Tony Curzon Price — Articles

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  Manchester's imaginary Polynesian

  2021-01-18

  The personal, historical and mythical lives of James Wharram: review of a rare autobiography.

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• Gertrude Bell: the tragedy of her letters from Baghdad

  2017-04-14

  A remarkable new documentary assembled from Gertrude Bell's letters read over archive footage makes us wish for what might have been

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• Uncertain comma Texas

  2017-03-09

  A new film describes a world whose inhabitants have been broken, but offers the hope that all can be repaired.

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• White God / Black Dog

  2016-11-23

  Kornell Mandruczo's and Kata Weber's film, White God, is about Hungary, mongrols, Liszt ... and authoritarianism

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• How to improvise with refugees

  2016-10-22

  Borderline, a new play by Sophie Besse about - and with a cast of - refugees represents an ideal of being together

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• Bike courier in London: the messenger is the medium

  2016-01-15

  A review of Julian Sayarer's new book, "Messengers". A cog in the wheel of the global information economy, this courier allows the City to deliver its true message of redemption to him.

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• Baudelaire's Friday 13

  2015-11-15

  A chance reading from Les Fleurs du Mal illuminates the Paris and the humanity that is being attacked.

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• The European walled-garden: what's the root cause? what's the solution?

  2015-09-14

  What should Europe do, and are we so inescapably in the grip of jealous nations that the EU cannot do the right thing? Participants in the 2015 Havel European Dialogues in an email exchange about the

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• The dialogue or the asylum: can Europe stick to its values?

  2015-05-31

  The chance conjunction in Prague of DOX's Art Brut exhibition and of the Václav Havel Library's 2015 European Dialogues contains a message about European values and the public sphere.

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• Markets of the mind

  2015-05-25

  Debt and guilt have much in common. It’s time we found better ways of organising both ourselves and the economy.

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• Nash equilibrium

  2015-05-24

  The mathematician John Nash, who died on Sunday, provided a foundation for economics that is rich, not dismal

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• Citizen solidarity not economic nationalism after GE2015

  2015-05-10

  A realistic strategy that makes the left electable in England requires citizen solidarity rather than economic nationalism

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• Why I'm not voting Green

  2015-05-03

  Chris Dillow makes a very compelling case for voting green. But count me out this time.

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• Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ... and welfare

  2015-05-01

  How do the political camps map their favourite welfare policies onto political values? A report from the Ax:son Johnson Foundation seminar on the future of the welfare state

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• Chemicals and the good society

  2015-03-30

  Powerful emotions and life-stories build up to a howl against the stupidity of the war on drugs. A review of "Chasing the Scream" by Johann Hari.

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• The Greek Game: Dominance or Chicken, Fear or Reason?

  2015-03-08

  The outcome of the Greek game depends on how Syriza sees itself in two possible futures: "Exit" or "Buckle"

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• The Varoufakis game is not chicken

  2015-02-16

  The FT thinks Greece is playing chicken. In fact, it's in a dominant position.

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• 12 mph politics - the conversation

  2015-01-26

  Breaking records, hospitality, racism, poverty, globalisation and two concepts of hope ... the film of an evening of conversation around "Life Cycles", Julian Sayarer's account of his record-breaking

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• Six (possibly) civilising uses of incivility

  2015-01-10

  Civilisation depends on some incivility, carefully applied. It depends also on civility, liberally applied

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• Are the heart and the mind really a battlefield?

  2014-09-05

  Isaac and Isaiah by David Caute and Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan - tales of how Cold Warriors failed to capture hearts and minds - contain an important lesson for our battle against extremist Jihadis.

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• Recording the broken records

  2014-07-04

  Julian Sayarer, bike courier and oD author, cycled around the world chasing a record. And his record of this record, Life Cycles, is an even greater achievement, a cross between Kerouac and Dervla Mur

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• Notes from the Prague underground, part 2

  2014-03-15

  Part 2 of an interview around Roger Scruton's new novel, Underground Notes. The contrast between Prague in the early 1980s and Washington in the late 2000s is the backdrop for a reflection on the natu

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• Notes from the Prague underground, part 1

  2014-03-14

  Part 1 of an interview around Roger Scruton's new novel, Underground Notes. Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s is the backdrop for an exploration of a conservative existentialism.

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• Liberty Abroad, Part 3. National liberation, tribalism and intervention

  2013-10-28

  JS Mill's support for national liberation movements in 1848 became doubt as he saw liberation turn to nationalism, solidarity turn to tribalism. His ideal was of cultural hybridisation, but citizens l

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• Liberty Abroad - Part 2. JS Mill on empire

  2013-10-17

  JS Mill, liberalism's intellectual giant, justified despotism in India, thought Britain should be a beacon of liberty like Athens (because of its navy) and that it is impossible for a democracy to rul

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• Liberty Abroad, Part 1. JS Mill on International Relations

  2013-10-10

  Mill is liberalism's intellectual giant of the nineteenth century. He was a respected public intellectual and a high ranking official of the East India Company, who also gained political influence thr

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• Is devaluation of sterling the answer to Britain's economic woes?

  2013-08-28

  In his new book John Mills makes a strong case for a British devaluation of sterling but we must start thinking about the socio-political foundations which shape our dysfunctional economy - you can't

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• The (un)freedom of the networked

  2013-07-27

  The web has a dual nature - it promotes some freedoms and endangers many others. Making the most of it will mean fighting for it (from the archive, 2008)

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• Commercial masters of our Voice

  2013-07-26

  Once upon a time publishers sold content to readers, and readers to advertisers. This two-fold market is being destroyed by the same technology that enables writers and readers to engage with each oth

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• Anti-semitism, Israel and Nationalism, Part 3/3

  2013-03-30

  Antony Lerman in conversation with Tony Curzon Price around Lerman's political memoir, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist - A personal and political journey. Part 3, 25 mins.

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• Anti-semitism, Israel and nationalism, part 2/3

  2013-03-29

  Antony Lerman in conversation with Tony Curzon Price around Lerman's political memoir, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist - A personal and political journey. Part 2, 30 mins.

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• Anti-semitism, Israel and nationalism, part 1/3

  2013-03-29

  Antony Lerman in conversation with Tony Curzon Price around Lerman's political memoir, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist - A personal and political journey. Part 1, 37 mins.

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• Will workfare be well paid?

  2013-03-24

  Aaron Peters explains why workfare is here to stay. But what are the limits to its generosity?

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• Gas or nuclear?

  2013-03-16

  As the UK negotiates for new nuclear power and ever more gas is discovered, we can't avoid the unpalatable question of which is least bad for the environment

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• Iraq after 10 years

  2013-03-12

  It is the marriage of the intimate knowledge of the particular - the only knowledge the particular is susceptible to, by definition - with a moral compass, that should have guided policy towards Iraq.

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• A tale of two webs: Google v the hyperlocal

  2013-03-02

  Now that rats can telepathically tweet without even wielding a mouse, will the tortoise of human organisation win the race, or fall victim to Google glass?

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• When is "saving marriage" not a conservative program?

  2013-02-12

  A reading of Zola's Germinal coincides with the debate on marriage to suggest a radical defence of the institution

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• Devaluation could exacerbate inequality rather than reduce it

  2012-12-06

  Continuing our Devalue or Else series, Tony Curzon-Price replies to John Mills, arguing that further devaluation could even increase the earnings divide across UK industries. Could this effect be enou

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• "Judaism, All that matters". An openDemocracy podcast

  2012-10-27

  An openDemocracy podcasted conversation around Keith Kahn-Harris' latest book (1 hr)

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• London's not yet ready to love its bankers

  2012-10-16

  The author finds himself debating whether the intelligence squared forum in London should vote to "love its Bankers", in a meeting well-stocked with the subject themselves.

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• The Cold White Heat of Today

  2012-10-06

  The powerful impact of a new installation in London by Russian architect Alexander Brodsky

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• No light at the end of the Heart of Darkness

  2012-08-06

  An annual return to the home my grandfather retired to and a rifle through the rump of his library sparks off a reflection on the way in which the main questions raised by Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

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• The post-Lehman financial system is its own source of risk - so why put up with it?

  2012-07-16

  The cost of credit to the financial system is now higher than it is for industrials. The financial system has become a source of autonomous risk. Why do we need it, then?

