Weekly Economics Podcast

By New Economics Foundation

What's Weekly Economics Podcast about?

Kirsty Styles chats to experts from the New Economics Foundation and elsewhere about the big economic issues in the UK and beyond. New episodes on Mondays.

Produced by James Shield. Programme editor for NEF: Huw Jordan.

Brought to you by the New Economics Foundation – the independent think tank and charity campaigning for a fairer, sustainable economy.

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LAST EPISODE

Where did our immigration s...

08.13.2021

This week a controversial deportation flight took off for Jamaica. Legal challenges meant that only a tenth of the 90 people due to be deported were on the plane. The planned deportation included people whose lawyers said they had a ...

Weekly Economics Podcast episodes:

08.13.2021 Where did our immigration system come from? This week a controversial deportation flight took off for Jamaica. Legal challenges meant that only a tenth of the 90 people due to be deported were on the plane. The planned deportation included people whose lawyers said they had a ...
08.06.2021 Fighting the climate crisis in the courts With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re spending five episodes this series looking at pressing climate issues. In this episode we’re talking about taking the fossil fuel industry to court. Last week, a government spokesperson ...
08.03.2021 Fast Fashion With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re spending five episodes this series looking at pressing climate issues. In this episode we’re talking fast fashion. Summer is here and Love Island is all over the telly. ...
07.23.2021 How can we tackle the climate crisis while levelling up? With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re spending five episodes this series looking at some of the biggest climate issues. In this episode we’re talking about a just transition. Last week, the prime minister travelled ...
07.09.2021 A climate conversation between two generations With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re going to spend five episodes this series looking at some of the biggest climate issues. We kicked things off last week with Alice Bell explaining everything you need ...
07.02.2021 Greenwashing With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re going to spend the next five episodes of the podcast looking at some of the biggest climate issues – starting this week with greenwashing. Last month 20 young ...
06.18.2021 The Police Bill Throughout the spring, hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched, signed petitions, and spoke out against the catchily-titled Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Critics say the Bill would curb our freedom of speech and assembly by giving ...
06.11.2021 Culture Wars This week, the front page of the Daily Mail screamed “Outrage as Oxford students plan to axe queen”. In reality, a group of postgrads voted to take down a portrait of the queen in a single common room, in a ...
04.01.2021 What will Biden’s America look like? There’s a new president in the Oval Office and he’s ready to make some changes. Joe Biden wants the start of his presidency to be defined by rejoining the Paris climate agreement, vaccinating the country against Covid-19, and pulling the ...
03.19.2021 Changing the rules of our economy to stop environmental breakdown There are just eight months left until the UK hosts the UN Climate Conference. And despite Boris Johnson’s insistence that we will have a green recovery from the pandemic, in the last month there have been a number of climate ...
03.12.2021 How can we make sure everyone has enough to live on? Last week a video circulated of 800 people queuing for a food bank in Wembley. Volunteers at the London Community Kitchen said that the number was not uncommon. In Rishi Sunak’s recent budget, he announced that the furlough scheme and ...
03.08.2021 Why should we care what big tech does with our data? From the A-level algorithm scandal, to parents taking on YouTube, to making Facebook and Google pay for news, people are fighting back against the way big tech companies and governments use our data. So what are companies like Google and ...
03.02.2021 What's Brexit done to fishing and farming? We were supposed to have cast off the shackles of EU rules around farming and fishing. Brexit was sold as a ‘sea of opportunity’. And yet, tonnes of British meat have been left rotting at European ports, while Scottish fishers ...
02.15.2021 Vaccine Nationalism By the middle of January, 49 wealthy countries had administered 39 million doses of the Covid vaccine. But the world’s poorest countries had only done 25 jabs, all of them in just one country: Guinea. Not 25 million, not 25,000 ...
02.05.2021 Is outsourcing out of control? Meagre food packages for kids on free school meals. A £22bn track and trace system that isn’t fit for purpose. And people asked to travel hundreds of miles for a Covid test. What do all of these things have in ...
