From Pottery Shards To Phone Votes: Where Does The UK Fit In?

by Clemency Flitter

Two Campaigners

I like to think many people who live and work in the UK are very proud of the democracy we share in this country. Every five years we all get to vote and choose a party which will go on to represent us and make the decisions on behalf of the population. Many have striven and many have died for this right to everybody getting a free and secret vote, with first the push to get all classes an equal vote and then the protests and hunger strikes of Votes for Women. It’s been a pretty rough ride getting to where we are now, and I would say it has been worth it, for there is certainly more equality in the way the government is run now than ever before. But is it still truly a democracy?

 

A Visual Guide To Deflation

by Viva Avasthi

Here's the second part to the previous post: A Visual Guide to Inflation. This one's brilliant too! As with the inflation guide, this is apparently biased towards the Keynesian view. What's your opinion about this? Is this guide relevant? Which approach is the best towards deflation in your opinion?

Read on to see the guide.

A Visual Guide To Inflation

by Viva Avasthi

Check this out! It's a really entertaining guide :) I don't know much about the various economic fields of thought yet, but apparently this is heavily based on the Keynesian view. How effective do you think this guide is? Are there any changes that you would make to it?


 Read on to see the complete guide.

What Do Bank Holidays Mean For The Economy?

by Viva Avasthi

The biggest economics-related news for the UK today has been that bank holidays are costing the British economy about £2.3 billion ($3.7 billion) per day. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has suggested that bank holidays should be more evenly distributed throughout the year to stop businesses "losing momentum".

There has been a very mixed response to this by the British public as I have discovered by reading some comments on the BBC site under this article:

BBC News - Bank holidays 'cost economy £19bn'

My question: is there a correlation between the success of a country and the number of bank holidays it has? If not, what could be the reasons for such a large loss for the economy? 

Sweatshops: a Curse or a Boon?

by Viva Avasthi

Sweatshops have been branded as places where the poor in developing countries are forced to work under horrible conditions for massive multinational companies such as Nike, for example. But is this really the case? Are there benefits to so-called 'sweat shops'?

Contents of Investigation:

1. Introduction
2. The problems with sweatshops
3. An alternative approach to the issues surrounding sweatshops
4. Conclusion

How Does The Weather Affect The Economy?

by Viva Avasthi


Living in the UK means that the weather has really (annoyingly!) been playing up recently. Only last week the weather was lovely but this morning there was a full-blown blizzard outside my bedroom window...


The Telegraph - Britain to be battered by gale force winds, snow sleet and rain as Winter returns for Easter 2012

OK, such a short burst of change in weather may not affect the economy much. However, this led me to thinking: just how much does the weather affect the economy? I'll focus primarily on the UK economy, of course, but since the world is so interconnected - through globlisation as you will probably be aware - I might just check out the impact of the weather on the global economy too (in a different post, perhaps.)