The Greek government has passed a law allowing private employers to extend shifts to 13 hours per day, framed in terms of “flexibility” and “growth”. It’s marketed as voluntary and fairly paid, but effectively it dismantles the standard eight-hour day, despite survey data showing workers overwhelmingly oppose it.
But while critics question its legality, technically it does comply with the European Union’s working time directive. For many, especially in hospitality, it simply formalises what already exists: long hours, low pay, little rest.
The reform mirrors a broader European and global shift towards deregulated work. And it proves that the fight for shorter hours is far from over, as I set out in a chapter in the forthcoming book Global Futures of Work: A Critical Introduction.
After Greek workers’ 1936 victory securing the eight-hour day, the country has now reached a point where Greeks are again among the most overworked in Europe. Data from the EU’s statistics office and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show full-time employees log about 1,900 hours a year, compared with 1,510 in the UK and 1,330 in Germany.
Weekly hours add up to 41-42 on average, the highest in the EU. Yet wages and productivity remain low. This paradox of working more but earning less reflects a regime centred on labour intensification and wage suppression, weak collective bargaining and precarious jobs.
Since 2005, Greece has loosened its working time regime under “flexibility” reforms. A 2005 law allowed daily shifts to be stretched by two hours, another change in 2021 redefined overtime, while a third law two years later revived the six-day week.
And now the fair work for all bill permits 13-hour days on a “voluntary” basis. Together, these measures have eroded the eight-hour norm, substituting collective bargaining for the needs of employers.
The Greek government claims that workers want longer days, but the evidence suggests otherwise. The drive to extend working hours masks a refusal to raise real wages and household income. Since the 2008-09 financial crisis, GDP has shrunk by 27% and remains below pre-crisis levels, while household disposable income has fallen by 35 percentage points.
Even the recent minimum-wage hike (a 6% increase to €880 (£775) per week for full-time workers) offers no real gains in purchasing power, leaving workers poorer than before the crisis. Instead of higher pay, the government’s solution is longer days – stretching time when it cannot stretch income.
A survey earlier this year by the Greek labour institute found that 94% of workers support shorter hours with no pay cut, and nearly 60% reject a 13-hour day outright. Among those already working such hours, 70% say the “voluntary” label is meaningless, with workers forced to put in these hours to make ends meet.
For many, the new law simply confirms the overwork they already face. For others, it represents a return to the 19th century. The wave of nationwide strikes demanding its repeal raises a clear question. If workers reject it, and EU law supposedly guarantees the opposite, how can the measure pass?
EU – protector or enabler?
Most opposition parties questioned the 13-hour workday’s legality under EU law, but the EU working time directive itself provides the loophole. It stipulates a 48-hour weekly average and 11 hours’ daily rest, yet imposes no cap on daily hours.
Member states may grant opt-outs, allowing workers to “voluntarily” exceed the limits, effectively legalising overwork. In response to a Greek MEP, the European Commission confirmed that Greece’s reform complies with EU rules. It admitted that the directive allows the 13-hour workday if the 48-hour weekly average is met in the reference period of four months. It is presented as “worker protection”, but this logic simply permits exhaustion now, rest later.
The UK government’s rebuke of South Cambridgeshire District Council for trialling a four-day work week shows that resistance to shorter hours is hardly unique to Greece. Across advanced economies, longer working time has been normalised.
And NHS staff reportedly performed more than 1 million hours of unpaid overtime every week before the pandemic. By 2025, it has been claimed that inefficiencies and delays have added another 7.5 million extra work hours every week across the NHS workforce.
Amazon workers in the US work ten-hour shifts and 55-hour weeks during peak seasons, with similar patterns in the UK. Amazon said its work patterns offer flexible career opportunities and that its staff were the “heart and soul” of its operations. Another elite tech firm looks like following suit: Google’s Sergey Brin actually called for a 60-hour week.
The push to extend working hours is not an anomaly in Greece, but part of a broader trend across advanced economies – the normalisation of overwork in the name of flexibility and growth.
Workers are expected to adapt, erasing boundaries between work and life. Greece’s 13-hour day doesn’t mark progress but a retreat from hard-won labour rights. And it threatens to undo historic victories on working conditions in pursuit of further productivity increases and profits.
Elena Papagiannaki is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Future of Work (ifow.org)
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?”
Hawking, who later became my PhD supervisor, predicted that a theory of everything – uniting the clashing branches of general relativity, which describes the universe on large scales, and quantum mechanics, which rules the microcosmos of atoms and particles – might be discovered by the end of the 20th century.
Forty-five years later, there is still no definitive theory of everything. The main candidate is string theory, a framework that describes all forces and particles including gravity. String theory proposes that the building blocks of nature are not point-like particles like quarks (which make up particles in the atomic nucleus) but vibrating strings.
It suggests that, if we could look deep inside electrons, we would see loops of strings, vibrating just like those on a violin. Different patterns of string vibrations correspond to different particles.
String theory unifies all the forces of nature. Forces that seem very different, such as gravity and electricity, are deeply related to one another. The forces are linked by so-called dualities: the same underlying phenomena can be described in different ways.
The force of gravity is described in terms of geometry, shapes and positions. Other forces are described in terms of different mathematical concepts, including algebra and numbers.
The unification of forces hence implies profound relationships between branches of mathematics. Such relationships had previously been proposed by mathematicians, particularly by Robert Langlands, and string theory gives physical explanations for the relationships.
Although string theory could be the correct theory of everything, it is hard to test experimentally. The effects of string theory become visible at very small scales and very high energies.
Particle accelerators explore the internal structure of particles by colliding them and breaking them apart. However, even the biggest colliders at Cern in Switzerland don’t have enough energy to break particles down into strings.
Clues in the cosmos
How can we test string theory experimentally if we can’t reach high enough energies in colliders? The answer may lie in looking up to the skies.
The very early universe was dense and hot, and the primordial soup would have been made up of strings. We can see the history of the universe imprinted in current day observations, from surveys of galaxies through to measurements of the cosmic radiation that permeates all of space and is a leftover from the big bang.
In the early 20th century, American astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the universe is expanding. Galaxies are moving further apart from each other.
At the end of that century, detailed observations of the expansion showed that it is in fact accelerating. Galaxies today are moving apart faster than they were a million years ago.
What is driving this acceleration? Gravity is an attractive force so it slows down the expansion of the universe. The acceleration of the universe is driven by a new kind of energy, which is spread throughout the whole of space. Scientists call this dark energy and it makes up about 70% of the energy of the universe.
We don’t know exactly what dark energy is. The most plausible explanation is that it is the inherent quantum energy of the universe. In the quantum world, particles can never just sit still, with no energy. There is always a little bit of quantum jitter and associated energy.
Atoms cooled down to absolute zero temperature still have energy because of their quantum motion. Dark energy could potentially be explained as being the underlying quantum energy of all the forces and particles in nature, including gravity.