01.29.2021 Exposing the truth about modern slavery From Sports Direct warehouses to nail bars, awareness-raising campaigns warn that modern slavery is happening all around us. Over Christmas, fashion brand Boohoo cut ties with 64 garment suppliers in Leicester after it came out that factories were paying their ...
12.01.2020 Finding hope during and after the pandemic Joe Biden has defeated Donald Trump to win the US election. Test results from around the world suggest that a coronavirus vaccine is on the horizon. Over the past month there have been more bright spots than usual in a ...
11.16.2020 Should we work less after the pandemic? Setting up a desk area in the kitchen, Zoom call-induced headaches, or getting furloughed and paid to not do any work - this year has shaken up the world of work like never before. The pandemic has made us reimagine ...
11.06.2020 Should we shake up taxes to recover from the pandemic? Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said that Britain faces new tax rises in the wake of the pandemic. But over the summer Labour’s shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds warned against increasing taxes during an economic crisis. Meanwhile, new research has found that ...
10.23.2020 The US election narrative war The US presidential election is less than a fortnight away - and Donald Trump and Joe Biden are pulling out all the stops to get the votes. But after a chaotic debate forced moderators to cut the candidates’ mics to ...
10.16.2020 What's going on with Brexit? Brexit - remember it? Way back in the distant past of 2019 it felt like it was all the newspapers could talk about. It might feel like it’s done and dusted, but the process is still rumbling on. We’ve got ...
10.09.2020 Building a caring economy “We want to build back greener as we recover from Covid-19” - that was the message this week at the Prime Minister’s Conservative Party Conference speech. But in all the talk of wind turbines and technology, the place of care ...
10.06.2020 Is competition killing us? Our track-and-trace system will be “world-beating”. The development of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine is “months ahead” of its competitors around the world. This is how politicians and the media have been talking about our lines of defence against the coronavirus ...
09.25.2020 Can unions transform the economy? Amid the coronavirus crisis, the number of people becoming members of a union has skyrocketed. Unison reported 65,000 new members since the start of the year, and in the last six months, 50,000 people have joined the National Education Union. ...
08.14.2020 Covid-19 and global capitalism It’s a cliche by now to say that Covid-19 has upended our economy. Industries have ground to a halt, and are only just beginning to start up again. Just this week the UK plunged into recession, with the worst drop ...
08.07.2020 How do we win a green recovery? We’re facing two global crises. We have scientific evidence for how to deal with both of them, but governments aren’t acting quickly enough. They both show how we are all more connected than we previously thought. And to tackle them ...
08.03.2020 Where does conservatism go next? For most of the last decade, the Conservative government has said they want to cut government spending to balance the books as they rolled out austerity nationwide. But since the start of lockdown, something seems to have changed. The chancellor ...
07.22.2020 Can we avoid a tsunami of job losses? It feels like every day there are new dire predictions of the state of the UK economy and jobs. Last week we discovered that the number of paid employees in Britain has plunged by 650,000 since the start of the ...
07.14.2020 Do police and prisons keep us safe? At the end of June Keir Starmer said of Black Lives Matter protesters in an interview: “Nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police.” At the same time, the UK government announced four new prisons. Olympic athlete Bianca Williams ...
07.03.2020 The Hostile Environment during coronavirus The end of June marked the anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush Generation in the UK, and sparked renewed conversations about the Hostile Environment. It’s been reported that UK immigration policies have stopped migrants from getting healthcare during the ...
06.17.2020 Gary Younge on the global black liberation uprisings The death of George Floyd three weeks ago at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sparked a fresh wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the world. In the US, calls to defund the police have won victories and across ...
05.15.2020 The future of social care after Coronavirus 10,000 care home residents have died from Covid-19, more than a third of all Covid-19 deaths. On Wednesday it was reported that the death toll is likely to be double the official figure. The death rate amongst social care staff ...
