London

The experience of cycling in a City - a space that has now been taken over by the car, with some segregated concessions to pedestrians - leads the author to an experience of unique vulnerability. A city that has made cycling safe is not just a nicer place to live: it is one that accords equal dignity to the weak

How mega sporting events bring the logic of war to host-city governance. The example of the football World Cup in South Africa highlights how security for mega-events has become a self-reinforcing feedback loop between state and corporate sector, taking the analogy between Sport and War another step closer

What is a public library for? Costa coffee and "bums on seats"? or the promise of a better world? The managerialised nightmare of a London council's cost-cutting misunderstandings is glimpsed at through the deep stacks by a not-yet-defeated librarian and idealist

Britain is on the brink of a double-dip recession. She needs to begin the fundamental reshaping of her political economy... and this is where I'd start.

Whether the ratings agencies get this or that decision right or wrong - they were probably right in the case of the European downgrades - is not the point. They have become the buck-passing agencies for weakened states. The most important public judgements of credit-worthiness ought to be made in public institutions, not behind corporate doors

It's true that high pay for bosses serves no purpose except keeping them (and their headquarters) in the country. The only real solution is economic policy coordination. In its absence, Machiavelli would have been proud of the proposals and statements on display this new year in the UK

In the wake of the PAC report on HMRC's failure to tax corporations fairly, what other solutions might there be to bridge Britain's £25bn "tax gap"?

Kettling, a controversial tactic used to contain protestors, now has an ugly sister: the steel police cordon, unveiled on the November 30 public sector strikes.

Another month, another lobbying scandal in the UK. The last led to the resignation of the defence secretary. This one leads to the British prime minister himself.

Londoners have mostly welcomed the recent Polish immigrant community in their midst, although most do not know them as a community. A new micro-published thriller, extracted here, brings that community to life and tells of its own relationship to pre-1989 life and power

UK governments talk loudly about controlling immigration but seem unable even to count in who visits Britain. Now, it seems, private incomers have been waived through in advance. Who were they?

Occupy London is fundamentally different in nature to the occupations in Madrid and Greece. It is small, but determined, and is on sacred ground: the skirts of St Paul's Cathedral. But how long will the anti-city in the City last?

I’ve not been to Wall Street. I don’t have to. Though separated from New York by an ocean, half a planet and a different political culture (one in which it is significantly less scandalous to talk about the obvious and total failures of capitalism), I can browse through any number of digital echoes and recordings, each with varying degrees of fidelity and spin. What has been most striking about the media reports from Wall Street is that – if you stripped away the inconsequential affect and incidentals – they really could have been written by anyone with an internet connection. This leads to the usual overhasty generalisations about the role of the internet and rapid distribution of callouts, data, plans, images, videos, plots, analysis, complaint, trolling and information that attends social movements. The obvious issue here is that these things don’t really transmit ideology, analysis or demand, they simply foreground the ease with which the method can be replicated. This method-as-meme is doubtless linked to the prominence of internet communication between activists and interested onlookers; its proliferation also speaks to a new interconnectedness felt by the disenfranchised, whether in New York, London, Barcelona or Athens. But as DSG point out in that link, the success or failure of a method is if it catches the zeitgeist, if it is passed between and above all replicated by a growing multiplicity of consumers.

Are high executive and banking pay related to results? Or to social value added? Or does executive compensation simply ratchet upwards, irrespective of either? Jeremy Fox reviews work from the High Pay commission, the New Economics Foundation and Ha-Joon Chang suggesting the answers are "No", "No" and "Yes"

When President Carter addressed a crowd of well-wishers in London, the unavoidable comparison was with the post-leadership of Tony Blair

England is about to have its land-use planning system overhauled ... if the platoons of Tories against the proposals do not force another climb-down. But the current land-use planning system does have very serious flaws. Their solution, however, can only come through a thorough democratisation of local government. Without it, the proposed reforms are suspect

Is there any reason to set top tax rates at anything but the rate which maximises government revenues? And what is that rate? Jeremy Fox has argued that the 50p rate does not constrain growth. Michael Bullen returned with the argument that 50p is too high for public revenue maximisation. Jeremy Fox countered that 50p was too little and that equality is a good in itself. Here, Michael Bullen questions Jeremy Fox's numbers and his levelling instincts

Michael Bullen argued against Jeremy Fox's charge of "blackmail by the wealthy" with respect to the campaign in Britain to abolish the 50p tax rate. Here, the author returns to the attack, proposing that the evidence suggests that 50p is, if anything, too low a tax for the welfare of all

Should the marginal rate of income tax be reduced for very high earners? Jeremy Fox argues that there is no obvious link to growth. But the link to government revenue is much better understood, argues Michael Bullen, and the numbers suggest that 50% is too high