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• G4S's Buckles is no bungler. Analysis of an interview

  2012-07-14

  Nick Buckles, CEO of G4S, was not the speech-and-thought-challenged buffoon he appeared to be on his mea-not-so-culpa interview on the BBC's flagship Today program. Indeed, the story seems much more i

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• "But you told me I could, Sir". Bob Diamond's "bent for the job" defence

  2012-07-04

  Bob Diamond, ex-Barclays chief, defends himself by saying he got a nod and a wink from the Bank of England and the Treasury, all of whom were happy to see LIBOR fixing as a "noble lie". It wasn't. The

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• Harder than cracking Diamond

  2012-07-03

  The resignation of the Barclays chief, if welcome, should not be allowed to obscure the need for fundamental reform. And Britain - that large hedge-fund with a small country attached - is deeper in ne

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• Not enjoying the football. But ever interested by it

  2012-07-01

  Is football racist to its core? The author starts out having thought so, but his experience of a particular group of joyful fans makes him wonder whether an inclusive tribalism might not be possible -

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• LIBOR's poker

  2012-06-28

  The City's Financial Services Authority has given Barclays Bank a massive fine for lying about its cost of capital in the obscure process that sets a key price in the financial markets. It shows again

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• The immorality of tax-dodging - reserve some indignation for the State

  2012-06-24

  The basis of taxation - especially of the super-rich, but also of the increasing numbers who feel no great traditional or ethnic attachment to the nation - must be solidarity, whose only sustainable b

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• Modern Greek history podcast, parts 2 and 3

  2012-06-23

  Parts 2 (50 mins) and 3 (50 mins) of the generalists' introduction to modern Greek history take us from 1920 to the present day. Part 1, 1820-1920, is here, and the two articles that have served as an

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• End in sight to "Othering the Union". Hope for Europe.

  2012-06-18

  The European debt crisis is political more than financial, as argued by George Soros. But the solution to the political problem needs to confront domestic political elites throughout Europe, jealous o

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• History podcast - the birth of modern Greece

  2012-06-17

  In this hour-long informal conversation, Terence Mitchison provides the historian's background to the modern Greek state - from Venetian/Ottoman contestation to the Balkan wars of the 20th Century, th

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• Osborne's Mansion House speech - it's so hard to be honest, guv

  2012-06-16

  An attentive reading of the UK Chancellor's (finance minster's) latest speech to the City reveals the strain of ignoring what really limits Britain's ability to formulate a good response to its own do

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• Liberty's wings will get badly burnt by "Flame"

  2012-05-29

  The "Flame" worm is a reminder just how fragile is the digital space of freedom that we have known. I used to think that the dire warnings from Jonathan Zittrain of an end to generativity and network

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• "Written on the Heart" - the difficulties of navigating loyalties by the light of love and mercy

  2012-05-21

  David Edgar's play about the writing of English Bibles in religiously turbulent Tudor and Jacobean England reverberates with echoes of our time

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• The attractions of mystical anarchism

  2012-05-07

  Rousseau, according to Simon Critchley, sees the problem of politics more clearly than many: if political institutions are to be self-created - autonomous - then what will motivate the "violent indivi

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• Journalist or Citizen?

  2012-05-06

  A short extract from the VociGlobali panel discussion at the Perugia journalism conference. Framed as an answer to James Curran's question: "Why has the Internet changed so little", the author propose

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• Desertec video - solar power from the Sahara

  2012-05-05

  A Scriberia animation describes the "Desertec" project - using solar power concentrators in North Africa and bringing power to Europe with High Voltage DC lines. Why not?

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• Welcome Magnus - incoming Editor-in-Chief

  2012-05-01

  Our outgoing Editor-in-Chief introduces us to his successor, Magnus Nome, and invites us to share the kind of ambitions he has had for openDemocracy over the last six years and onwards into the future

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• "A woman inside" - interview & review

  2012-04-17

  A fringe play by a prison therapist about the impact of incarceration on femininity presents an intense and brutal world, yet one in which humanity still gets a redeeming look in. Your browser does no

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• Do we need the ghost of the father or of the son?

  2012-04-08

  A production of Hamlet reminds the author of other ghost stories, including the contemporary literary whodunnit and myth, Luis de Miranda's "Who killed the poet"?

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• The Judo of Clicktivism - why Europe's democratic deficit stops a European political identity from emerging

  2012-03-28

  The clicktivism of very targeted campaigns, like Londoners on Bikes, Move Your Money or the Big Switch will transform our democracies. The important lesson from micro-campaigning is that identity foll

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• The problem is not party funding - it's parties full stop

  2012-03-26

  There's no surprise that it costs a lot to dine with the British Prime Minister. But calls for party funding reform are misguided – we need to undermine the parties, not strengthen them.

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• The code in the machine. A conversation with Luis de Miranda

  2012-02-27

  How has the digital realm changed us? Has it given us a way to understand the liberating aspects of order, and is this how the today's thinking about alternatives differs from that of generation '68?

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• Jimmy Wales or Kim Dotcom - is anti-SOPA about fundamental principles or competing commercial interests?

  2012-01-28

  In this podcast, Tony Curzon Price talks to Albert Wenger, partner at Union Square Ventures, the venture capital fund behind a lot of the most innovative and visible web companies of today, to try to

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• Credit rating agencies: the wrong institutions for public judgement

  2012-01-16

  Whether the ratings agencies get this or that decision right or wrong - they were probably right in the case of the European downgrades - is not the point. They have become the buck-passing agencies f

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• High pay: what Machiavelli would have recommended a politician do

  2012-01-09

  It's true that high pay for bosses serves no purpose except keeping them (and their headquarters) in the country. The only real solution is economic policy coordination. In its absence, Machiavelli wo

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• Why I wish I could condemn Cameron's decision whole-heartedly but can't

  2011-12-09

  It is now that we really need a genuine democratic European movement with strong civil society roots. But it doesn't exist, and in its absence, the Commission is an untrustworthy institution.

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• "Free" and membership

  2011-11-21

  Time to pay up for the wonders of the economy of "free". Become an openDemocracy Friend or Member

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• Clearing Zuccotti Park: the strange resilience of democracy with a thin skin

  2011-11-15

  The occupation of Zuccotti Park was only the visible tip of a movement whose significance and power goes well beyond the tent city. The next moves of the movement need to remember the nature of the sy

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• Stephen Pinker’s guide to violence: dotting some “i’s” in Rawls

  2011-11-04

  Stephen Pinker's new book is a powerful paean to humanistic modernity. But its method of questioning may not be its own best friend

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• Joining up the dots: Steve Jobs, Slavoj Žižek and "good capitalism"

  2011-10-07

  Watch the moving and inspirational commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. From the story of his birth to the daily awareness of his death, he joins up the dots to write the pers

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• Carter and Blair: two tales of post-power hope

  2011-10-06

  When President Carter addressed a crowd of well-wishers in London, the unavoidable comparison was with the post-leadership of Tony Blair

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• Afghanistan: graveyard of hegemons

  2011-10-05

  Video'd conversation with historian William Dalrymple on the subject of his next book: the first Anglo- Afghan war (and defeat) – 1839-42

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• Planning at Wormwood Scrubs illustrates the flaws of English local democracy

  2011-10-01

  England is about to have its land-use planning system overhauled ... if the platoons of Tories against the proposals do not force another climb-down. But the current land-use planning system does have

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• Update to commenting policy

  2011-09-21

  Ever since the early summer, commenting has become much more polarised on the site. Our previous modus vivendi based on community moderation broke down. This is an update to the commenting policy laid

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• Freedom to re-invent financial reality

  2011-09-14

  The fictions of finance gives us freedom to change what might seem like externally determined constraints; but we certainly need political systems that are better at exercising that freedom. A reply t

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• Fear and loathing. What 9/11 has to do with the economic crisis

  2011-09-12

  The mentality created by the War on Terror created the demand for a sense of security which translated, in the US and the UK, into excessive investment in homes - the ultimate "place of safety" in the

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• Why the Euro is a force of political centralisation

  2011-09-04

  This article was published 11 years ago in the Salisbury Review - then a small right-wing magazine edited by oD author Roger Scruton. The author wonders why he stands behind the basic position and ana

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• Granta's "Ten years later". Animals and other subjects

  2011-08-29

  The recurrence of animal imagery in Granta Magazine's powerful collection of fiction and reportage remembering the decade after 9/11, points to the depth of incomprehension and "otherness" that we hav

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• Proving Standard & Poor's wrong: "Starve the beast" versus "Feed the dream"

  2011-08-10

  The downgrade of America's Sovereign debt rating is a recognition that the Gingrichite revolutionaries might win their struggle. The only response left must be to persuade voters of an ambitious, wort

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• What's the mampus all about? The merging of the shopping-mall & the campus in urban and social web design

  2011-07-05

  Plans for a mall on my doorstep reminds me of the malls that Facebook and Google are building on our screens. Email should be part of the strategy to reclaim our public spheres

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• Treason of the heart. A conversation with David Pryce-Jones

  2011-06-07

  David Pryce-Jones in conversation with Tony Curzon Price about his latest book on radicals of the left and right whose anger with England and whose traumas led them to seek comfort and revenge in fore

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• Liberalism: The road from serfdom. A conversation with Domenico Losurdo

  2011-05-15

  Liberalism does not evolve and progress according to some internal process, but because of the historical challenges it has faced. Slavery, colonialism, anti-semitism have all been a part of this. How

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• How will we resist another decade of low-hanging fruit?

  2011-05-12

  openDemocracy's first decade opened and closed with economic and financial crises. The first gave us the tools that will be needed to reorganise our politics to avoid more of the same; the second shou

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• Are media relations in central and eastern Europe being Berlusconised?