Experiments are pinning down the properties of dark energy. Desi is an observatory based in Arizona, US, which is mapping out galaxies and quasars. The space based telescopes Euclid and Roman will measure the universe in unprecedented detail, mapping out the history of billions of galaxies over billions of years.
Desi sits in the dome of the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. wikipedia, CC BY-SA
This doesn’t prove string theory because string theory can produce a variety of different universes, with differing patterns of dark energy. However, the Desi results suggest that interpreting dark energy as quantum energy of strings may be on the right track. There are of course phenomena other than strings that could explain the change in dark energy.
Euclid and Roman will make very precise measurements and will be able to exclude many such theories of dark energy and some specific versions of string theory – helping to narrow down the bits theorists should focus on.
Another way to verify string theory may be via black holes. Once something falls inside a black hole, it cannot escape. Inside a black hole there are very strong forces and particles are torn apart. We still don’t understand exactly what happens inside a black hole, but string theory teaches us how a black hole retains information about what has fallen inside.
That’s because string theory assumes there is no “singularity” inside a black hole – a point of infinite density and gravity – but instead that the objects are spread out as balls of strings called fuzzballs.
Future, more precise, measurements of gravitational waves (ripples in the fabric of spacetime) will be looking for the subtle signals of the quantum behaviour inside black holes predicted by string theory. If black holes are fuzzballs, they should produce a different signal when they merge, lasting longer and containing echoes. What’s more, if extra dimensions exist, as string theory proposes, black holes may oscillate in different ways which we could also detect.
In addition to cosmological measurements, scientists can run thought experiments, just as Einstein did with his theories of relativity. String theory has led to new insights not just in mathematics but also in other areas of science. For example, string theory has proven to be useful in understanding how quantum systems can be used in computing.
I don’t think a complete understanding of a theory of everything is just around the corner, but in the 45 years since Hawking’s Lucasian lecture we have certainly learned a lot. And right now, things are looking up for string theory.
Marika Taylor currently receives funding from EPSRC, STFC, UK government deparments and the European Horizon programme.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natalie Pollard, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Culture, University of Exeter
What do you picture when you think about climate change? For many of us, it is the same set of dramatic images: melting glaciers, sinking landforms, rising seas or extreme weather.
These are powerful visuals. They shock, grab headlines and galvanise environmentalism. However, this imagery offers a partial account of transformation, often underplaying political responsibility and colonial history. In my new book, 21st-Century Climate Imaginaries, I call these charismatic images “climate memes”.
Monumental images of melting or calving glaciers lend drama to earth’s changing form, but tend to bypass the thorny social and economic roots of ice loss. Research shows that glacial melt is accelerating especially in regions at the frontline of resource extraction and colonial occupation. My research asks: why is this?
The polar effect: house-sized blocks of ice come crashing down into the sea. Troutnut/Shutterstock
Imagine a glacier melting in the Andes. Blood-red threads of wool – like streams of meltwater – are running down the mountain. It is 2006. This is an activist intervention by Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña. It is the first in her series of performances and soft sculptures, The Blood of the Glaciers. Her giant-order red threads spell out the effects of foreign direct investment in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s regime, which sparked a dramatic rise in overseas mining corporations in Chile.
Standing knee-deep in seawater on the shoreline of Tuvalu, the country’s foreign minister addresses Cop26 delegates with these words: “We are sinking”. Simon Kofe’s 2021 speech was broadcast globally from a point that had recently been above sea level. From his semi-submerged podium, Kofe made visible to the world the situation people endure in low-lying Pacific islands.
Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, delivered his “we are sinking” speech from a podium knee-deep in water.
Since the 1980s, sinking islands have become a powerful shorthand for climate crisis. Apocalyptic spectacles of raging seas symbolise planetary transformation. An often-cited example is the documentary of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It showed Tuvalu engulfed by tides, alongside the incorrect remark that “Pacific nations have all had to evacuate”.
In 2009, Marshallese activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner joined forces with Greenlandic climate poet Aka Niviâna and environmentalist organisation 350.org. They produced an influential video-poem: Rise: From One Island to Another. The performance connects changing Greenlandic ice and Pacific waters with Indigenous resistance to fossil capitalism.
Rise: From one island to another.
Climate images of melting and sinking often go hand-in-hand with colonial narratives of Indigenous vulnerability. In contrast, Rise brings to life the history of Greenlandic and Marshallese opposition to development for extraction and scientific exploitation. The two activists highlight the nuclear colonial legacy of the Pacific Proving Grounds and Greenland’s Camp Century, linking military histories in the Arctic and Pacific: “nuclear waste / dumped / in our waters / on our ice”.
It is not always easy to remember that environmental change is caused by specific technological, military and political acts. Indigenous arts activism helps by showing how climate memes make sense only in the context of histories of exploitation and resistance, which often take place in developing countries.
Today, activists and artists across the world are challenging popular, generalised climate memes, such as those of melting and sinking. As I show in 21st-Century Climate Imaginaries, attention to the local and specific helps people process how social and environmental violence are intimately linked. Arts activism, working directly with people’s lived experiences of change, can offer much-needed, grounded alternatives to spectacular climate soundbites. How far these interventions are positively reshaping how we understand our responsibilities to a fast-changing world is yet to be seen.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Natalie Pollard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
It is difficult to ignore the intertwined nature of the commercialised UK higher education model and its reliance on international student fee income. One in four students enrolled in higher education courses in the UK in 2023-24 is of non-UK origin. This is an increase from just over one in five in 2019-20. A total of over £10 billion of universities’ student fee income is raised from non-UK students.
Recent reports that Sheffield Hallam University stymied an academic’s research as a result of pressure from China has thrust the influence that foreign nations may have on UK universities into the spotlight.
Sheffield Hallam has denied that commercial interests played a part in the decision. “For the avoidance of doubt, the decision was not based on commercial interests in China,” a university spokesperson said. “Regardless, China is not a significant international student market for the University.”
For many UK universities, though, international student fees are a vital part of their income. This has followed the reduction of government financial support for universities and successive steps towards marketisation of the higher education sector.
Marketisation means universities compete with each other to attract students, who pay fees for their education. However, fees in the UK are regulated (and Scottish and Welsh governments subsidise students from their respective juridictions) and often do not cover the total cost of teaching and administration of courses. Universities have responded by increasing recruitment of international students to plug the funding gap.
In a marketised model, international students are attractive as their fees are uncapped, meaning that institutions can charge much higher amounts for the same number of students.
Universities are also judged in rankings that include things like how international their student body is, and the ratio of staff to students. Recruiting more international students helps keep the ratio of staff to students lower because higher international student fees mean that fewer students are needed to fund a course.
In 2016-17, international student fee income made up 15.2% of an average institution’s total income. This has risen to 24.6% in 2022-23. This greater reliance on international student fee income as a percentage of overall revenues has been driven by several factors.
Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency also shows how important individual regions are as part of the overall international student cohort. In 2023-24, the top two countries are India and China. India provided 107,480 students to the UK higher education sector, 25.1% of all international students. China contributed 98,400 students, 23.0% of international students.
