MAgazine
Government must get its hands dirty
Common Weal could offer the incoming Scottish Government all the policy it needs, but its problem isn’t policy. Its problem is that it doesn’t have a theory of how government works so it doesn’t understand why it isn’t working just now.
How the average person killed politics
The ‘moderate centre’ is where almost all politicians think elections are won, yet new research shows that no-one wants moderate parties. The gap between is exactly where democracy has been dying.
Hold on, wait for it...
Our third economic crisis in rapid succession and an unhinged USA mean the time is ripe for major change. But if it is going to be positive change, the left have some important lessons to learn.
Freedom and the good stuff
There are a series of dogmas about choice and freedom which implies that they are the ultimate goal of human affairs. Well I’ve got a pair of jeans which suggests otherwise…
It's time to be serious – Scotland needs partners
It seems like self-sabotage to have the chance of a major industrial plant in Scotland and to throw that chance away. It is time we were more aware of the reality of our position as a manufacturing nation and recognised that to develop, we can’t start from scratch.
A Strategy for Deliberative Democracy
Bill Johnston follows up his article from January on building the infrastructure we need to develop a truly deliberative democracy
A nation that can't take care of itself is a fool
If the economics of precarious supply chains and globalised risk is stuttering, what is the responsible thing for a nation state to do? The same as always – make sure it's people have what they need.
The economics which created our crisis can’t fix it
The latest war-driven global price panic is not an aberration but a constant state of being in the contemporary global economic. It is all so unstable that unless we take a new course, it will fall down sooner or later.
It’s a lack of will, not consensus, that prevents Council Tax reform
The Scottish Government’s failure to reform Council Tax has gone on far too long. It must be a defining mission of the next Parliament to reform it in the only fair way possible.
How Scotland could start investing in ourselves
Economist Jim Osborne discusses how Local Government Pension Funds could be a key anchor of Community Wealth Building in Scotland
The public and politics are at right angles; this missing concept explains it
Politics used to focus on people’s quality of life - and then it started counting up numbers instead. This more than anything explains the disconnect between people and politics.
The end state of capitalism is monopoly and then failure
Even as the AI Bubble threatens to pop, it appears to have already caused a completely different tech crisis amongst IT companies that relied on your inability to switch to a competitor to avoid having invest in their own products.
What does ‘The Traitors’ tell us about ourselves?
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Politicians need to stop being 'mid'
There is a perceived political orthodoxy about the role of government - don’t waste time in small things, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Except life is mostly small things and very big things…
Cities for people first, tourists second
Rory Hamilton says his non-New Year’s resolution to carry something forward from 2025 into 2026 and to leave something behind in 2025 is no better embodied than in his moving from Edinburgh to Glasgow.
The failure of politics? You can't fix what you can't see
Policymakers are far too stuck in their own bubble to properly understand how their policies impact on people. Unless they learn to count what matters to real people rather than corporations, the fraying of democracy will continue.
Farewell Auld Reekie, onwards the dear green place
Rory Hamilton says his non-New Year’s resolution to carry something forward from 2025 into 2026 and to leave something behind in 2025 is no better embodied than in his moving from Edinburgh to Glasgow.
2025 - Common Weal’s Year in Policy
Craig runs through Common Weal’s policy library to show off everything we’ve published this year, just in case you’ve missed a paper or two and would like to see them.
The Scottish Government wants to remove profit from children’s care – here’s how to do it.
A repost from our In Common column in The National, Craig summarises our latest policy paper on how and why the Scottish Government must remove profit from children’s care.
Private profit doesn't make government more efficient
For 50 years we've lived as if private profit is good for public services and it has led to the mass extraction of public wealth by corporate insiders. We will never fix public services until we admit this problem.