  2011-05-08

  The ideal of business, media and political separation is never fully achieved. But the trend in Central and Eastern Europe seems to be towards a worrying degradation. A podcast conversation with accom

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• My Royal Wedding: free from it (but there is no escape)

  2011-04-30

  Our Editor-in-Chief seeks escape and recounts the company he kept

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• Audio: What sort of organisation is Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb?

  2011-04-17

  Yvan Guichaoua, West Africa expert researching non-government armed groups, describes what kind of force Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is, what motivates its members and what are the conditions of i

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• All power to the doctors' consortia!

  2011-04-08

  Playing around with debates, again. This time on the NHS reforms.

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• District heating - should we follow Denmark's lead

  2011-04-05

  Another debate I worked on, extracted from the Department of Energy and Climate Change's public consultation on Pathways to 2050. I love the idea of district heating – which seems such a natural adjun

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• Tax dodgers should be made to pay

  2011-04-05

  Still playing around with lay-outs for debates

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• "Crowds are fascist" vs. "Groups are democratic"

  2011-03-28

  More fun with wrangl.com

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• Tax dodging versus flat-taxers. The case laid out

  2011-03-25

  Playing with the very nice Wrangl.comto lay out the issues

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• The living history of Arab revolutions

  2011-02-18

  A filmed interview of Professor Eugene Rogan; the conversation ranges from the echoes of nineteenth century constitutionalism in the Tunisian and Egyptian movements today, to other moments of Egyptian

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• Did the Internet matter in Tunisia and Egypt?

  2011-02-18

  An audio interview in which Nabila Ramdani describes the role of the social networks in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions – to what extent are Morozov's and Gladwell's arguments proved wrong by ev

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• Cupid's freedom: how the web sharpens the democratic revolution

  2011-01-31

  Franzen's "Freedom" holds the key to what I think is wrong with Morozov's cyber-pessimism: it underestimates the problem of common knowledge and the web's contribution to its creation. That is why Wik

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• Consumption tax increases discourage consumerism; work tax increases discourage work. Shouldn't we welcome the shift to VAT?

  2011-01-04

  VAT is not progressive, as claimed by UK Chancellor George Osborne in his defence of the tax rise. But it is a tax on something we should be doing less of. So shouldn't we welcome it?

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• Denis Dutton and Arts and Letters Daily: the authority of the aggregator and the shift in power from information to meaning

  2011-01-01

  Denis Dutton, founder and editor of Arts and Letters Daily, has died. His daily selection of reading material was a remarkable work in itself and has much to teach web and media watchers about where t

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• Fellow Britons! Remember: the banks still owe their survival to us. Let's use that power well

  2010-12-19

  Without massive ongoing public support the banks will fail. We should take the consequences seriously, they extend much further than bonuses

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• Ha-Joon Chang in conversation with Tony Curzon Price on "23 Things they don't tell you about capitalism", students, strikes and legitimacy as a public good

  2010-12-18

  A wide-ranging conversation recorded in Cambridge, England, on November 29th 2010. Ha-Joon Chang discusses students, strikes, economic ideologies, what to do with finance, with power, nations, global

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• Phew! At least there's a Plan B

  2010-12-14

  The FT's Philip Stephens brings the good news that the Treasury has a few heads above sand-level: A confidential paper circulating in Downing Street suggests the government should consider in advan

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• Student fees/loans good for the poorest graduates

  2010-12-13

  The distributional aspects of the UK government's loans/fees package looks attractive

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• US power, wikileaks, student protest, Christopher Hitchens and openDemocracy under attack: moral authority, or authoritarianism?

  2010-12-13

  Authors, authority and authoritarianism. A turbulent week raises the question of truth and legitimacy

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• Students – please be a bit less conservative!

  2010-12-02

  Was education in the UK, before the overhaul of the Browne report and the cut in funding, really a golden age?

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• openDemocracy comments moving to Disqus

  2010-11-29

  Why we're moving commenting on openDemocracy over to Disqus Expected launch: beginning of December.

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• UK Welfare: radicalism says do nothing

  2010-11-13

  The UK Department of Work and Pension's workfare proposals are wrong. The current system is not perfect, but works in a pragmatic way. It could be made better by decentralising the administration of b

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• The unfolding story of democracy

  2010-11-03

  openDemocracy's editor-in-chief surveys the last two months of oD coverage

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• Currency wars: China buying time

  2010-10-13

  China is being pressed to revalue the yuan; Thailand has imposed limits on money flows into Thailand; Brazil is appealing for an end to competitive devaluations ... the currency war between China and

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• Quick plug for our custom search provider, Wikiwix and their new Wiki/Twitter search

  2010-10-07

  Wikiwix has been our custom search provider for a while, and they've now launched a nice wiki and twitter search product

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• Celebrating the fanatically normal

  2010-10-07

  Sweden needs to reinvent itself around the idea of constitutionalism in order to create a future that is truly shared between new Swedes and older. An interview with Maciej Zaremba (audio, 45mins)

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• The idea of the nation and the surge in Sweden's xenophobic right

  2010-10-04

  The social democrats and the moderate right in Sweden have both abandoned the idea of the nation, leaving it to the extreme right. Listen to Professor Lars Tragardth of the Institute for Civil Society

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• Always waste a good crisis: reflections on King's call to the Trade Union Congress

  2010-09-22

  The UK's coalition government should come clean: the cuts are about much more than deficit reduction. The project to reform the state is an important one that cannot be built on the pretense of "There

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• Hawking kills gods, philosophers

  2010-09-08

  Rationalist humanism goes beyond scientism

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• Dissing Assange

  2010-09-07

  Why does TechCrunch decide to join the chorus of insinuations about the sexual habits of Wikileaks' Julian Assange?

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• Knotty independence: who guards the BBC

  2010-09-03

  The Director General of the BBC was photographed coming out of Downing Street with notes about how the national broadcaster will cover the government's unpopular spending cuts. To understand the BBC's

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• Media freedoms and the constitution in South Africa

  2010-08-31

  Professor Pierre de Vos, South African constitutional law expert, in conversation with Tony Curzon Price on the Information Bill; the ANC is a complex coalition that will ultimately act in a trustwort

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• How serious are the assaults on press freedom in South Africa?

  2010-08-30

  The proposed Information BiIl and Media Tribunals are a serious assault on press freedom in South Africa. They ultimately come out of the internal wranglings of a party that needs not fear the loss of

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• The playthings of humanity

  2010-08-08

  Fulfilment does not come from self-government in Toy Story 3. Can Pixar ever let the Toys go free? See Related Articles for Jeremy O'Grady's reply

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• If code is law, then programmers rule

  2010-07-26

  Impressions of the Open Rights Group conference, Orgcon 2010

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• Has Quantitative Easing worked?

  2010-07-21

  Brief post - also out of the Cable talk - on efficacy of QE

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• Barbed-wire City and Financially Transmitted Diseases

  2010-07-21

  Vince Cable explains that the City is a bit like the oil company compounds in Gabon - surrounded by barbed wire, paying a levy to government, but otherwise distant from the host country

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• It's up to You - the economics of openDemocracy

  2010-06-29

  Yes, great, independent content costs and if the readers don't pay for it who will? Why you should want openDemocracy to be supported by voluntary reader donations and give if you can

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• openDemocracy at (almost) 10

  2010-06-24

  openDemocracy's next ten years: what more, what else, and how? Please join in the discussion and consider giving your support.

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• A Defining Budget I: What does the UK budget mean?

  2010-06-22

  What is the balance of the ideological, tactical and necessary in the axe-wielding plans for the UK public sector announced today?

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• Totem and World Cup - How British Broadcasting Corporation patronises England

  2010-06-07

  Why can't the BBC talk about football like the French? oD's Editor-in-Chief asks why the Corporation's flagship morning news programme Today makes a fascinating question so dull.

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• PSBF panel thoughts

  2010-06-06

  Collecting some thoughts on the public service new media

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• Russian GDP and the oil price

  2010-06-06

  Playing with Google's "motion" widget for data visualisation

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• Balancing on a Cable

  2010-06-03

  Has the battle to reform finance in the UK already turned into a victory lap for the City? The indications from Liberal Democrat Secretary of State Vince Cable are ominous

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• The Eurozone is the new Europe

  2010-05-12

  Will democracy be built around currency, or will currency revert to national democracies?

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• Europe: the central power grab

  2010-05-10

  The 1/2 trillion Euro bail-out has calmed markets and handed power to the center

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• UK Election: Clegg's Lib Dem options - a decision tree

  2010-05-08

  Negotiations are hard things because they have so many moving parts. For those following the UK election here's a wiki-map decision theory approach to Clegg's choice. Conclusion: do a deal with the To

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• Debate: "A hung parliament would be hell"

  2010-05-07

  What are the arguments? I tried to do as much justice as possible to the anti-hangers on this IntelligenceSquared written debate - click through for the detail

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• It's government not management, stupid - and management must be rethought too

  2010-04-14

  A businessman's plea in the UK's Financial Times for a "change of management" in British government is a dangerous mistake.