Financial risk
The implications of such rises in the proportion of revenues being raised from international student fee income are vast. Most apparent is the increased risk that this exposes UK universities to in terms of volatility in international student numbers.
This is much more unpredictable than changes in government finance, which tend to be announced in advance. Simply put, fluctuations in international student numbers have a big effect on income. And this is a key factor in the current financial crisis in UK higher education.
Marketisation has been linked to cuts that universities are imposing on departments, closing courses and making significant redundancies. This is because greater volatility means that institutions are likely to seek to cut costs such as staff in response to lower revenues, as staff costs represent a large portion of the overall cost base for universities.
The Universities and Colleges Union estimates total job losses within the sector to be in the region of 15,000. Such widespread and rapid cuts are likely to have severe knock on effects for the UK economy as a whole and the universities sector. Industrial action is already affecting the delivery of courses, research activity, and key knowledge exchange and practical impact activities.
Current government policy implies a perseverance with the marketised model, although a proposed 6% levy on international student fees seeks to encourage institutions to pursue more diverse sources of revenue. However, this is unlikely to have any material effect on where institutions draw their students.
The Higher Education Policy Institute has suggested that such a levy could cost an already financially precarious sector in the region of £621 million. Universities may well react by increasing the volume of international students they take on board, as increasing domestic fees may deter home applicants.
Such behavioural effects may well exacerbate such risks in the future. Alternatively, further staff cuts are likely to have prolonged effects for the sector in terms of the quality of education it can provide, and the value delivered to students. Courses may become shorter, student-staff contact time reduced, and optional modules cut.
Rather than focus on one incident, it is the marketised model itself that has landed universities in this the current crisis. They find themselves beholden to the fee income that the market provides. Currently, the need to promise – and provide – a superior experience to their prospective student applicants is driving many financial decisions in the sector.
This includes large amounts of spending on capital projects that has left many institutions with budget deficits and in some cases, heavily depleted cash reserves.
Incentives are required that will encourage sustainable stewardship of our higher education institutions. Until that happens, it is unlikely that anything will change. Capital remains all powerful. The pursuit of it will continue to supplant traditional ideological values of the university, with seemingly no cost too high for universities seeking to “remain in the game”.
David Yates has historically received research funding grants from the British Accounting and Finance Association, the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, all for projects unrelated to this article. He is a former member of the Labour Party.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Jacobsen, Senior Lecturer in Film History in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London
Nearly four decades after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscle-bound version sprinted across screens, The Running Man returns to cinemas. In Edgar Wright’s hands, this adaptation is a sharper, smarter reflection of a culture that still can’t look away from spectacle.
Following The Long Walk, this is the second film adaptation in 2025 of a Stephen King novel originally published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Both films are set in a near-future America under a totalitarian regime whose oppressed population glue themselves to violent televised contests.
Schwarzenegger’s dreadful version of The Running Man in 1987 used the title of King’s novel and the concept of deadly game shows in a future America – but the similarities ended there. Director Edgar Wright’s hugely entertaining new adaptation is more faithful to the plot of King’s book, if not the tone.
In The Running Man, America is effectively run by television syndicate The Network. They keep the population entertained and obedient through life-and-death TV game shows. Participants in the most popular show play a game of hide-and-seek against a team of armed hunters. The public are promised cash rewards if they report a sighting of the contestant that leads to their capture and killing.
Ben Richards (Glenn Powell) is a blue-collar worker who wants to compete to win money for his sick daughter’s medication. The film follows Richards as he encounters eccentric citizens (with cameos by Michael Cera, William H Macy and an unhinged Sandra Dickinson) who are either keen to help or hinder him as he flees north from New York City along the east coast of America.
Trailer for The Running Man.
The Running Man’s opening scenes vividly show a stratified America, a vast poverty gap dividing the complacent ultra rich from a working class without basic comfort and sustenance. Richards, like many of King’s Bachman book protagonists (and King himself when writing the first draft of this novel in 1972) is driven by a deep-seated rage at the injustices in the American system.
The Network’s oily executive Dan Killian (a typically brilliant Josh Brolin) knows Richards will make great cathartic TV for an impotent, rage-filled population – he’s “the angriest man he’s ever seen”. The overarching theme is that the populace likes it this way and can’t imagine an alternative. The Network’s programming offers a satisfying pound of flesh to their frenzied viewers, whose primal urges are kept at bay by the spectacle of violence. As Killian hammily asserts, for Americans: “Bloodlust is our birthright!”
Tuning into current debates, The Network heavily edits its programmes with use of seamless AI. The film suggests the population is uninterested in whether their entertainment and news are authentic or faked. As clearly doctored footage of Richards is screened, the crowd bays aggressively for his blood. In the film’s final act, there is the suggestion that this fervour could be redirected with hostility towards the hand that feeds.
The film’s early depiction of the technology saturated sprawl of New York City is a superbly realised absurdist vision of an oppressive media-run state. It strongly evokes the style and tone of influential weekly British Science Fiction comic 2000 AD (1977-present), with its towering, neon-lit concrete structures. The overpowered and excessively violent police force particularly resembles the futuristic satire of the comic’s most famous character, Judge Dredd.
Wright and frequent collaborator Simon Pegg have expressed their admiration for the comic and its amplified visions of contemporary politics and society. Like 2000 AD, The Running Man is social commentary that delivers its message through aggressive, fast-paced action and explosive violence.
Edgar Wright and genre cinema
This is a great year for King adaptations, and while The Long Walk’s publicity campaign promoted his name heavily, The Running Man features Wright’s name and rising star Powell with no mention of the writer. This choice is likely to avoid misconceptions that this could be a horror film. Rather this is a breathless, hyper-kinetic action film that, like the smaller scale Baby Driver (2017) showcases Wright’s ability to beautifully direct explosive car chases and gun battles.
At the heart of Wright’s films is a love of genre cinema. In his last film, Last Night in Soho (2021), he paid tribute to gothic London films and to the cinematic myth of the swinging 60s. Here he shifts gears and celebrates the uncomplicated pleasures of the high-speed thrills of 1980s and 1990s action films in the vein of Die Hard (1988). It is an interpretation of King’s work that replaces the dour, bitter tragedy of the source material with a satirical, cartoonish absurdism.
This comedic approach works superbly in the film’s first half but can’t quite sustain the more serious critiques of American politics and media culture that the script tries to deliver in the final act.
The Running Man loses tension and nuance in its second half, especially with the late introduction of poorly conceived character Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones). She’s a young woman and member of society’s comfortable class who is embroiled in Richards’ escape plans. Her encounter with Richards leads her unconvincingly to reflect on her privilege and the injustices of her society.
