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.
The Iran War sounds a warning for All of Scotland’s Critical Minerals
It isn’t just oil that is being disrupted by the US’s war with Iran nor will it be the only future disruption so Scotland needs a more resilient economy with strategies that should extend to all critical minerals.
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.
Artemis II shows that we can choose hope
Humanity has chosen to go back to the Moon for the first time in half a century. Some will inevitably ask why, in a world of poverty, we do so. We must, because science and poverty are not a zero-sum trade.
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.
If energy powers get devolved - what then?
Calling for more powers over energy to be devolved is one thing, but what is the Scottish Government’s plan for using them if they get them?
May this be the last oil war
The US-Israel war against Iran should be the wake up call the world needs to make sure that it is the last Oil War.
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.
The UK Grid is changing - how it will affect Scotland?
Gordon Morgan of the Common Weal Energy Working Group looks at upcoming changes to the way the UK is managing the electrical grid and how the UK Government’s choices will affect Scotland.
The economic case for renewable energy is now unstoppable
While the environmental case for renewable energy has been clear for decades, the economic case for investing in renewables to the exclusion of fossil fuels has now been decisively made.
What does ‘The Traitors’ tell us about ourselves?
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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.
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.
Use energy to win independence, rather than independence to win energy
The Scottish Government is promising that independence will unleash our ability to reform energy. This neglects the things that they could be doing now that might just convince people that we need independence to win the rest.
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.
Communities have been priced out of owning Scotland
Two new reports show that the rate of land transfers to community ownership in Scotland has dropped to the lowest level since the start of devolution and that a poll of the Scottish public shows near-unanimous support for more land reform over and above that which may be delivered by the recent Land Reform Bill.