David Price who runs Debategraph has very kindly produced a graph that might help us understand contemporary political issues in a much clearer, more understandable way.
As the Debategraph team say, their “goal is to make the best arguments on all sides of any public debate freely available to all and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all.” Earlier today, I asked David to illustrate his ideas with a current issue leading the news. Here’s his handiwork on the resignation of Bob Quick. David says he will be adding to the graph as the arguments for and against resignation develop over today.
With grateful thanks to David for producing the graph at short notice.
Their words: “Now, more than ever, it can’t be business as usual in the UK. The government must help people living below the poverty line, as well as the growing number at risk of poverty. We must create a society based on sustainability. That means good quality jobs that offer secure livelihoods, backed by a welfare system that does not trap people on benefits, but pays them enough to live on.”
The report makes a number of recommendations:
1. Make the tax system more progressive, including by increasing the threshold at which income tax is paid and lowering tax and benefit tapers
2. Invest in infrastructure, including a comprehensive energy efficiency programme, an expansion of free, high quality childcare and social care and a social house building programme
3. Introduce an emergency increase in out-of-work benefits and tax credits
4. Put further welfare reform on hold, and renew the welfare state so it becomes a genuine safety net for all
5. Effectively enforce existing employment rights
6. Set a maximum level of interest and widen eligibility for social fund hardship loans
7. Give more help to struggling homeowners and private tenants
8. Redouble government’s commitment to equality, anti-discrimination and community cohesion
I admire Oxfam for having the courage to run this campaign. When they first started campaigning on green issues, they experienced resistance from their core supporters who felt that they should just do ‘international aid’. Well if you stand up for the world’s poor, you have to take an interest in the causes of poverty be they political, economic or environmental. Still, they’ll get some pushback for a purely domestic anti-poverty campaign.
For the full report visit “Close to home: UK poverty and the economic downturn”
The semantic web is coming of age if the good people at Zemanta are right. I’ve recently downloaded their Firefox application to see how it works. I’ll try it for a few weeks to see how it goes. If you have any experience of using it, I’d be interested in your views.