The film wants viewers to imagine that there is potential for the entitled and complacent to reflect and for resistance against totalitarian control to blossom with the right catalyst. This is a deliberate choice to run counter to King’s original nihilistic vision. But it does not ring true in the face of what we’ve been shown about the film’s grim world. The final act messaging feels rote and unearned. Richards delivers a clunky, didactic dialogue that sits at odds with the film’s more interesting questions around the nature of violent spectacle and human nature – and our own enjoyment of the film’s violence.
Taken as a feather-light, fugitive-on-the-run film, this is an extraordinarily entertaining piece of mainstream action cinema. If you overlook messy plotting in the final act, it’s the most fun you are likely to have in the cinema this year. As a more focused and coherent critique of the threat of totalitarianism and media dominance, however, The Long Walk has the distinct edge over this film. Those looking for a more revealing social commentary may be left disappointed.
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Matt Jacobsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Basil Germond, Professor of International Security, School of Global Affairs, Lancaster University
China’s new Fujian aircraft carrier, unveiled recently by president Xi Jinping with great fanfare, has been hailed by Chinese state media as a major milestone in the country’s naval modernisation programme and a key development in the counry’s aspirations to become a maritime power.
In the context of Beijing’s sustained seapower strategy, the long-term implications for the security and leadership of the global maritime order are certainly significant and enduring.
The launch means China now has three aircraft carriers in service and is capable of maintaining a continuous carrier presence at sea. And there have been reports of satellite images which suggest construction has already begun on China’s fourth carrier.
This will increase Beijing’s ability to preventatively deploy warships to faraway locations it considers important. It gives China the potential to control the airspace wherever their battle group is operating, as well as the ability to project air power in more distant theatres of conflict.
The new carrier also means China can launch heavier and specialist aircraft, for example with airborne early-warning systems and fighter jets equipped with greater fuel and payload capacity.
This expands Beijing’s operational options. It elevates China into a select group of four nations (US, UK, France, China) capable of independently operating a carrier battle group with the capacity to generate substantial strategic advantages from the sea.
Among this group, however, the US remains far ahead. It enjoys a significant lead in terms of carrier fleet size, technological sophistication, operational experience, global reach and sustained carrier strike capabilities.
Aircraft carriers are obviously key naval assets in confrontations between comparable nations in open ocean environments – known as “blue-water engagements”. But they are also important in controlling the maritime battlespace – particularly through air superiority – and in projecting power ashore.
The Fujian does not dramatically shift the global balance of power in China’s favour. But its enhanced land-attack capabilities nonetheless expand Beijing’s operational toolkit, allowing a more flexible and assertive naval strategy.
A strong symbolic power
Since the second world war, aircraft carriers have replaced battleships as the capital ships, the principal and most powerful warships in any country’s navy that are designed to form the core of a fleet and deliver decisive combat power.
Such capital ships carry strong symbolic weight. They signal a state’s ability to mobilise the resources required to procure, sustain and operate such complex platforms, as well as its intent to function as an ocean-going naval power.
In this light, China’s aircraft carrier programme has considerable symbolic resonance. It reflects both Beijing’s intrinsic naval capabilities and its extrinsic power – that is, its increasingly elevated status within the international pecking order.
China’s comprehensive seapower strategy
China’s carrier programme needs to be understood as part of Beijing’s wider seapower strategy. Unlike other authoritarian states such as Russia or Iran, the power base of China’s regime is much more dependent on international trade and so on freedom of navigation. Consequently, China does not seek to disrupt the global maritime order. It wants to lead it and initiate a new cycle of global dominance.
To that end, Beijing is not only expanding its naval power but, perhaps more significantly, its civilian seapower. This includes a robust shipbuilding industry, a large and growing merchant marine registered as Chinese. And it has made substantial direct investments in critical western infrastructure, such as ports.
Many of these investments have been made via private Chinese firms which maintain close ties with the state. This gives Beijing additional leverage to exercise civilian seapower to further its political interests. For example, it can use Chinese shipping companies to circumvent western sanctions on Russia, or interfere in European ports owned by Chinese firms.
In the South China Sea, Beijing aggressively uses its fishing fleet, backed by its coastguard and navy to achieve a degree of control over contested areas it considers to have economic or strategic importance.
So the commissioning of the Fujian is more than a technical milestone for the Chinese navy – it is a signal of intent. It reinforces China’s growing capacity and willingness to shape the maritime domain. As part of a broader seapower strategy, it reflects Beijing’s ambition not just to contribute to, but to lead, the global maritime order.
Basil Germond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
After years of disciplined reform and painful sacrifice, Jamaica had done what few global debt specialists thought possible. Through tough and sometimes controversial spending cuts and fiscal discipline, it slashed its debt from a staggering 150% of GDP in 2013 to just 62% by 2024.
By 2025, Jamaica was hitting its stride. One internationally recognised credit rating agency upgraded the country’s credit ratings from category BB- to BB (slightly less vulnerable in the near term to adverse economic conditions).
This gives the country more leeway to borrow on the international market. Unemployment and crime rates were falling. Jamaica’s economy was on track for one of its best years in decades.
However, in late October Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm, tore across the island, leaving catastrophic destruction in its wake. The island nation was prepared, but not protected.
Preliminary estimates put the damage at a staggering US$7 billion (£5.3 billion) – equivalent to 28-32% of last year’s GDP. Jamaica has a multi-layered financial safety net: a contingency fund, catastrophe insurance through the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility – which will pay out US$91.9 million, its largest ever payout – and a US$150 million catastrophe bond.
But these buffers barely make a dent in the US$7 billion recovery bill. There is a shortfall of more than US$6 billion. Given the scale of the destruction, Jamaica will likely have to borrow to fund its recovery – deepening its debt, just as it had emerged from a debt crisis.
This loop of disaster, debt, recovery and the another disaster does not just affect Jamaica. Increasingly frequent climate disasters wipe out years of progress in small island developing states, forcing them into increasingly costly borrowing to fund their recovery.
One study shows that climate destruction is becoming more expensive for small island developing states such as Fiji, Guyana and the Dominican Republic, because these nations typically rely on expensive private external debt to cover their disaster recovery costs.
Our team at the thinktank ODI Global estimates that between 2000 to 2022, extreme weather events in small island developing states may have caused an estimated total of US$141 billion in economic loss and damage, of which US$53 billion (38%) could be attributed to climate change.
For severe tropical cyclones and hurricanes, the estimated total economic loss and damage during the same period could be as high as US$122 billion. Climate change may have been responsible for US$52 billion of that. This translates to a total loss of US$5.3 billion from hurricanes, with US$2 billion attributable to climate change each year.
For countries with fragile economies and limited fiscal space, these shocks are existential. Each dollar spent on rebuilding is a dollar not spent on healthcare, education or infrastructure. To meet their development goals, small island developing states would need to raise social spending by 6.6% of GDP by 2030.
Yet disaster recovery and debt repayments continue to consume their limited budgets. The ODI global study found that among 23 small island developing states, external debt service payments are now growing faster than spending on education, health and capital investment combined.
What is loss and damage? An expert explains.