05.08.2020 How to organise under lockdown Between the lack of PPE for key workers, growing numbers forced onto universal credit, and worries about worker safety both now and after lockdown, there’s plenty to be angry about. So has Covid-19 led to a new wave of organising? ...
05.01.2020 Coronavirus and the legacy of austerity In the last few months we’ve seen the government promise billions in support for people and businesses impacted by coronavirus. Supporters of austerity claim the last decade of cuts is what enabled the government to put money into these schemes ...
04.24.2020 Childcare under lockdown The lockdown period has been extended for at least another three weeks. Schools and nurseries remain closed, except to a few children. Many parents are at home trying to balance work with looking after their kids. But some are still ...
04.17.2020 Renters, homelessness and coronavirus During lockdown, the message everywhere is to stay home. But what should you do, when you don’t have a secure place to live? At the end of last month, the government gave councils 48 hours to house all rough sleepers ...
04.10.2020 Fixing the Social Safety Net As nationwide lockdown continues and parts of the economy grind to a halt, the chancellor has announced a package of measures to support people struggling with the economic fallout of coronavirus. But is it enough? Or have 10 years of ...
03.17.2020 The Budget, climate and coronavirus Last week, the big red briefcase was handed over to new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. But many of Sunak’s Budget promises were overshadowed by new measures to deal with the coronavirus. With the stock market hitting a four-year low, the outbreak ...
12.02.2019 Election 2019 The election is just around the corner and the outcome will determine the future of the country, and the shape of the economy. So what are the parties planning to do if they win power? How radical are their policies? ...
11.25.2019 How to fix the childcare system The childcare system in England is broken. Our nurseries are among the most expensive in the world, but our childcare professionals are some of the lowest paid workers in society. For a long time, government policy on childcare has been ...
11.20.2019 Universal Basic Services Our public services are in dire need of investment. The question of how much investment has loomed large over the first weeks of the election campaign. But in the middle of a debate over competing spending plans, isn’t it also ...
11.12.2019 Hostile Environment: how immigrants became scapegoats How did the word immigrant become such a loaded term? How did the public conversation about immigration become so toxic? And is there another way forward – an alternative to the hostile environment? This week we're at SOAS, part of ...
11.07.2019 Algorithms of Oppression We're away this week recording our exciting live event with Maya Goodfellow for the podcast next week. In the meantime we're listening back to a live episode we recorded in April. Safiya Umoja Noble is an associate professor at UCLA ...
10.28.2019 The stories that broke the economy, and the stories that can fix it Some common lines you’ll hear about the economy: we all put money in, or take it out. Some people pay their fair share, but others don’t. We can’t overspend – putting public spending on the national credit card would be ...
10.21.2019 How to make the 4-day week happen It’s one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. But unlike the phone, the car, computers and indoor plumbing, the weekend is still stuck in the 1930s. As productivity increased, the promise of shorter working hours always seemed ...
08.14.2019 The rent is too high More and more of us are renting for longer – not by choice, but by necessity. In cities especially, more people are renting into their thirties, forties and beyond, sometimes raising children in rented flats with no long-term security. But ...
08.06.2019 The myth of meritocracy It’s the story we’re all told when we’re growing up. Work hard at school so you can get into a good university. Work hard at university so you can get a good job. Get a masters degree – taking on ...
07.26.2019 The new PM and the future of Conservatism This week the UK got a new prime minister, and the Conservative party got a new leader. After nine years in government, will this be a pivotal moment in history, or a last gasp? Apart from a more hard-line stance ...
07.15.2019 Is wellbeing the new GDP? If you’ve been listening to the Weekly Economics Podcast for a while, you’ll know that we think there’s much more to economics than GDP. But it still dominates the way politicians and much of the press talk about the economy. ...
07.08.2019 Generation Left The polls show that while previous generations became more conservative with age, millennials are staying left wing for longer. And age and education now seem to be the big dividing line in our politics, replacing class as the key division. ...

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