the austerity argument held onFive years after the coalition's first budget, the economists have mostly moved on from the case for fast deficit reduction. British politics has not. The evidence, and the reasons it has made so little difference.
2012 1 piece
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Five Glasgow advice offices to closeGlasgow's switch from grants to contracts leaves five bureaux in the city's poorest areas facing closure at the end of March.