A wake-up call
Jamaica’s story is a preview of what’s to come if the world doesn’t change course.
As global leaders gather for the UN climate summit, Cop30, Jamaica’s devastation should be a wake-up call. The promise of the fund for responding to loss and damage, launched in 2023 to help developing countries pay for the damage from climate-related events caused by global warming, remains largely unfulfilled, woefully undercapitalised, and a low priority for developed countries.
Indeed, loss and damage issues are being currently sidelined at Cop30, with the overall 2035 climate finance goal, national pledges known as nationally determined contributions, and adaptation indicators being top of the agenda. Small islands such as Jamaica, represented by the Alliance of Small Island States (a coalition of leaders of these most vulnerable nations), flagged concerns before the conference had even begun that loss and damage finance has fallen off the radar completely.
Fiji Red Cross has provided thousands of people with emergency relief since Cyclone Winston made landfall in Fiji on Feb 2016. ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock
Developed countries can help ensure the viability of small island developing states in a harsh climate context by offering predictable and accessible grant finance for loss and damage to support recovery and reconstruction. By providing debt relief for climate-vulnerable countries after disasters, they can also ensure that rebuilding does not result in deeper debt.
Without these commitments, the loss and damage fund risks drifting into obscurity as a symbolic gesture rather than the lifeline small island developing states desperately need.
Hurricane Melissa’s impact on Jamaica, Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Dominica in 2017 and several other climate disasters demonstrate that even with fiscal discipline, prudent planning, strong institutions and improved governance, these small island nations remain just one storm away from fiscal collapse and unsustainable debt – the repayment of which diverts critical resources from health, education, and sustainable development.
Without decisive action, Cop30 will fail the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Small island developing states need real systemic change, not unfulfilled pledges.
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The resignations of the BBC’s director general and director of news were shocking. Perhaps just as shocking is the US$1 billion legal threat the broadcaster now faces from US president Donald Trump.
The full story of what has happened at the BBC may take months (or years) to emerge. But it’s become evident that a combination of poor editorial judgement and political meddling by longstanding BBC critics contributed to Tim Davie and Deborah Turness’s departures.
That there were editorial mistakes is not in question. The BBC Panorama documentary on Trump spliced together two different parts of Trump’s notorious January 6 2021 speech on Capitol Hill, without making the edit clear.
The programme itself, which was broadcast a few days before the 2024 US presidential election, was arguably carefully balanced, containing an equal number of Trump supporters and detractors. Notably, it did not receive a single complaint at the time of transmission.
It was broadcast a week before the 2024 US presidential election – nearly four years after the speech itself. It wasn’t a programme that was likely to sway anyone’s views of the president, who was impeached for “incitement of insurrection” after January 6. He was later acquitted.
Nevertheless, it was wrong to edit the speech in this way. That error was one of many allegations of institutional bias included in a dossier by Michael Prescott. Until June, Prescott – a former political editor for Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times and longtime PR professional – was an external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee.
The report was leaked to the Telegraph, which splashed with selected excerpts alleging that the programme had been “doctored”, and listing other editorial problems that he claimed the BBC had failed to put right.
Political influence
The Telegraph, like much of the British press, has for decades waged an editorial war against the BBC. As a publicly funded, free-to-air broadcaster, which is by some distance the most trusted news provider in the UK, the BBC is a serious challenge to news publishers’ commercial interests. It also offends the political sensibilities of those opposed to public funding interventions more generally.
It was therefore only a matter of time before the Telegraph “exclusive” on BBC bias and the Panorama programme escalated, especially once noticed by the White House. As the crisis gathered steam, one of the many burning questions was: why on earth is the BBC not responding?
It has now been reported – including by the BBC’s media editor Katie Razzall and BBC presenter Nick Robinson – that an apology was drafted by the BBC news team and was ready to be signed off a week ago.
Unfortunately, the BBC board reportedly prevented Turness from putting out the apology, instead opting for a letter to MPs on the media select committee. What followed was a damaging vacuum, with the BBC unable to defend itself or acknowledge its error. As internal arguments raged, it simply issued a bland statement that it would respond in writing to the select committee.
Key to this institutional paralysis and the fallout that followed were the political appointees to the BBC board. When the BBC charter was renewed in 2016, the then Conservative government introduced a new governance structure. The BBC would be governed by a unitary board of 14, including a chair, and four part-time members, each representing one of the UK’s nations. These five were all government appointees.
That boardroom dissent was, it now appears, led by those political appointees, in particular Sir Robbie Gibb. Following time as a BBC executive in charge of political programmes, Gibb was Conservative prime minister Theresa May’s director of communications. He was subsequently involved in the founding of GB News, an avowedly right-wing news channel.
In the words of Prospect magazine and former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Gibb “does not pretend to be impartial on issues related to British politics or Israel”.
Gibb was appointed to the BBC board by Boris Johnson, reappointed by Rishi Sunak, and his term runs until 2028. It is therefore unsurprising that Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has called for Gibb’s immediate removal from the board and for an end to the practice of political appointments.
The Conversation has reached out to Gibb for comment.
In his letter to the chair of the media select committee on Monday, BBC chairman Samir Shah acknowledged the Panorama mistake and apologised for the news team’s “error of judgement”. He made it clear, however, that Prescott’s report “does not present a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken”.
Changes for the future
This peculiar arrangement of political appointments appears to have effectively given partisan appointees a veto over a crucial senior management decision, resulting in the forced departure of the BBC’s two most senior news executives.
While Davey is right that this anomaly needs to be rectified, the whole BBC governance structure is in need of an overhaul. At a time of increasing polarisation and social media misinformation, it is more important than ever that the BBC is protected from political interference.
The next BBC charter, starting from January 2028, offers a perfect opportunity to provide the kind of protective structure that the BBC requires. As part of a campaign to support public service broadcasting in the UK, the British Broadcasting Challenge – a group of academics and media professionals that includes myself and The Conversation’s CEO Chris Waiting – published a report last month calling for a “genuinely independent public appointments process for the chair and trustees, insulated from covert and overt government influence”.
This could be done through a dedicated body set up under the same terms as the wholly independent Press Recognition Panel, with no links to any political party or partisan campaigning group. Such a body could be responsible not just for non-executive BBC appointments (including its chair) but also for the chair of regulator Ofcom and the chair of Channel 4 – both currently in the gift of government.
The Labour government is about to kickstart a debate on the next BBC charter. Lisa Nandy, as the responsible secretary of state, has it in her hands to rectify some of the egregious damage inflicted on the BBC’s reputation by the political meddling of the last few days. Let’s hope that she rises to the challenge.
Steven Barnett is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the Advisory Board of the Charitable Journalism Project which campaigns for public interest journalism and on the board of Hacked Off which campaigns for a free and accountable press.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stewart Lansley, Visiting Fellow, School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol
In the run-up to the 2024 election, future prime minister Keir Starmer labelled wealth creation Labour’s number one mission. “It’s the only way our country can go forward,” he declared. “We should nourish and encourage that – not just individuals but businesses.”