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• It's very sad but Jobs is using the iPad to try and become Bill Gates

  2010-04-10

  A lover of all things Apple shares his alarm that Steve Jobs wants to make the iPad a platform to monopolise development

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• Feather fluffing: why our politicians are no better than sparrows when it comes to marriage and take-overs

  2010-04-10

  More mis-use of economics for today: Tories want to make marriages a matter of national interest, and Labour want to protect the holy union of brands to the nation.

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• Put the business bosses in their place

  2010-04-09

  Business complains about a tax levied on its most expensive input. No surprise there. And possibly even a good thing. But the big question is whether it is business bosses or citizens that should be j

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• McEwan's environments: shining through Solar

  2010-03-30

  There are two views of why the environment is a mess and what we should be doing to help it shining through Ian McEwan's latest novel, Solar. But there is one unexplored, but possibly crucial, configu

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• Is this how quantitative easing works

  2010-03-25

  This was passed on to me by John Jackson, via another. Is this the right model?

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• A shock to the system; Wales feels our collars!

  2010-03-24

  The Welsh Assembly's criminalisation of electric dog collars should be welcomed

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• Healthcare and religion

  2010-03-19

  Healthcare is not God's work

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• How to tell your debt from your deficit

  2010-03-18

  A quick clarification on debts, deficits and affordability

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• Build Internet communitarian memory

  2010-03-09

  A video of Jonathan Zittrain's lecture at Duke on who owns the archive and the politics of making sure that the Web's memory will persist, with an extended comment by Tony Curzon Price

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• Optimal currency areas and the politics of fooling around

  2010-02-23

  The passage between Scylla and Charibdis in the ocean of currencies implies neither euro nor drachma, but more democratic control over the economy

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• Avatar blues and the hopelessness of Pandora

  2010-02-04

  What's depressing is the film's theory of value

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• The Liberty/Equality axis

  2010-01-18

  Where are the polyarchists gone?

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• Does environmentalism destroy the world?

  2010-01-07

  openDemocracy and Resurgence launch the Dictionary of Ethical Politics to explore how our political concepts can cope with the end of the limitless

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• Participedia workshop

  2009-12-09

  Notes from Participedia.net meeting at Harvard, Dec 4th & 5th 2009

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• Phones and the control of money

  2009-12-06

  The control of money issue, creation and transfer is about to move from banks and states to mobile phone companies. A big change, both welcome and unwelcome

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• openDemocracy needs your support

  2009-11-30

  A message from openDemocracy's Editor-in-chief

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• The pro-Israel lobby in Britain: Publisher's foreword

  2009-11-13

  What happens in Israel matters to many of us, and for all sorts of reasons. So it is absolutely right - as this pamphlet emphasises - that Britain’s political system should have pressure groups whose

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• Reclaiming realism for idealists; welcome to our new website

  2009-11-09

  An introduction and call for contributions from our editor in chief

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• Responses to Johnson on Bentham’s defense of usury

  2009-10-27

  Earlier this month, Peter Johnson gave an account of Karl-Heinz Brodbeck's critique of the famous utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Benhtam's defence of usury, the charging of high rates of interest on m

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• Freak storm

  2009-10-19

  There's been a riveting storm all week-end in the US eco/env blogosphere about Dubner and Levitt's Superfreakonomics, especailly a chapter, now available and scanned by Brad de Long. Levitt, supposed

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• Consensus on dissent: very marginal

  2009-07-30

  How do you get a consensus? Bring together 250 pros of disagreement into a single place to talk about the marginilisation of dissent. CarnegieUK (with oD as media sponsor) organised the event to explo

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• Thither's others - Giles Fraser's thought for the day

  2009-07-02

    Thought for the Day, the homily slot on the BBC's main morning news radio program, used to play the really useful role of getting me out of bed when I was a university student. I had worked out tha

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• Back to the 80s at the FT. Griping about state spending

  2009-06-25

  Chris Giles and Simon Briscoe in the FT have a beautifully produced flash-data feature describing the state of the UK economy. Their basic message would not have sounded out of place in 1980: the stat

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• Rebuilding the railway

  2009-06-15

    The Association of Train Operating Companies tells us that there is a case for re-opening 40 stations and 14 lines that were closed after the Beeching report of 1967. A moment for environmentally c

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• Public radio jocks: chaste and poor?

  2009-06-04

  "Today" featured an item today about whether we should know the salaries of top BBC radio presenters (as if queued by Anthony's reply to my post about their lazy journalism yesterday). The National Au

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• Pop blogger doesn't like oD's philosophy pieces

  2009-06-03

    Jane O'Grady's very interesting piece on the mind/body problem has stirred quite a controversy. AlDaily picked it up, which always brings a good readership. This brought it to the attention of the

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• Hot Air Today

  2009-06-03

    When Michale Buerk went onto the Today program today to announce this evening's Moral Maze about the crisis of trust and authority, he signed off with a little insider joke: "It's not just MP's, it

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• If you're a technological determinist, you run the risk of determining (only) technology

  2009-06-02

    Tom Loosemore at the 4IP/Polis, #recasting event last night talked about the deep rules of the internet  (those summarised beautifully by Zittrain - distributed, minimalist, messy, collaborative, a

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• Crimes against legitimacy

  2009-05-14

    John Humphrys on Radio4's Today program interviewed Patrizio Nissirio (from Italian news agency Ansa) and Sebastian Berger (from German newspaper Rheinischer Merkur) to ask if the MPs' scandal had

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• Rebuilding the News: Demotix & openDemocracy team up

  2009-05-13

    Putting the news back together again has to happen piece by piece, and when openDemocracy and Demotix agreed today on a broad-ranging partnership, two pieces that fit together came together. Tur

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• David MacKay talking about Energy Without Hot Air

  2009-05-12

  David talks about Energy Without Hot Air on BBC.

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• "Small is beautiful" ... "but big is efficient" in heating systems

  2009-05-10

  May 10th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapter 21. Efficient Heating (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) The average winter-time temperature in English homes in 1970

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• Thursday May 14th. London oD pub evening - Media and democratisation in Latin America

  2009-05-06

  Latin America's Democratic Opening. What was the role of media and what should be the role for new media? When: Thursday May 14th at 7.15pm Where: The Perseverance, 63 Lamb's Conduit Street. Nearest

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• Let's pay the money lenders to leave the Temple!

  2009-05-05

  So the hedgies are about to pack their bags and go to Geneva? Maybe we should give them a hand. Let's grant that hedge funds do some useful global capital allocation work. Their work is essentially g

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• Every little lever helps

  2009-05-05

  John Authers starts this otherwise disappointingly fluffy Long View video interview with Andrew Lo with these fascinating charts. The top chart shows that it was getting tougher being a hedgie be

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• Transport: Bicycles, trains, electric cars and nuclear ships

  2009-05-04

  May 4th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapter 20. Transport (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) Electrify transport. There's not much to beat trains+bicycles, and an

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• The tax on google---a semi thumbs-up

  2009-05-04

  The Mail has this interesting story about a tax proposal hatched somewhere between Andy Burnham's DMCS and Mandelson's BERR to tax internet advertising to fund the BBC. I don't like the idea of shovel

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• Allowing failure means decentralisation

  2009-05-04

  John Kay has a telling of Labour's economic record that I think is wrong -- he thinks there was "good Blairism" that sought to increase public provision without centralising decision-making and "bad B

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• So this is financial innovation?

  2009-05-02

    Gillian Tett's micro-historical view of the crash is extracted in the FT. Quite apart from satisfying a sort of morbid fascination about which regulators had what wooled pulled over their eyes, it

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• Mind the output gap, or the politics of facts

  2009-05-01

  Here's an excellent piece of rapid debunking of Treasury rhetoric by Robert Chote, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The basic point he makes is important. The Treasury would like to write

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• Bourdieu & the crisis: leverage your social capital

  2009-04-28

  James Kwak has a great post about cultural transmission between Wall Street and the Treasury. It could just as easily have been written about the City and Westminster for the UK. Krugman also has a de

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• Is Thatcherism dead?

  2009-04-28

  Gideon Rachman is the emblematic "good liberal" of my generation. He viewed the world from his office at the Economist since the late 80's and saw the unfolding of the idea of individual freedom---a s

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• Catastrophe and passivity

  2009-04-07

  Cannon Dr Alan Billings in the homily slot on the BBC's morning news program suggests that crumbling banks and crumbling buildings are a good moment to hand trust over to God. For Voltaire, these were

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• The G20's sins of commission

  2009-04-07

  Amid the shortage of credit, jobs and confidence, the G20 has produced an abundance of commitments. There are 19 uses of the word in the 29 numbered paragraphs -- a 30% commitment rate per paragraph s

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• Monopoly powers

  2009-04-02

  From the FT on what's happening at the G20: "A large police presence kept under control a small group of protesters playing a game of Monopoly outside the London Stock Exchange on Thursday morning."

