In the midst of a windy day on the 29th of January 2016, the side of Oxgangs School in Edinburgh collapsed. A large section of the gable wall came crashing down with nine tonnes of bricks falling across the path below. An independent report concluded that it was “a matter of timing and luck” that […]
This article has been written by Dexter Whitfield, director of the European Services Strategy Unit as an accompaniment to his new book, which will have a launch in Edinburgh later this month. The new book Public Alternative to the Privatisation of Life sets out the scale, cost and impact of different forms of privatisation and encompasses […]
How much would you pay someone to put up a Christmas tree? We took to the streets of Edinburgh this week to ask people this to demonstrate the disproportionate costs that come with Private Finance Initiatives. Under a complex and unfair PFI contract, Alistair Darling had to pay £900 for the UK Treasury’s Xmas tree. This […]
Lessons from a failed system Our schools are collapsing, hospitals are being failed and yet there’s more money being spent on them than ever, with nobody around to be held accountable. That’s the situation that our country has found itself in after years of contracts forged by Public Private Partnerships. Our infrastructure is costing taxpayers […]
This article was written by Bodo Ellmers, Policy and Advocacy Manager – Debt and Financial Reforms. Eurodad, European Network on Debt and Development Ten years after the last crisis began, global debt levels are higher than before, and debt vulnerabilities are increasingly hard to manage. That’s why activists all over the world are standing up to call […]
This article was written by Ric Lander. “Make It Happen” was an RBS slogan that meant far more than they intended. In the mid-2000s activists had spent years of fighting oil spills, pipelines and mega coal mines and the damage they cause. When they began to look deeper into how these projects came about they […]
This article was written by Hugh Cullen, Scottish Socialist Party National Secretary. “The only surprise of the Economic Crisis of 2008 was that it came as a surprise to so many” Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall. The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) takes no glee from the crises of capitalism that socialists have tirelessly exposed for the past […]
This article was written by Nick Dearden. Nick is the director of the social justice campaigning organisation, Global Justice Now, one of Jubilee Scotland’s member organisations. I was in Quito, Ecuador, on 15 September 2008, the day investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and the financial crisis exploded. Appropriately enough, I was there to celebrate Ecuador’s ‘debt […]
This article was written by Dorothy Grace Guerrero The West have largely ignored or underestimated China’s New Silk Road Project, Beijing’s most ambitious project to date. Now that it is becoming the biggest channel for outward investments and creating a more connected Eurasia from Spain to Indonesia, governments are waking up and jostling to get on […]
This article was written by one of our volunteers, Elena Scarso, and edited by Jubilee Scotland. Banks are often considered the cause of economic and financial issues. Trying to change this opinion, in 1983 Muhammad Yunus had the idea to create a microcredit institute able to support poor people by means of loans on easy […]
This article was written by Laurie Macfarlane from New Economics Foundation. Investment – both by the private sector and by government – is crucial to the long term economic, social and environmental health of any economy. As part of the UK, Scotland has a longstanding problem of underinvestment relative to other countries. The percentage of GDP invested in […]