Starmer was right, in theory. But wealth creation is a slippery concept. Essential for economic and social progress, it can also work against both. It’s therefore vital to distinguish between “good” and “bad” wealth.
According to one definition, increases in “good” wealth come from innovation, investment and more productive business methods. Such activity boosts economic resilience, social strength and the size of the economic cake.
Examples include investment in medical and scientific technology – but also, crucially, in the activities that provide vital everyday services and goods to sustain our daily lives. Improvements in the quality of local shops, transport, services for children, adult care and decent hospitality all expand a country’s resources in ways that see the gains shared widely across society.
However, over the past half-century, a rising share of economic activity in the UK and other rich countries has been connected with “bad” wealth accumulation, which actively hampers and harms a country’s prospects.
The Conversation and LSE’s International Inequalities Institute have teamed up for a special online event on Tuesday, November 18 from 5pm-6.30pm. Join experts from the worlds of business, taxation and government policy as they discuss the difficult choices facing Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her budget. Sign up for free here
Bad wealth is especially associated with non-productive or low social-value activities geared to personal enrichment. In Britain and elsewhere, decades of privatisation and wider tax, benefit and monetary economic policies have
fuelled rising inequality while handing much of the command over resources to corporate boardrooms, top bankers and the very rich – with damaging effects for societies and economies alike.
A central source of bad wealth has been a rise in the level of economic “extraction” or “appropriation”. This occurs when capital owners use their power to capture excessive shares of economic gains through activity which weakens economic strength and social resilience. Examples include the rigging of financial markets and manipulation of corporate balance sheets, a range of anti-competitive devices such as the rise in aggressive acquisitions and mergers, and the skimming of returns from financial transactions – a process City of London traders like to call “the croupier’s take”.
Bad wealth is also the product of passive activity unrelated to merit, skill or prescient risk-taking. Over half of the increase in household wealth in the UK since 2010 has come from rising asset prices – in particular relating to property – rather than from more productive activity. This means a huge amount of that wealth is trapped in property and other assets which are not available for reinvestment in the economy.
Britain’s economic record since the 2008 financial crisis has been dismal, with a collapse in the rate of economic growth amid much hand-wringing about its “productivity puzzle”. Yet over the same period, private wealth holdings have surged. In total, UK wealth – comprising property, physical and financial assets – is now more than six times the size of the country’s economy, up from three times in the 1970s. Other rich countries have seen similar trends.
This surge in levels of personal wealth is not the product of more dynamic and innovative economies and record rates of investment. As an editorial in UK financial investment magazine MoneyWeek argued in 2019, too much personal wealth is the result of “mismanaged monetary policy, politically unacceptable rent-seeking, corruption, asset bubbles, a failure of anti-trust laws, or some miserable mixture of the lot”.
It is these activities which account for the burgeoning bank accounts of the already super-rich. Around the world, from the mid-1990s to 2021, the top 1% of wealth holders captured 38% of the growth in personal wealth, while the bottom 50% received just 2%. In the UK, the average wealth of the richest 200 people grew from 6,000 times the average person in 1989 to 18,000 times in 2023.
One of the most important outcomes of the rise of bad accumulation, and the associated surge in the concentration of personal wealth, has been the way opulence and plenty sit beside social scarcity and growing impoverishment. It has brought a significant shift in how national resources are used – away from meeting basic needs to serving the demands of corporate elites, a growing billionaire class, and private markets.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much,” declared US president Franklin D. Roosevelt during his second inaugural address in January 1937. “It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
By most metrics, Britain and many other wealthy countries are failing that test.
A key explanation for Britain’s low private investment, low productivity and slow growing economy is the disproportionate share of the rising profit levels of Britain’s biggest companies that has gone in payments to shareholders and executives in recent times. Dividend payments in the UK and globally have greatly outstripped wage rises over the last 40 years. In 2020, aggregate dividend payouts by the FTSE 350 companies made up some 90% of pre-tax profits.
Often, these heightened dividend payments have been financed through borrowing, thus undermining corporate strength. In the case of Thames Water – stripped of much of its value by an aggressive profit strategy by its overseas owners – this has brought near-bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, far from the promise of a property-owning society, large sections of the UK population have – outside of pension provision – no, or only a minimal, stake in the way the economy works. Those with few assets lose out from rising property prices and higher interest rates on savings.
How a nation’s productive resources – land, labour and raw materials plus physical, social and intellectual infrastructure – are owned and used is key to its productive power, social stability, and distribution of life chances. “Money is like muck – not good except it be spread,” wrote the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon in 1625.
In the UK, the more egalitarian politics after the second world war led to a more equal sharing of private wealth, and a much higher level of public ownership of key utilities and land. Then in 1979, newly elected prime minister Margaret Thatcher launched her drive for a “property owning democracy”. The windfall gains from council house sales and the selling of cut-price shares in her great privatisation bonanza initially benefited many ordinary people.
But today, the balance sheet looks markedly different. While the sale of council houses initially boosted levels of home ownership in the UK, the number of first-time home buyers is now less than half its mid-1990s rate. As a result, the rate of home ownership has shrunk from a peak of 71% in 2000 to 65% in 2024, with the most marked decline among those aged 25-34.
Getting on the housing ladder is now heavily dependent on having rich parents. The proportion of young people aged 18-34 living with their parents reached 28% in 2024 – a significant rise since the millennium.
At the same time, today’s much more heavily privatised economy has eroded Britain’s holdings of common wealth. Publicly owned assets as a share of GDP have fallen from around 30% in the 1970s to about a tenth. This is one of the principal causes of the deterioration in the UK’s public finances, while handing more control over the economy to private company owners.
The French economist Thomas Piketty has argued that today’s model of corporate capitalism has a natural, inbuilt tendency to generate ever-growing levels of inequality – “a fundamental force for divergence”, as he termed it.
When the return on capital from dividends, interest, rents and capital gains exceeds the overall growth rate, asset holders accumulate wealth at a faster rate than that at which the economy expands, thereby securing an ever-greater slice of the pie – and leaving less and less for everyone else.
In his 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty offered an essentially pessimistic conclusion that breaking this inequality cycle has only happened across history through war or serious social conflict. In response to critics, he modified this position and now seems to accept that there are democratic mechanisms for delivering more equal societies – whatever the undoubted hurdles of implementation.
Suppressing the profiteering and excessive returns that have driven higher levels of inequality is one of the biggest challenges of our time. But such an alignment of growth and rates of return on capital was broadly achieved in the post-war era, and there are several routes for achieving such convergence again – even in today’s very different conditions.
1. Shift the tax focus from income to wealth
Despite the scale of today’s wealth boom, Britain’s tax system is still heavily biased to earnings. Income from work is taxed at an average of around 33% and wealth at less than 4%. Through political inertia, the UK tax system has failed to catch up with the growing importance of wealth over income in the way the economy operates, and does little to dent the growing concentration of wealth holdings at the top.