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• Join the Avaaz poll on the world economy

  2009-03-31

  Paul Hilder from Avaaz will give us a write-up of what the poll tells the G20 leaders.

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• Balance: thinly spread and unpopular

  2009-03-30

  March 30th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapter 18. A first balance (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) This is the first chapter attempting to balance-up consumptio

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• Exodus or Odyssey?

  2009-03-27

  Comment on Rabbi Sir Jonathan's Sachs' G20 Homily: Listen!

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• Anthony Barnett's "What Next?" - grainy recording

  2009-03-26

  From The BigChill, Kings Cross, London. 26 Mar 2009 I tried out my first iPhone audio blog on Anthony's "What next?" proposal earlier this evening to the Convention on Modern Liberty post-event par

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• Blogs, truth and power at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

  2009-03-25

    I went to a fascinating meeting at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office on their "digital diplomacy" initiative. The ambassadors are blogging -- you can see them aggregated here. You might think

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• Three Kings, Clerkenwell, London. Thursday Mar 19 2009

  2009-03-22

  openDemocracy's quarterly London meeting. Bill Thompson led a discussion on journalism, the web and civil liberties. About 30 people made it - many people who had met online as part of the publishing

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• Clearly easing

  2009-03-19

  There is a lot of confusion about quantitative easing, especially now that the US has joined the UK in trying it. The usually clear Robert Peston has finally given up trying to understand. This is fro

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• Needed: globally coordinated bank nationalisation

  2009-03-18

  We need a globally coordinated bank nationalisation. It has long been clear that a globally coordinated stimulus plan is needed. And despite the parlous performance of Europe at last week-end's G20, i

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• Mind-changing facts

  2009-03-16

  A short version of this review appeared in the March 09 Spectator Business If there are silver linings to the economic crisis, one has to be enjoying the clarity, poise and judgement, delivered six t

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• Drilling deep holes and making bombs

  2009-03-15

  March 15th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 14 and 15. Geothermal and Public Services (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) It matters where the energy is: lots o

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• Tides and Stuff - March 8, Chapter 14 and 15

  2009-03-08

  March 8th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 12 and 13. Tides and Stuff (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) Tide farms, tide barriers and two-way tide pools sound

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• Modern Legitimacy

  2009-03-05

  For at least the past thirty years, our state’s claim to legitimacy can be thought of as the marriage of Hobbes and Bentham. The first duty of the state is to deliver security through its monopoly of

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• Group Read. Energy without hot air. Wave and Food

  2009-03-01

  Feb 23 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 12 and 13. Wave and Food (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) In which we learn that to get by on wave power you need to

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• What's love got to do with it?

  2009-02-28

  Many of the sessions at the convention here today are about the state of our politics. We have had 30 years of governments who talk the talk of Liberty. They have presided over an era of centralisatio

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• Who exactly is cleaning up?

  2009-02-26

  The UK government has discovered its metaphor for the bail-out: the banks need to clean-up their balance sheets; the government is cleaning-up the financial sector ... the Augean metaphor should be su

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• Energy group read, Week 6

  2009-02-23

  Feb 23 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 10 and 11. Offshore and gadgets (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) Offshore wind seems intuitively a nice option for an

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• Week of Feb 9 on the front page

  2009-02-15

  I've just completed my second turn on the front page rota, handing over to Kanishk tomorrow, who hands over in turn to David, who hands over to Tom, then Rosemary then Susan. The system is getting a l

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• The liberty of the networked (pt 3)

  2009-02-14

  Preamble1 This is the third and final section of "The liberty of the Networked". In part 1 of this essay I used Benjamin Constant's characterisation of the modern, individualised liberties as being

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• Energy group read, week 5. Heat, hydro and light

  2009-02-14

  Feb 14 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 7, 8 and 9. Heat, hydro and light (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) We use about as much to heat and cool ourselves (in

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• The liberty of the networked (pt 2)

  2009-02-09

  Preamble1 In part 1 of this essay I used Benjamin Constant's characterisation of the modern, individualised liberties as being dependent on the republican liberty of collective self-determination to

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• Time for the taxpayer to make the rules

  2009-02-09

  Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): Yvette Cooper says (Today, Radio4) that banks that need money from the taxpayer from now on will be subject to tight bonus and pay caps. The good news is that this is a

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• Put some of those out-of-work bankers into Whitehall. Quickly.

  2009-02-09

  Yvette Cooper says (Today, Radio4) that banks that need money from the taxpayer from now on will be subject to tight bonus and pay caps. The good news is that this is all the big British banks. The ta

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• The liberty of the networked (1)

  2009-02-09

  Does technology liberate or enslave? When Prometheus first started the industrial revolution, Zeus thought he had liberated humanity and should be punished for it. The tension between technology as em

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• Group read, energy, week 4. Will solar energy let us fly to the sun in winter?

  2009-02-07

  Feb 7 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 5 and 6. Flight and Solar (Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post) Will solar energy technologies allow us to sustainably take

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• Solomon: wisdom or luck?

  2009-02-05

  When Solomon became wise for suggesting a baby be split in two to settle a dispute, was he in fact just lucky? A short version of this book review appeared in the Spectator Business "Lucky", say Avi

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• Globalisation, protectionism and social democracy in one country

  2009-02-04

  Rachman vs. Toynbee on Globalisation, "Today" Toynbee: "Gloablisation is good in that it has raised the poor out of poverty, for example in China. But the benefits in the advanced economies have been

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• "Energy without hot air" Group Read

  2009-01-30

  Jan 30 2009, Chapters 3 and 4. Cars and wind In which we learn that a car eats (the energy equivalent of) half a kilo five kilos of butter per day on a typical commute, and that although "Britain’s on

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• Sunday Jan 11 - handing over to Kanishk

  2009-01-11

  I hand over front page duties to Kanishk next week, then David, then Susan, then Rosemary then back to me. Anthony will join in when the Convention is over. Why the rota? The idea is that we all work

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• Wed Jan 7 - Gaza, Economy, Greece

  2009-01-07

  Today was pretty Gaza-dominated on the site again. Over in the forums, Gaza-related threads are getting very long and heated. Just asn an example, Iron Mike posted this one on Hamas being the blame fo

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• Thursday's FP, readership spike

  2008-12-18

  Denis Dutton at Arts & Letters Daily featured Theo Hobson's very interesting Milton piece and we got the spike in readership that comes from Denis' selection. I have written about the ALDaily effect,

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• Polymeme Feed

  2008-12-18

  I added the Polymeme feed to the front page the other day. Polymeme was created by openDemocracy author Evgeny Morozov. It is Evgeny's own semi-automated news aggregator, and I had found myself select

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• Wednesday Front Page - disrupted day

  2008-12-17

  Yesterday's fron page plans did not all come together in time. There was the very nice surprise of having John Palmer's piece on the Irish referendum and the sureal spectacle of having Europe's leader

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• Tuesday's front page

  2008-12-16

  I'm doing front page duty this week -- essentially, I look at what articles we have either coming up or published in different areas on the site and chair the process by which we decide some get highl

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• Remembering the New Deal changes our deal

  2008-12-03

  We are so aware of the Depression and the possible parallels with this moment that the critical economic actors may not feel the fear that allowed Roosevelt to push through deep change 75 years ago.

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• That elusive Rusbridger Cross

  2008-12-02

  TechCrunch reports on the continuing decline of revenues in US newspapers – down $5bn since the start of 2008 compared to 2007. Even online revenues are falling. The “Rusbridger Cross” that was meant

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• Reputation for junckets

  2008-11-29

  Belgian defense minister lashes out at blogosphere after having his juncket reported.

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• Shiller's 'no shill' solution

  2008-11-27

  Conflict of interest, animal spirits and the return to political economy from one of the most prescient economists of our times.

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• Energy Without Hot Air

  2008-11-23

  The - almost - straight facts on energy from Cambridge physics professor.

