shutterstock Evgeny Karandaev/Shutterstock Expressing affection can be expensive. Spending on heart-shaped gifts, romantic cards, chocolates and flowers (other gifts are available) to celebrate Valentine’s Day has reached close to £1 billion in the UK. So the value of Valentine’s to retailers seems clear enough. But just how valuable is the annual ritual to consumers? What […]
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China has announced that in 2023 its population declined from 1.4118 to 1.4097 billion people. Forecasting by the UN suggests China’s population will dip to 1.313 billion by 2050 and then down to about 800 million by 2100. This is a significant change and will have ramifications well beyond its borders. There are two trends […]
Read the articleAs many as 130,000 people in the UK are trapped in modern slavery, according to the recently appointed independent anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons. These people are forced to work in a variety of exploitative situations, ranging from cannabis farms to building sites to sex work. Lyons has been raising concerns that the government has cut […]
Read the articleshutterstock Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock Spring is traditionally the season for a good clean – and maybe a clear out. Taking stock and having a bit of a declutter can freshen things up domestically. One popular new way of doing this involves targeting your wardrobe by making digital inventories of your clothes – and then tracking what […]
Read the articlekovop/Shutterstock Maybe the Tesla directors who agreed to pay Elon Musk US$56 billion were just feeling generous. Or maybe, as the judge who cancelled this “unfathomable” deal suggested, they really were “starry eyed” and swayed by Musk’s “superstar appeal”. In her ruling, Kathaleen McCormick said those who decided to give Musk the biggest pay cheque […]
Read the articleAs if it wasn't tough enough already. B.Zhou Life isn’t easy for the approximately 1 million women working as takeaway delivery riders in China. Though their numbers appear to be rising as delivering food is convenient for fitting around childcare or retraining for new careers, these women have to live with gender pay gaps and […]
Read the articleNo more homelessness – a goal that sounds like utopian fiction may become reality soon. The “Housing First” concept in Finland, supported by NGOs like the Y-Foundation, is aiming towards the end of homelessness in 2027. In a new interview, Juha Kahila, Head of International Affairs at the Y-Foundation, talks about the implementation of “Housing […]
Read the articleGorgev/Shutterstock The landmark Misogyny in Music report from British MPs on the women and equalities committee, published on January 30, shines an unsettling light upon the gender discrimination, sexual harassment and abuse which is rampant across the music industry. The cross-party inquiry heard evidence from a wide range of witnesses connected to the music industry. […]
Read the articlePremier League transfer windows can be a noisy affair, with vast amounts of money being thrown around, as deals are made and players bought and sold. The summer of 2023 reached a record spend of £2.36 billion, straight after a high-spending January window before that (£815 million). January 2024, though, has been eerily quiet, closing […]
Read the articleEngland’s councils are in serious financial trouble. Six including Birmingham, Nottingham and Croydon have effectively announced their bankruptcy, in the form of “section 114 notices”, since 2020. Various others, including Somerset and Bradford, have warned in recent months that they might have to do the same. And now a cross-political party committee in parliament is […]
Read the articleMapped out. Oleg Elkov/Shutterstock Europe is home to many languages, varied geography and different cultures. And until fairly recently, it was also a place where almost every country had its own currency. The arrival of a common currency in 1999 changed all that. Now 344 million citizens in 20 of the 27 EU member states […]
Read the articleWikipedia/ETH-Bibliothek Current debates about gender have become polarised. These divisive arguments tend to focus on narrowly defining “man” or “woman”, rather than considering archetypal underpinnings of the feminine and masculine. For psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung and post-Jungian thinkers, these concepts are crucial to understanding gender and wider cultural dynamics. A Jungian perspective considers the […]
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