In her first budget in October 2024, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, took steps to raise revenue through changes to inheritance and capital gains tax (the profits made on selling shares or property other than your home). But these were too modest to alter the imbalance in the taxation of wealth and earnings.
A more fundamental shift would be to reform the existing system of council tax with a larger number of tax bands at the top. Still based on 1991 property values, this is perhaps the least defensible tax in Britain. Households in poorer areas pay more than better off households in the richest.
In Burnley, the typical household pays some 1.1% of the value of their home in council tax every year. In a typical property in Kensington and Chelsea, it is 0.1%. The most effective alternative would be to replace council tax and stamp duty – the tax on the purchase of homes – with a single progressive or proportionate “property tax”. Any serious reform requires a long overdue property revaluation and an extension in the number of tax bands.
A modest and phased rise in capital taxation would also help to break up today’s wealth concentrations and reduce the passive – and often malign – role played by wealth holdings. Even small changes would release funds which could be used to improve social infrastructure from schools to hospitals.
One such change, as recommended by the Office for Tax Simplification, should be to raise the rates on capital gains tax so that they are equal to income tax rates. In 2024, 378,000 people paid UK capital gains tax worth a total of £12.1 billion – a decrease of 19% on the previous year.
Measures to limit asset inflation could include extending the Bank of England’s remit on inflation to limit rises in property prices, which have led to historically high rents and priced a rising proportion of young people out of home ownership.
2. Reduce how much wealth gets passed on
“A power to dispose of estates forever is manifestly absurd,” the Scottish economist Adam Smith declared 250 years ago. “The Earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.”
Despite Smith’s exhortations, birth and inheritance remain the most powerful indicators across most countries of where you end up in the wealth stakes and the pattern of life chances.
Importantly, inheritance does little to boost productive activity. Higher ratios of inheritance in wealth holdings – and recent decades have seen an upward shift – tend to be associated with reduced economic dynamism. Assets tied up in large wealth pools are often little more than “dead money”: idle resources that could be put to use funding public services or productive investment.
Yet, helped by light taxation, social privileges continue to be handed on in perpetuity. Only 4.6% of deaths in the UK resulted in an inheritance tax charge in the 2023 financial year, contributing a tiny 0.7% of all tax receipts.
Around 36% of all wealth is stored in property, and there is a strong public attachment to people retaining their inherited housing wealth – even among those who are not beneficiaries. In part, inheritance tax is widely perceived as unfair because of the way the richest are able to avoid it.
Of people born in the UK in the 1980s, those in the poorest fifth by wealth will enjoy an average 5% boost to their lifetime income through inheritance, compared with 29% for the top fifth. Clearly, those on the wrong side of this gap will be left even further behind by the end of their lives.
And the divide is widening sharply. The scale of intergenerational wealth transfer is on a steeply upward trend, with projected levels of inheritance set to dwarf all previous wealth transfers in the coming decade. Little of this process contributes to more productive activity, with one of its primary and malign effects being to fuel higher house prices.
3. Introduce a ‘whole wealth’ tax
Another much-debated option would be to levy a new tax on whole wealth holdings, rather than just the revenue these assets generate. An annual 1% tax on wealth over £2 million – affecting some 600,000 people in the UK – could raise around £16 billion a year, according to the 2020 Wealth Tax Commission report.
Such taxes would be easier to levy on immobile assets like buildings and land taxes than on liquid assets, such as financial holdings. But this complexity is not insurmountable – and nor is public opinion. Such a measure could be sold politically as a “solidarity tax” to help pay for key under-resourced but high social-value services – such as a proper social care system and improved services for children.
While many governments have been wary of the political reaction to higher taxes on wealth, YouGov’s most recent survey suggests around three-quarters of the public now support such a tax, with more than half strongly supporting it.
The Inequality Crisis – a talk by the article’s author, Stewart Lansley, in March 2013. Video: RSA.
4. Increase public ownership of utilities and services
Tackling inequality and profiteering also require a greater level of common and social ownership. Britain is a heavily privatised and marketised economy. Few other developed countries have handed over such control of key utilities to private firms.
Privatised in 1989, Britain’s water industry has been turned into a potent example of profiteering. Under private ownership, it has delivered leaky and unrepaired pipes, the illegal dumping of sewage spills into rivers and beaches, and two decades of under-investment in large part because of the disproportionate share of profits going in dividend payments to mostly overseas owners.
Another significant trend has been the private takeover of a range of public services – from social care to children’s services. According to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK has “sleepwalked” into a dysfunctional system with widespread profiteering in privately run children’s homes. It found operating profit margins averaging 22.6% from 2016-20, driven by escalating charges and cost-cutting.
These examples of bad accumulation have hollowed out some of the UK’s most vital industries. A mix of public and social ownership and much more effective regulation are necessary to turn these industries into effective service providers rather than cash machines for investors.
Regulatory reforms are also needed to moderate the way some markets work. The CMA suggests that anti-competitive behaviour and “oligopolistic structures” are hallmarks of a rising volume of business activity. For example, it has accused the UK’s seven largest housebuilders of collusion on issues from pricing to marketing.
Price gouging – when firms exploit emergencies such as the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to charge excessively high prices for essential goods – is another area ripe for tougher intervention.
5. Establish citizens’ wealth funds
Alongside greater social ownership, all citizens need to be given a more direct stake in the gains from economic activity. As one heckler put it during the Brexit referendum: “That’s your bloody GDP, not ours.”
One route would be to build models of “people’s capital” through a new strategy of asset redistribution to individuals. This would extend the principle of income redistribution that has been one of the main, if now much weakened, pro-equality instruments of the post-war era. A medium to long-term plan would be to create one or more national and local “citizens’ wealth funds”, owned collectively by all on an equal basis.
Originally advanced by the British economist and Nobel laureate James Meade, such funds would be created by the state but owned by society, with returns distributed either as universal dividends or as investment in public services. Such a fund could be financed from a mix of sources including long-term government bonds; the transfer of several highly commercial state-owned enterprises, such as the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey or Crown Estate; part of the proceeds from higher wealth taxes; and new equity stakes in large corporations.
Anchorage, capital of the US state of Alaska, which operates a permanent fund for its citizens. TripWalkers/Shutterstock
Perhaps the most notable example of citizen-owned capital is the Alaska Permanent Fund. This was created in 1976 from oil revenues and effectively owned by all of the US state’s citizens. It has since paid out a highly popular annual dividend which averages about US$1,150 (£875) a year.
The UK has its own example: also in 1976, the Shetland Islands Council established a charitable trust from “disturbance payments” paid by oil companies in return for operational access to the seas around the islands. The returns from this trust have been used to fund social projects, from leisure centres to support for the elderly.
Another possibility is to establish a national pension fund that would eventually pay for the cost of state pensions. Australia’s Future Fund, for example, is an independently managed sovereign wealth fund to meet future civil service pension obligations. Established in 2006 by receipts of AUS$50 billion (£20 billion) from the sale of Telstra, the national telecoms company, it has since been supplemented by direct government grants and is projected to reach a value of AUS$380 billion by 2033.