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• The banality of Mamet

  2008-11-22

  David Mamet is a genius. Take this speech in American Buffalo: It comes at the end of a failed enterprise. A day when three small-time crooks inject purpose into their life by planning to steal an

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• Mollom beats spam

  2008-11-18

  Here's a fascinating chart of spam activity on oD's forums for the past 2 months: So, has Mollom beaten the site spamsters? It certainly looks as if they eventually learn that their spam messages are

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• G20 Communique - group read & comment

  2008-11-16

  The G20 communique from their November 15th Washington meeting is reproduced below. Join me in doing a group read/comment of the text. Is it what we need from our leaders? Are the principles right? Wh

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• BoE forecasts very tight electoral window for Brown

  2008-11-13

  The Bank of England has just come out with its quarterly inflation report. The big headline is that recession for the next 12-18 months is almost certain. A comparison with August's forecast is in

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• Lame duck G20

  2008-11-12

  The Group of 20 meeting in Washington this week-end will do little in the way of solving the financial crisis, let alone designing a new World Economic Order (WEO). The Green New Deal (GND) hopefuls w

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• Supra-nationalised banking

  2008-10-31

  The European Investment Bank's deal, announced yesterday, whereby it made €30bn available for lending to the Europe's small and medium sized companies is interesting for the model of emergency banking

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• Mary Kaldor's Schumpeterian analysis

  2008-10-31

  I have just published Mary Kaldor's latest column, which I think makes a really valuable contribution to our view of the financial crisis. The economics commentary, however much it professes to have l

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• Osborne/Today - endless equivalence

  2008-10-31

  Tony Curzon Price (London, openDemocracy): George Osborne gave the Today program an opportunity to demonstrate the great emptiness of the media-political conversation this morning. Paraphrasing, here

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• Osborne/Today - endless equivalence

  2008-10-31

  George Osborne gave the Today program an opportunity to demonstrate the great emptiness of the media-political conversation this morning. Paraphrasing, here was the interview: SM (interviewer): "Wha

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• Why the banks are hoarding cash

  2008-10-30

  The BoE quarterly report has a table (reproduced below) of all the measures that have been taken by central banks world-wide to get banks lending again. The fact that, after all we are doing, they sti

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• Bjork the Autarch

  2008-10-29

  Iceland's chill has led Bjork to tune in to her inner philanthrocapitalist. (Hat Tip CalendarGirl ). In this interview, Bjork describes her reaction to Iceland's economic woes and explains what she is

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• Darling and the Economics of Keynes

  2008-10-29

  Tony Curzon Price (London, openDemocracy): Darling is going to announce that the budgetary prudence rules of his predecessor---to balance the budget over the cycle, unless the spending is on long term

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• BoE snapshot of crash

  2008-10-28

  Tony Curzon Price (London, openDemocracy): The Bank of England's report on the state of finance has about 3 worrying graphs per page. Here's just one example - the amount that UK banks will need tofi

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• BoE snapshot of crash

  2008-10-28

  The Bank of England's report on the state of finance has about 3 worrying graphs per page. Here's just one example - the amount that UK banks will need tofind next year to pay back loans that are com

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• Jarvis describes ... what oD tries to do

  2008-10-27

  Here is Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian today: "I want a page, a site, a something that is created, curated, edited and discussed. It will include articles. But it's also a blog that treats a topic as an

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• Keynesian remedies and ignorance

  2008-10-26

  The Sunday Telegraph publishes a letter from the rump monetarists---many familiar names from the economic crusades of the 1980's. It is interesting to see how those old arguments play today. Take this

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• "Crisis? Did you say 'Crisis'?"

  2008-10-16

  I went to a fascinating lecture by Daniele Archibugi yesterday at Birckbeck who argues that the prospects for global democratic institutions are actually quite good. The essence of democracy, he argue

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• Krugman wins economics prize

  2008-10-13

  While I am 100% with Yves Gingras that Economics should not have a Nobel, I am very pleased that Paul Krugman has been awarded the The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nob

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• Time to rupt the banks

  2008-10-12

  Will Hutton writes in his Observer column that "big public stakes in banks and offer guarantees to the interbank market [...] is a necessary condition for stabilisation [but] it is not sufficient." W

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• Plan-B

  2008-10-09

    Plan 'B" Tony Curzon Price October 9th 2008 Face up to it: the Brown re-capitalisation plan may not work. The banks have relied to a massive extent on Credit Default Swaps, a sort of insuran

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• The essence of the de-leveraging crisis

  2008-10-07

  Tony Curzon Price (openDemocracy, London):Paul Krugman has a simple model of the crisis that is a pretty useful tool to think about what is happening and what should be done immediately. It is not a m

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• Shorting neo-liberalism

  2008-10-07

  I posted Gideon Rachman's FT column  on oD's The World link-watch page on diigo earlier today. Gideon writes: Investment bankers, the shock- troops of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, were allowed to

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• Krugman explains de-leveraging

  2008-10-07

    The essence of the de-leveraging crisis Tony Curzon Price October 7th 2008 Paul Krugman has a simple model of the crisis that is a pretty useful tool to think about what is happening and wha

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• Krugman, Blinder & Co YouTube

  2008-10-02

  Sounds like a firm of City lawyers -- Krugman, Blinder & Co. In fact, it is half the panel line-up on this excellent film of the Princeton Economics Department panel on the subprime crisis.(YouTube em

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• The American Left's remedy for the meltdown

  2008-10-01

  The progressive pressure group Campaign for America's Future - the left counterpart of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council - welcomed the House's rejection of the bailout and released three gui

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• Unwilling capitalists

  2008-10-01

  My note to Willem Buiter on his praise of the Fortis "nationalisation": Dear Professor Buiter, I agree that Fortis shows that the worry - expressed just today by Munchau in the FT - that Eu cannot re

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• Unprincipled madness

  2008-10-01

  Yesterday, I (and many others, I imagine) were surprised to discover how polarised American politics really is. Tactical explanations of the vote abound--Mark Thoma points to Bloomberg's report that e

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• Keeping up with the economists

  2008-09-27

  There's a huge amount of excellent and important commentary on the financial crisis. I have collected together the RSS feeds I'm using in 4 netvibes tabs that I am skimming through to keep abreast. Yo

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• The cost of mistrust

  2008-09-22

  Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): Gamekeeper Hank Paulson has asked taxpayers to put up $700bn of risk capital to spend on his erstwhile and future colleagues on Wall Street. He has given permission to

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• Would you trust Paulson?

  2008-09-22

  There will be recession. Now is not the moment to waste the hardship on a crony's solution.

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• Regular regulators

  2008-09-21

  I wrote the other day that we -- the collective, global, democratic "we" -- desparately need to take responsibility for financial regulation. I mainly had in mind our own shareholder, pension-holder,

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• Constant returns

  2008-09-17

  The post-meltdown financial future lies in an individualised democracy of regulation

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• Lehman: technocrats' end-game

  2008-09-15

  Now is the time that the regulator abandons hope that the banking system would heal itself. Deep breathing and other lessons for finance from surfing.

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• Murat Belge on the fundamentalist mind

  2008-09-15

  I had not read Murat Belge's remarkable October 4th 2001 essay on Fundamentalism and reactions to it. Murat is a Turkish public intellectual and long-time friend of openDemocracy - he regularly comes

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• Georgia-Russia: calling for a Machiavellian u-turn

  2008-09-06

  Rein Müllerson, a professor of International Law, strips the Russian-Goergian war of obfuscating legalities. This is not a conflict about ``aggression, occupation, genocide, racial discrimination, ter

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• Georgian endoscopy

  2008-08-27

  A part of Fred Halliday's call to understand local agency before jumping the geo-political gun is to know the domestic politics (see his recent article here). War often has deep domestic political rep

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• Smaller peoples pay a higher price

  2008-08-26

  Fred Halliday takes a broad historical sweep at the nationalist delusions of grandeur of small states. Nationalism, more than any other force, has led local leaders to mis-read their strength, their o

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• China's coming out moment - vulnerability, power, democracy

  2008-08-21

  Behind every ritual show of control, look for the unconfidence that it masks. Kerry Brown notices it in the the Olympic pageant. The perfectionism, the mime, point not so much to manipulative control

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• Krastev: Russia's nineteenth century clothes

  2008-08-20

  For the past week at openDemocracy we have focused our war coverage on history, on the particular, on reminding our readers that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not abstractions, but places with histor

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• Steal this donation, donate this theft

  2008-07-31

  There's always a business model question hovering around iSummit, and 08 is no exception. Jamie King talked about what he'd learnt from Steal this film -with some great pidgeon pictures - but also tal

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• T-Shirt remixes

  2008-07-30

  Notaland.com is at the iSummit08 offering t-shirt remixes. They print it on the spot, within a few hours. You get a template - this one had the iSummit08 logo on it, you tell it what Flickr stream yo

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• Overmundo, GV and openDemocracy

  2008-07-30

  I spent yesterday in the Local Commons Global Context track of the iSummit event which was focusing on publishing on the commons. oD was there as one of 2 other publications for whom the ethos of the

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• What should iCommons be doing?

