How do HS2 and other white elephants get commissioned? It’s clientelism – the subtle form of corruption. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th September 2023 In 2010, when a high-speed rail line from London to the north – HS2 – was proposed by the outgoing Labour government, I wrote an article arguing that […]
corporate power
Why do we put up with daily assaults on our health? It has everything to do with corporate power. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22nd September 2023 There are some things we rightly find intolerable, such as the possession of poorly trained, aggressive dogs. There are other things, whose impacts are many thousands […]
The remarkable story behind the disciplining of a major charity shows how power really works. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 8th September 2023 Economic power seldom needs to discipline those who might challenge it. Most of the time, they do it to themselves. However extreme the ideologies promoted by corporations and oligarchs, organisational […]
Fossil fuel companies walk away from the lands they have devastated, often without paying a penny to restore them. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 1st June 2023 When you’re in a hole, keep digging. This is the strategy of opencast miners across the world: our past debts and future liabilities can one day […]
This government runs on dirty money. That’s why it’s torching the planet. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 29th March 2023 Money for the criminals, prison for the heroes: this, in brief, is the government’s climate policy. If something is damaging to the public interest, it’s likely to be rewarded and subsidised. If it’s […]
Pumping water from one messed-up catchment to another solves nothing. We need to fix our problems at source. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 23rd March 2023 It’s a classic end-of-pipe solution. Rather than addressing the problem at source, it piles one problem upon another. Yet, like so many disastrous schemes, it is now […]
How Corporations are Using Inflation to Take Your Money
Inflation is a cover corporations are using to squeeze more money out of you. But as I’ll explain, there are five things we can do to fight back.
Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits.
Prices are surging – but let’s be clear: corporations are not raising prices simply because of the increasing costs of supplies and labor. They could easily absorb these higher costs, but instead they are passing them on to consumers and even raising prices higher than those cost increases.
Corporations are getting away with this because they face little or no competition.
The steps the company should take to change the way it closes accounts. By George Monbiot, published on monbiot.com 25th July 2022 Following my family’s shocking experience in trying to cancel my deceased mother’s Vodafone account, and the discovery that many other people have suffered the same treatment, or worse, I’ve made a list of […]
Bereavement is bad enough, without a predatory phone company refusing to cancel a dead person’s account. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th July 2022 It’s sometimes called “sadmin”: tying up the affairs of someone who has passed away. There’s a lot to do, though some aspects have become easier – you can notify […]
Without public consultation, the boundaries of freeports have been expanded to cover much of the country. What does this mean? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th August 2022 Democracy is the problem that capital is always striving to solve. To maintain its rates of profit, it seeks to drive down the taxes it […]