Next month, South Sudan will celebrate its first birthday. While this should be cause for elation, we must pause to recognize that the world’s youngest nation may perhaps also be the most vulnerable. The peaceful secession of South Sudan last July was a remarkable outcome after decades of conflict and dispute. The agreement to…
Living Below the Line 2012 – part 2, some reflections With over one billion people in our world living on less than £1 a day, the challenge of tackling extreme global poverty in our world can seem both overwhelming and, for many, far removed from our own reality. The solutions for this situation, like the…
Here, in my five-day diary, I reveal how I survived on porridge, water and vegetable soup as part of my Live Below the Line campaign 2012. THE RULES I have to live on £1 a day for five consecutive days. Worldwide, 1.4billion people live on this. Thankfully, my £1 a day is just food and drink, not everything…
My colleagues on the Economic Affairs Committee in the House of Lords could hardly have chosen a worse time for their report, published on 29 March 2012, opposing the all party commitment to 0.7% of UK GDP as the target for our nation’s international development aid. While politicians and pundits in Britain might be…
Five years ago, Scotland’s unemployment was below the rest of the UK, and our Annual GDP growth rate had climbed above that of the United Kingdom. In the past year, however, those positions have been reversed with unemployment higher and growth lower than the rest of the UK. Uncertainty and disagreement over the timing of…