  2008-07-28

    What is the global commons and what does it need? Tony Curzon Price July 27th 2008 Contents * iCommons should be the confederation that serves the projects that constitute the global co

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• Speculation again

  2008-07-02

  Are oil prices rising because of semantics?A calm has returned to the economics blogosphere .... if not to the oil markets. Krugman saves his position by arguing that "speculation" only occurs when st

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• Speculative theories

  2008-06-29

  Here is an instructive comparison between economists and political realists: First, the increasingly abstracted stock-flow models from Paul Krugman and Mark Thoma. Second, a suggested account of the

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• Speculation Today

  2008-06-27

  A good summary of the positions by Mark Thoma (a bit of theory)Arnold Kling is not sure where to place his bets, but has a good counterfactual question to Krugman: does he believe oil prices were at t

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• Speculative questions

  2008-06-26

  Mark Thoma has a good summary of yesterday's econ-blogosphere debate on the speculation question. He ends up on the question of what single cause can account for the run-up in both agricultural produc

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• Speculation watch

  2008-06-25

  The economics blogosphere is abuzz ... is the oil price being driven up by market fundamentals or by some sort of manipulative activity?Paul Krugman has a short theoretical piece here challenging the

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• Slippery Truths about Oil Prices

  2008-06-23

  Slippery oil prices   Slippery oil prices Tony Curzon Price June 23rd 2008 I wrote a piece on the oil price last week for The Spectator (there is an uncut version of the article here. It elic

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• Fundamentalism and oil markets

  2008-06-23

  Speculators ahoy   Fundamentalism and oil markets Tony Curzon Price June 14th 2008 In 1990, Jim Rogers, famed biker-trader, set off to circumscribe the globe astride a large motorcycle and wi

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• Tribal voices at the FT

  2008-06-23

  Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): I have discovered with great pleasure Julian Jaynes' rather controversial "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown fo the Bi-cameral Mind". A theory of consciousne

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• The political uses of Swiss-ishness

  2008-05-26

  Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): A friend of mine tells this story of a first encounter with a French scientist, met under the building-sized replica of the DNA molecule in Crick and Watson's laborator

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• Economics: roots and food

  2008-05-03

  A question to Martin Wolf and Paul Collier on the world's food crisis: can we all be both vegetarian and libertarian?

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• The food economy's missing link

  2008-05-02

  Economics - roots and food Tony Curzon Price May 3rd 2008 Xenophon wrote the first economics book as a treatise on how an Athenian nobleman should best manage his estate. It is often useful, wh

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• Help me online annotate Jonathan Zittrain's new book

  2008-04-27

  JZ has written an important new book: "The Future of the Internet (and how to stop it)". The PDF can be downloaded here, and you can buy it here But it has a beautiful HTML edition here. This really

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• Why we're running Google AdWords again

  2008-04-18

  You may have noticed that our banner spot is now occasionally filled with Google AdWords. We've experimented in the past with Google Adsense, and we stopped when, after the Thai coup, our coverage of

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• Freedom or Equality at the Progressive Governance Summit

  2008-04-06

  My two previous posts from the Summit are on OurKingdom: Lots of programs - but where are the progressives? Want to feel good about the short term world outlook? First a few random bits of conversti

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• Responsible recessions

  2008-04-03

  The spectacle of "moral hazard'' caught in the spotlight is not edifying. Bankers who have been seen living in morally righteous luxury are now relying on the support of the public institutions of the

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• The Avaaz.org Tibet petition

  2008-03-19

  Our friends at Avaaz (including openDemocracy's co-founder, Paul Hilder) have been working at getting a global and significant petition to represent world opinion about events in Tibet. Pasted below i

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• Malaysian Victory

  2008-03-09

  I posted yesterday about what was looking like a difficult moment for Malaysian democracy. You will have seen, read or heard since then of the astonishing result: although the ruling party won enough

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• Democratic perils

  2008-03-08

  Here are this week-end's warnings from friends in democratic difficulty, from Malaysia and Russia: Folks, Anwar’s party is winning a considerable number of seats ... there is currently no news whatso

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• From Zittrain to Aristotle in 600 words

  2008-03-07

  Can cyber-communities tame punks, restrain big business, become the state - and make us good?

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• Credibility and Technology

  2008-02-26

  Technology Screencast   Technology Screencast Introduction to Session 1, 0945-1115 Friday February 29th 2008 Wikipedia & Wikiscanner Google's Attention Deficit Librarians against the

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• Keep the European Universtiy at St Peterspburg open

  2008-02-26

  I had a note from Masha Lipman about the closure of the European University at St Petersburg (EUSP). Please join us in signing this petition calling on the Putin government to allow teaching and rese

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• Materials for the oD/POLIS/MacArthur Credibility Seminar

  2008-02-23

  Location Accommodation Reading List Promo PodCast ( or Download Here - Right-click and save file)   Preview some of the materials for the technology sessions here             LOCATIONS and L

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• SecondLife event: MacArthur and Virtual Worlds: Credibility and Reputation in the New News

  2008-02-21

  Please join the USC Institute for Network Culture for a discussion in a series on philanthropy and virtual worlds supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.   The event, "MacArthu

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• Soul Searching

  2008-02-01

  Microsoft has done the decent thing and proposed to Yahoo. More even than Google's presence at Davos, it marks the end of the teenage years for the search and internet advertising business - excitemen

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• Da-Tube's Global Conversation with 200 people

  2008-01-28

  The tuberculosis sanatoria of the Magic Mountain at Davos fill every year with the business leaders who, ill of their tarnished images, want to put themselves into the spotlight of the media and tell

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• The blind newsmaker

  2008-01-26

  The mass industrial media, at their best, perform two basic public functions. First, they monitor and hold to account, and second, they form and maintain a common purpose, an ``imaginary community''.

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• If regulating the strong doesn't work, just nanny the weak instead

  2008-01-08

  Evan Davis, the telegenic and usually excellent BBC Economicscorespondent, had a heart-stoppingly bad argument this morning on theToday show. Darling is hauling in the gas and power companiesto hear j

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• Google's Attention Deficit Disorder

  2008-01-06

  How a giant of the net has bred the conditions of its demise

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• The openDemcoracy Crowd, 1 year-on

  2008-01-05

  predictive-jan08.html The oD Sophocrats openDemocracy launched a set of predictivemarktes in January 2007. The idea was that byallowing oD readers to buy and sell forecasts, the oD crowd wouldreveal

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• Sub-prime Chicago

  2007-12-30

  I've been looking forward to Becker's blog posting on sub-prime for a while. I think the current financial crisis will be to economic liberalism what Iraq was to political liberalism: a failure so vas

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• Banking shakes

  2007-12-20

  How should we interpret the massive investments from sovereign wealth funds being taken by UBS, Citi and Morgan Stanley to shore up their capital reserves? Just when the central banks are making huge

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• Is the City the biggest subsidy scrounger around?

  2007-11-30

  Will Hutton was interviewed on Today - the jolly slot at 0857 - about whether the 30,000 UK resident super-rich are good for the country. He talked about incentives, Scandinavia, giving back, Quaker b

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• Give us a dollar, oh! you know why.

  2007-11-28

  Brad Setser at RGE Monitor has a very worrying picture: It shows that long term lending to the US has dried up since August. The consequences seem to me to be quite stark. Either * the US starts

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• Coherent Disagreement

  2007-11-22

  Who you are determines what you mean. What you say can make who you are. This dance of talking and being makes listening quite hard, and nowhere more so today than in the questions about Islam and th

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• Media and Public Sphere: chicken <-> egg, or chicken <-> roast

  2007-11-09

  I am in Vienna, a guest of the Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, who, for their 25th anniversary, gathered a group ``Towards a European Public Space; International workshop on European med

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• Facebook: World Wide Tupperware Party

  2007-11-07

  Facebook, with its advertising announcement, has just turned your friendly social networking neighbourhood into one big Tupperware party. Tupperware, the maker of ever convenient plastic containers, b

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• Don't be Googil

  2007-11-06

  Google's been busy at behemoth work these past few days. Google announced an "open" social networking protocol, and then of an "open" mobile phone system. Sounds like we at openDemocracy should be ch

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• Crisis or crescendo for the economy

  2007-11-05

  The banks The big banks have lost a lot of money in the credit crunch. The utterly engrossing live transcript of FT Alphaville's Chat on November 1st, when the big banking losses started to scare the

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• JK Rowling - Which culture?

  2007-11-01

  When JK Rowling was interviewed by Razia Iqbal (go to minute 22 or so) on the BBC this morning, there were a few intriguing directions the story almost went in. Rowling is auctioning a single copy of

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• "Today's" to-do: a) speak truth to power; b) become one with audience; c) avoid "national treasure" status

  2007-10-31

  With a tin ear and no television in my life, I walked into the BBCist crowd assembled for the 50th birthday of "Today" the morning radio news-show (a bit like NPR's "Morning Edition", or the French "L

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• Relics are the hardware

  2007-10-30

  Jonathan Freedland has a great edition of "The Long View", the BBC Radio show that draws historical parallels. He proposes the analogy between the use of relics to bind the 9th century Carolingian emp

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• Toxic-onomics

  2007-10-25

  Nasim Taleb has a great piece in the FT arguing that the economics Nobel's are not just clever but dishonest marketing, but are actually damaging to the financial system. Taleb claims: The environmen

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• Representative, or did you mean representative, or maybe representative?

  2007-10-22

  Representative, or did you mean representative, or maybe representative? The question of representation has been discussed a great deal in openDemocracy's coverage of Tomorrow's Europe poll. There is

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• Public space must police politicans and ranters

  2007-10-16

  I was very kindly invited to YouGovStone's Evening Standard Influentials Debate on the London Housing Crisis. Debating and its role in the creation of a Public Space is much in my mind - and on my pag

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• The cheap-talk challenge: what is debate really for?

