Clash of barbarisms: Gaza as a metaphor for a fractured world
Are we all pawns in a global game of barbaric chess?
21 October 2025, 04:00 AM
Navigating pre-election tensions: A plea for common sense
The trend of settling old scores about “who did what” decades ago should be seen as a distraction from the huge challenges facing any incoming government.
14 September 2025, 05:00 AM
LETTERS FROM THE UK / Challenges for critical journalism
The consequences of this era of mass insecurity are people having to work harder for less, often several different jobs in a day or week, without weekly or regular leisure, to make ends meet.
10 August 2025, 07:00 AM
Frogs in the saucepan: A metaphor for our times
We have adjusted to the curtailment of our liberties and discrimination in various forms—social, racial, ethnic, immigrant and so on.
11 April 2025, 11:00 AM
Absurdity of justice
Since Margaret Thatcher, we have had that problem in spades in the UK; blame for failure is bounced around between ministries and private contractors, between policy ideas and those responsible for implementation.
20 March 2025, 09:30 AM
Obituary / Stephen D Biggs’s pioneering work in helping small farmers
Stephen was more than a university teacher and researcher.
10 March 2025, 11:11 AM
Munich again, 87 years later
It is always good to seek peace rather than war, but the question is always, at what price and in whose interests?
3 March 2025, 10:00 AM
Economics for all?
How one develop can enough economic knowledge to understand political choices.
13 February 2025, 06:00 AM
Clash of barbarisms: Gaza as a metaphor for a fractured world
Are we all pawns in a global game of barbaric chess?
21 October 2025, 04:00 AM
Navigating pre-election tensions: A plea for common sense
The trend of settling old scores about “who did what” decades ago should be seen as a distraction from the huge challenges facing any incoming government.
14 September 2025, 05:00 AM
Challenges for critical journalism
The consequences of this era of mass insecurity are people having to work harder for less, often several different jobs in a day or week, without weekly or regular leisure, to make ends meet.
10 August 2025, 07:00 AM
Frogs in the saucepan: A metaphor for our times
We have adjusted to the curtailment of our liberties and discrimination in various forms—social, racial, ethnic, immigrant and so on.
11 April 2025, 11:00 AM
Absurdity of justice
Since Margaret Thatcher, we have had that problem in spades in the UK; blame for failure is bounced around between ministries and private contractors, between policy ideas and those responsible for implementation.
20 March 2025, 09:30 AM
Stephen D Biggs’s pioneering work in helping small farmers
Stephen was more than a university teacher and researcher.
10 March 2025, 11:11 AM
Munich again, 87 years later
It is always good to seek peace rather than war, but the question is always, at what price and in whose interests?
3 March 2025, 10:00 AM
Economics for all?
How one develop can enough economic knowledge to understand political choices.
13 February 2025, 06:00 AM
Two cats in the yard
We move into 2025 with many heightened uncertainties.
30 January 2025, 07:00 AM
A new deal for Bangladesh-UK partnership in uncertain times
Even before the recent change of government in the UK, its role in Bangladesh has been shifting, especially bilaterally.
28 October 2024, 07:00 AM
A blueprint for reforms: Tackling corruption, inequality, and autocracy
The government needs to set in place irreversible principles and practices that constrain arbitrary power in the future leading to the misuse of popular consent.
21 September 2024, 02:00 AM
Surrealism and dark arts: Leaving citizens behind
Under the Tories, the emperor lost its clothes—if it ever had any. Its international rhetoric of “leave no one behind” is a hollow slogan at home.
2 August 2024, 05:00 AM
A review of My Golden Bengal: A serious book for serious times
A remarkable gathering of informants have been interviewed in recent years by René Holenstein, a former ambassador for Switzerland, for 'My Golden Bengal: Views and Voices from Civil Society.'
12 June 2024, 05:00 AM
Is the family farm disappearing?
The depeasantisation thesis associated with Kautsky and popularised as “the Agrarian Question” needs to be subtly understood in Bangladesh.
24 May 2024, 06:00 AM
Dealing with climate change in a capitalist world
Why we should care about remote others in time and space.
11 May 2024, 04:02 AM
The lingering trails of poverty in Bangladesh
While the term ‘development’ can have many meanings, poverty remains a necessary issue for policy and action.
4 April 2024, 02:00 AM
Development NGOs: Arm of the state or part of civil society?
Just don’t expect too much from development NGOs in shifting the needle on the dial.
5 March 2024, 01:00 AM
Evidence to policy. Truth to power.
"Policy" as an institutional process is a nebulous mixture of concepts, thinking, ideology, values, pragmatism, interests and, hopefully, evidence: prior, during, and afterwards.
22 February 2024, 02:00 AM
Extreme poverty: Special measures or solved by growth?
In material development terms Bangladesh has changed a lot, and has made much progress since I first arrived just over 44 years ago.
25 October 2018, 18:00 PM