Are Trams Socialist?

Author: Christian Wolmar
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 1907994580
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
Transport is key to our daily lives. The transport system is essential to ensure the movement of people and goods, and most of us will use the roads or public transport every day. Vast sums are tied up in it and are spent on trying to resolve the problems of congestion and delays. And yet it is a most neglected field of politics. Britain has never had a coherent transport policy. Transport ministers are regarded as minnows compared with their ‘big beast’ colleagues in other ministries. Successive governments have barely attempted to get to grips with the challenge of getting people around efficiently and safely while limiting the environmental damage caused by transport. In this entertaining polemic, Christian Wolmar, an author and journalist who has written about transport for over two decades, explains why politicians have not addressed the crucial issue of balancing transport needs with environmental considerations. Instead, they have been seduced by the popularity of the car and pressure from the car lobby, and they have been sidetracked by dogma. Solutions are at hand – and successful examples can be seen elsewhere in Europe – but courage and clear thinking are needed if they are to be implemented.

The Nanny State Made Me

Author: Stuart Maconie
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473562104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
'He is as funny as Bryson and as wise as Orwell' Observer It was the spirit of our finest hour, the backbone of our post-war greatness, and it promoted some of the boldest and most brilliant schemes this isle has ever produced: it was the Welfare State, and it made you and I. But now it's under threat, and we need to save it. In this timely and provocative book, Stuart Maconie tells Britain’s Welfare State story through his own history of growing up as a northern working class boy. What was so bad about properly funded hospitals, decent working conditions and affordable houses? And what was so wrong about student grants, free eye tests and council houses? And where did it all go so wrong? Stuart looks toward Britain’s future, making an emotional case for believing in more than profit and loss; and championing a just, fairer society.

Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia

Author: Max Hirsh
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824894375
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global infrastructure production today is focused squarely on Asia. Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia investigates the deeper implications of that pivot to the East. Written by leading international infrastructure experts, it demonstrates how new roads, airports, pipelines, and cables are changing Asian economies, societies, and geopolitics—from the Bosporus to Beijing, and from Indonesia to the Arctic. Ten tightly interwoven case studies powerfully illustrate infrastructure’s leading role in three global paradigm shifts: climate change, digitalization, and China’s emergence as a superpower. Combining social science methods with mapping techniques from the design professions, Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia establishes a dialogue between academic research on infrastructure and the professional insights of those responsible for infrastructure’s planning, production, and operation. By applying that mixed method to transport, energy, telecommunication, and resource extraction projects across Asia, the book synthesizes research on infrastructure from six academic fields, while making those insights accessible to a wider audience of students, professionals, and the general public. For links to the open-access PDF and EPUB editions, chapter downloads, and detailed information, visit the project website: https://infrastructureasia.net/.

Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere?

Author: Christian Wolmar
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 191301925X
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Wolmar's entertaining polemic sets out the many technical, legal and moral problems that obstruct the path to a driverless future, and debunks many of the myths around that future's purported benefits.

A Better Politics

Author: Danny Dorling
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 1907994556
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Book Description
The aim of this book is to inspire a better politics: one that will enable future generations to be happier. Greater well-being and better health should be the goals, rather than wealth maximization. We need to value healthcare more than hedge funds, caring above careers, relationships more than real estate. The book is about what makes most of us happier, but it is also about the collective good. We cannot truly be happy if those around us are not happy. The evidence for a successful politics that would promote happiness and health is examined, and policies that take account of this evidence are suggested. Government can and should work to make us happier.

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin

Author: David Birch
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 190799467X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Technology is changing money: it has been transformed from physical objects to intangible information. With the arrival of smart cards, mobile phones and Bitcoin it has become easier than ever to create new forms of money. Crucially, money is also inextricably connected with our identities. Your card or phone is a security device that can identify you – and link information about you to your money. To see where these developments might be taking us, David Birch looks back over the history of money, spanning thousands of years. He sees in the past, both recent and ancient, evidence for several possible futures. Looking further back to a world before cash and central banks, there were multiple ‘currencies’ operating at the level of communities, and the use of barter for transactions. Perhaps technology will take us back to the future, a future that began back in 1971, when money became a claim backed by reputation rather than by physical commodities of any kind. Since then, money has been bits. The author shows that these phenomena are not only possible in the future, but already upon us. We may well want to make transactions in Tesco points, Air Miles, Manchester United pounds, Microsoft dollars, Islamic e-gold or Cornish e-tin. The use of cash is already in decline, and is certain to vanish from polite society. The newest technologies will take money back to its origins: a substitute for memory, a record of mutual debt obligations within multiple overlapping communities. This time though, money will be smart. It will be money that reflects the values of the communities that produced it. Future money will know where it has been, who has been using it and what they have been using it for.

The Weaponization of Trade

Author: Rebecca Harding
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 1907994734
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Book Description
Trade is being weaponized – and this is not good. As politicians on both sides of the Atlantic raise the stakes, trade is increasingly a tool of coercion to achieve strategic influence. This book looks at the risks for us all as trade becomes an instrument of foreign policy, and it shows how politicians could turn things around.

Travel Fast or Smart?

Author: David Metz
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 1907994610
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Book Description
Britain does not have a coherent transport policy, and conventional transport economics has reached a dead end. A transport policy should incorporate systematic thinking about the travel needs of society, but in Britain public investment in the transport system has been extraordinarily volatile. We closed underused railways and then experienced a doubling of passenger numbers, prompting huge new investment. We gave up making substantial investments in motorways, but we have now chosen to revive the road construction effort in a big way. We vacillate on road pricing, introducing congestion charging successfully in London but backing off elsewhere because of local opposition. We have delayed the decision about whether and where to build additional airport capacity for decades. This mess has come about because policy has focused on big construction projects and time savings when it should have been focusing on the part that people and places play in economic development. This book sets out the principles that could underpin a strategic policy for transport. Instead of focusing piecemeal on getting from place to place ever faster, we need to think about how and where we want the economy to develop, and about how new digital technologies can help us achieve what is needed.

John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister?

Author: Kevin Hickson
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785902717
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of one of the most momentous general elections this country has ever seen. John Major's defeat in 1997 ended a record eighteen years of Tory government, prompting accusations of failure and ignominy. A controversial leader, Major oversaw numerous crises in international and domestic policy. Between 1990 and 1997, he presided over Britain's participations in the Gulf War, the start of the Northern Ireland peace process, the Maastricht Treaty negotiations and, famously, Black Wednesday and Britain's exit from the ERM. Towards the end, Major's government was split over Europe and ridden with allegations of sleaze. Widely criticised by the media and politicians from all parties, Major went on to be crushed by Tony Blair and New Labour in the 1997 general election. An Unsuccessful Prime Minister? is the first wide-ranging appraisal of John Major's government in nearly two decades. This book reconsiders the role of John Major as Prime Minister and the policy achievements of his government. Major's government faced many more constraints and left behind a more enduring legacy than his critics allowed at the time or since.

London Transport

Author: James Fowler
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1789739535
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Book Description
This book is a timely assessment of a unique hybrid public body with a system of governance that once made London transport domestically popular and internationally admired: the London Passenger Transport Board.