The UK government has launched the Community Wealth Fund, a £175 million initiative aiming to “transform neighbourhoods with long-term financing”. Working with local communities the initiative will fund projects in local communities across England. Despite its modest finances, this establishes the principle of collectively owned social funds. This is funded through the government’s Dormant Assets Scheme, which unlocks old bank accounts and other financial products that have been left untouched.
6. Spread access to the nation’s assets across society
Any meaningful redistribution of wealth across society requires a suite of deep structural reforms from improving access to affordable housing to reducing levels of corporate extraction.
One of the most important issues is finding ways of extending access to assets to all citizens as a condition of democratic opportunity. The Child Trust Fund, introduced by New Labour in 2005, was an ambitious attempt to address wealth inequality by giving every child a modest financial stake – a kind of citizen’s inheritance. Yet the scheme was abolished in 2010 by the incoming coalition government.
In the event, it only achieved a modest impact. Average payouts when children reached 18 were around £2,000, with a quarter of all accounts being forgotten or lost. The desired shift in household saving habits tended to be limited to more affluent parents paying extra into the trust funds, meaning the policy reinforced some of the inequalities it had aimed to challenge.
Bold decisions required
While recent years have seen a growing debate about the impact of ever higher concentrations of wealth in the UK, few proposals for real change – beyond a mere tampering at the edges of inheritance and capital gains tax – are yet on the political agenda. Some of these measures would take longer to achieve, and some, such as citizens’ wealth funds, are more ambitious and potentially transformative than others. All would require bold decisions by government.
In the run-up to her much-anticipated November 26 budget, the chancellor has hinted that higher taxes on the wealthy will be “part of the story” – although a manifesto-busting rise in the base rate of income tax is also on the cards.
Against this, Reeves has ruled out a standalone wealth tax, and there appear to be no plans for more radical measures to rein in excessive profiteering. This means that the wealth gap is probably set to widen.
Yet history suggests the idea of limiting high concentrations of wealth is far from utopian. Limits operated relatively effectively among nations including the UK and US in the post-war decades, through a combination of regulation, highly progressive taxation and changes in cultural norms.
The highest personal fortunes were more modest in part because of the destructive effect of war on the size of asset holdings. There was also a new social and cultural climate that would not have tolerated today’s towering fortunes, and which allowed the post-war progressive tax systems to be maintained for decades.
Restructuring the process of wealth accumulation is never going to be straightforward politically. The protests over the adjustment to inheritance tax in 2024, in particular its impact on farmers, demonstrates how sensitive these issues are – particularly when stoked by those seeking to make political capital out of pro-equality reforms.
But Britain stands at a historic moment. Failure to tackle mounting wealth-driven inequality will have harmful consequences for the social and economic stability of generations to come. Amid rising public anxiety about the future and a widespread sense that the economy is “rigged” against ordinary people, a more ambitious political agenda that addresses inequality and economic stagnation could win public backing, if any government is brave enough to try.
The Conversation and LSE’s International Inequalities Institute have teamed up for a special online event on Tuesday, November 18 from 5pm-6.30pm. Join experts from the worlds of business, taxation and government policy as they discuss the difficult choices facing Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her budget. Sign up for free here
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Stewart Lansley is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His latest book, The Richer, The Poorer: How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor, is published by Bristol University Press.
In October 2025, members of the European Parliament voted in favour of a bill to reserve terms such as “burger” and “sausage” for meat products. If this bill is approved by most EU member states, products made from meat alternatives or vegetables will no longer be allowed to have “burger” on their packaging.
This bill would change the words on the packaging, but it is not enough to change the words that people use in their everyday lives. A push to change the meaning of a word from a government body is unlikely to be successful, linguistically speaking, because of how the human brain processes and stores the meaning of words.
People often think that the meaning of a given word is a single, unchanging definition, much like you would expect to find in a dictionary. However, the linguistic part of the brain that stores words and their meanings is actually a lot more dynamic – and a lot more vague – than that.
Our understanding of meaning is a lot more “I’ll know it when I see it”. Consider the word “milk”. Attached to that word are a number of qualities that you, personally, find relevant to its meaning. These qualities might include its source (from a cow, a pint carton from the supermarket), its appearance (white, liquid) and its function (a drink, a component in coffee or tea, poured over cereal, as an ingredient in baking, or processed into cheese/yoghurt/cream).
It is these qualities that are stored in the brain under the category “milk”. These qualities, or meanings, are continuously edited, upgraded and discarded over time as we gain new information. By this process, the brain learns how to categorise new experiences or unusual examples, such as chocolate-flavoured milk.
Plant-based alternatives have many of the same qualities as their dairy equivalent. Garna Zarina/Shutterstock
Now consider a dairy alternative, such as one made from oat or soya. This plant-based product has many of the same qualities as its dairy equivalent. The milk alternatives fit the appearance and function of milk, and so they are stored under the category “milk” in the brain.
If oat milk is something you drink regularly, then your meanings will update to reflect this: oat milk will become the prototypical “milk” in your brain. Even if oat milk is not a common occurrence in your everyday life, your brain will likely store it under the linguistic category of “milk”, albeit as a fringe example of milk.
When is a burger not a burger?
Now let us consider the meanings associated with a word like “burger”. Its source (beef, turkey, chicken, pork, bean, falafel, meat alternatives), its appearance (a processed disc patty, presented in a bun) and its function (a patty placed in a bun, usually with some accompanying salad or sauces).
There aren’t any non-burger products that have been processed into the prototypical burger-shaped disc. Tatjana Baibakova/Shutterstock
The first thing you might notice is how many options there are for the source of the burger. Most of these sources are quite common and well-known. Even if you yourself have a strong preference for beef burgers, you probably wouldn’t consider a chicken burger an unusual example of a burger.
In other words, our linguistic category of “burger” allows a lot more flexibility and a wider range of sources than “milk”. On the other hand, the shape of the burger (a processed disc patty) and its function (between two buns) are both very important and more restrictive qualities of a burger.
This is in part because there aren’t any non-burger products that have been processed into the prototypical burger-shaped disc. Similarly, there aren’t any sausage-shaped products that aren’t sausages. The shape of the burger is reinforced in our mental linguistic definitions every time we see a burger, and is never undermined by seeing a non-burger patty. This is why we feel very strongly that the very essence of a burger is tied to its function and its shape.
The meaning of the word “burger” doesn’t come from the dictionary definition, or from being told what a burger is by a government. In fact, there isn’t one single meaning for “burger”.
Instead, in the linguistic database in our brain, we have a collection of meanings that we associate with burgers. This linguistic ability allows us to confidently categorise burgers from non-burgers, even if it is, ironically, hard for us to put into words. What is a burger? I’ll know it when I see it.
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Victoria-Elliot Bush does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