  2007-10-16

  You can't be involved for long with openDemocracy - or with any serious new-media publication - without soon needing a reply to the "cheap-talk" challenge: "what's all this debate for anyway?" Are we

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• Liquidity Enhancement - plastic surgery for drying bankers?

  2007-10-16

  The beautifully named SIV Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit (SMLEC), the fund the big investment banks are putting together to rescue each other, is a stitch-up. Roubini has a dense but compelling

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• Why is HSBC trying to bank with me?

  2007-10-15

  HSBC, my bank, has been acting strangely lately. I called them for some simple shuffling of funds from one place to another, and they immediately started suggesting that I move some of my funds into t

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• Roubini comes to Europe

  2007-10-14

  RGEMonitor, long my favourite reading on macro-economics (at least the non-subscription pieces of it ...), has launched an open Euro-economics publication at http://www.rgemonitor.com/euro-monitor. J

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• Gordon Brown: between rock and hard place

  2007-09-18

  On 6 May 1997, the BBC ran a picture of a youthful, determined, courageous Gordon Brown with the text "...the bank will now be free to decide monetary policy without taking the short-term wishes of po

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• We are recruiting a Russia editor

  2007-09-13

  Thanks to a generous grant, we are extending our Russia coverage. We are looking for an editor to lead the new section. It will focus on publishing international material of interest to Russians in R

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• Clock Grabbing

  2007-09-10

  Professor Detlef Pollack presented the NEF/van Leer conference with some data on secularisation in Europe: are we becoming less religious? can it be measured? is it getting faster or slower? He contra

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• Sarkozy: ``Voltaire is not negotiable''

  2007-09-05

  Sarkozy has established the chillingly named Ministère de l'Immigration, de l'Intégration, de l'Identité nationale et du Codéveloppement.. Does this make immigration a ``national identity problem''?

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• Gilles Keppel: Multiculti + Londonistan = Terror

  2007-09-02

  Gilles Kepel, French scholar of Islam (and openDemocracy author) presented us with a paradox: British ``multi-culti'' gave home born terrorism; French republicanism, fired by ``la Mission Civilisatric

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• Does secularism turn political religion into a problem?

  2007-09-02

  This was Professor Jose Casanova's contention in the opener of the Van Leer Institute/Network of European Foundations conference on Religion and Democracy in Europe. It's not the economy, stupid ... i

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• Regis Debray: Israel pessimist. Tony Curzon Price

  2007-08-31

  This link details Regis Debray's depressing view of the disappearing reality of a 2-state option in Israel/Palestine. It came through my email, just as I sit in an airport lounge bound for Jerusalem.

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• The conditions of quality

  2007-08-22

  A conversation with Carl Djerassi has no chance of running out of subject-matter. The energetic octogenarian, whose latest play has just opened in New York, was a Viennese emigré of the 1930s, the fir

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• Bernanke Hugs the Hedgies

  2007-08-20

  So Bernanke decided tohug the hedgies after all ...By cutting the federal funds rate by a 1/2 percent, Bernanke has rewarded the banking system for its latest panic. Think of it like this: money is ba

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• The Spinners get Spun

  2007-08-15

  Virgil Griffith has just made it possible for us to glimpse at how the spinners on wikipedia have been spinning their tale for us. Go and look for yourself. When you edit a wikipedia entry anonymousl

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• Is deliberative democracy really "democratic"

  2007-08-14

  I happened to be re-reading Professor John Dunn's excellent 2005 article on what democracy is good for and what it isn't much good for and I was struck by the concluding paragraph: Less steadily and

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• The end of gentlemanly capitalism

  2007-08-13

  Over the past week, we - the rich-world voter and taxpayer - have bailed out the hedge-funds, their bankers and their counterparts caught in the global squeeze on credit. Again. It happened in 2001 an

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• Google News: Friend or Frenemy?

  2007-08-13

  Google News: Friend or Frenemy? When Banquo, whom we know Macbeth is about to have murded, walks about the ramparts after nightfall and hears a rustling behind him, he is worried enough about his saf

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• Corporate liability and social interest

  2007-07-26

  How does corporations' immunity from public damage relate to kite-surfing? Tony Curzon Price talks to two experts about the risks of "limited liability"

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• Corporate liability and social interest

  2007-07-25

  I am on the north Somerset coast, in England's "west country", with my young daughters for a family holiday. The wind is blowing cross-shore and I can see the industrial stacks of south Wales ten mile

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• Making up minds

  2007-07-23

  The Enlightenment faith that knowledge will lead to understanding, and understanding to a better world, is central to openDemocracy's being. It informs both what we publish - in-depth analysis and com

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• AccountAbility, Zadek, July 07

  2007-07-02

  Videocast of SZ/TCP

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• Jonathan Octtain

  2007-06-16

  by Tony Curzon price at the iCommons summit 2007 You know the argument -- in the post-copyright world, musicians will find other revenue sources, like live performance. Well, if the same will apply

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• Larry (almost) resigns

  2007-06-16

  by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007 What is CC/iCommons? Lessig started answering the question during the keynote. It is: * A user interface to Copyright * A signal that defines an

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• Does CC destroy free culture?

  2007-06-15

    Does CC destroy free culture? Business models panel presentation. I have a panel on business models this afternoon, and this is the presentation for it. A simple argument: - you need communitie

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• Dubrovnik, Day minus 1: Why iCommons?

  2007-06-15

  by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007 in Croatia ``What is the purpose of the iSummit?'', I asked as a disparate band of commoners jumped into a taxi to the centre of town. The question s

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• The IP Year, 2006-7

  2007-06-13

  by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007 in Croatia I was at iCommons Rio in June 2006. The habitual morning's bodysurfing on Copa Cabana was even more memorable than watching Brazil watching

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• The reinvention of scarcity

  2007-06-13

  Exactly two years ago, openDemocracy switched to publishing under Creative Commons. Siva Vaidhyanathan made the argument that this license represented true openness and democracy, that it suited us in

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• Technology that can really help use the web for research - diigo

  2007-06-12

  Strongly Recommend: Use Diigo! by Tony Curzon Price According to our surveys, many oD readers are involved in research in some form or other: as students or academics or media-folk or policy makers

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• Das Google Problem: is the invisible mouse benevolent?

  2007-04-19

  It has become fashionable to worry about Google's market power and economic clout, as in the Business Week cover story on 9 April 2007: "Is Google Too Powerful?" It elaborates the question thus: "Will

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• The reach of economics: a reply to Diane Coyle

  2007-03-13

  To start, two anecdotes from my past as an economist. I was founder and managing director of ELSECo, the game-theory consultancy company that designed the 2001 3G mobile-phone spectrum auction in the

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• Tony Blair and centralisation

  2007-02-20

  Article summary Turnout rates in English local elections are critically low. They are not only the lowest in Europe, by a 12% margin, but also are falling further - by five percentage points since 1

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• The openDemocracy crowd's wisdom: January 2007 market report

  2007-02-14

  Over the new-year break, I introduced the annual predictive-markets game (see "The wisdom of the openDemocracy crowd", 29 December 2006). Based on the Hayekian notion that markets are ways of hovering

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• Who pays for openDemocracy?

  2007-02-06

  We have been asking you to donate to openDemocracy because your contributions are critical to openDemocracy's growth. Why? I will now open up openDemocracy's finances to explain. We publish over 1,00

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• The Economist redux

  2007-02-05

  During the 1980s, I read the Economist from cover to cover, week to week; during the 1990s I read it from the back, stopping with "Business"; since then I maintain my subscription like a Christmas car

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• The wisdom of the openDemocracy crowd

  2006-12-29

  Busy forecasters at the Chicago Board of Trade How good are you at forecasting world events? Can openDemocracy readers, authors and editors take the pulse of events? Who are the most effective crysta

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• The 'as if' economist: Milton Friedman's legacy

  2006-11-27

  Milton Friedman, who died on 16 November 2006, leaves a great economic legacy but a broadly failed philosophy. Ben S Bernanke (Alan Greenspan's successor as head of the United States federal reserve),

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• iCommons for beginners

  2006-06-19

  Tony Curzon Price, Becky Hogge and Sam Howard Spink are blogging from the iCommons iSummit in Rio this weekend, 23-25 June 2006 Creative Commons Creative Commons is an American charity founded by the

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• Turning the tide: how fear will make People Flow obsolete

  2003-07-09

  In August 1993, at the bar of the Novotel in Libreville, Gabon, I had an encounter straight out of a Graham Greene novel. Julien Joo, an official of some rank at the French Ministry of “Cooperation”

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• Holistic hunters' knowledge can be harmful

  2002-09-02

  Hugh Brody contrasts the hunter gatherer's holistic knowledge of his environment to the alienated relationship to prey and territory of the recreational hunter-land owner. It is not clear which hunte

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• Why Fly?

  2002-06-11

  1. Two Fathers, One Question The only time I have seen my father agreeing with a priest was when he and Father Elijah shook heads as I, seventeen and proud of my first purchase of any mode of rebelli

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