Study finds £18m a year deducted from benefits, sinking people deeper into poverty and for some a desperate flight into the arms of dodgy lenders BUSINESS is booming for loan sharks in Leeds, West Yorkshire, thanks to government policy plunging city residents into desperate poverty. Well, that’s one way of…

Surging energy costs and political squabbles cast a dystopian spectre over Britain’s future — THIS is the stuff of dystopian nightmare: swathes of our towns and cities gone dark as the power fails and basic services cease to function. Welcome to the United Kingdom, as a disturbing power vacuum sweeps over the land, and our leaders prevaricate in the face of catastrophe. The power…

With crisis everywhere we look, can a struggling culture industry really save us? — Culture is a critical bread and butter issue, writes Mark Cantrell, but with the industry itself in crisis, can it really help revive the fortunes of struggling, economically damaged communities? YOU can’t eat culture, right; maybe not, but it does provide a livelihood for many and makes a sizeable contribution…

The horror of war is no more outrageous in Europe than anywhere else in the world — The awful situation in Ukraine has highlighted that all victims are equal when it comes to suffering the carnage of war — but some are more equal than others. That needs to change, writes Mark Cantrell PEOPLE like us. We’ve been hearing quite a bit of that since Russian forces…

A much-criticised cut to Britain’s Universal Credit welfare payment threatens to tighten the grip of upper middle class privilege on the nation’s arts and entertainments sectors , writes Mark Cantrell— we’ll all be the poorer for it STRANGE as it may sound, October’s cut to Universal Credit benefit payments threatens…

Unions warn British workers need stronger legal protections against “inhuman” AI managers — Artificial intelligence isn’t simply about bosses replacing wage-hungry human workers: it’s about controlling those who still hang on to a job, writes Mark Cantrell TECHNOLOGY is often hailed as the great liberator, but that’s not necessarily the case for those of us who depend on work to survive — most…

Covid-19: Johnson’s delay delivers a show-stopping performance for Britain’s cultural re-opening — Just when we hoped it was safe to take in a show, or listen to live music, the Government steps in to postpone the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, writes Mark Cantrell. Is this the final curtain call for the UK’s arts and entertainment sector? THE show must go on, as…

Citizen Zero: Language is a vital tool for keeping the poor in their place — Fiction explores themes of contemporary reality in the dystopian science fiction thriller, CITIZEN ZERO, writes Mark Cantrell but what does the disparaging term ‘zero’ really mean? “STICKS and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.” We’ve probably all heard some version of this before, but the…

Was Labour beaten by its own ‘pork barrel’ game? — ‘Pork barrel’ politics is cited as one possible reason for Conservative victory in Hartlepool, but if so has Boris Johnson not simply applied a lesson learned from Labour’s policies towards social housing, back when it was last in government? By Mark Cantrell THIS is analogy not analysis, but in the…