Every online dating candidate is visible, in unsparing detail, to every other. The chances of finding the right person now look very high, and the risks of making a mistake vanishingly low. Where once we might have met some hundreds of potential partners during our life, now we can meet millions. Satisfaction guaranteed?

The Director General of the BBC was photographed coming out of Downing Street with notes about how the national broadcaster will cover the government's unpopular spending cuts. To understand the BBC's reaction, you need to think of it as a business

Despite commitments by the World Bank to significantly reduce conditions attached to its loans, research from Eurodad reveals that a massive 57 conditions were attached to three loans given to Ghana in 2009. 12 out of the 57 conditions were stipulated in a side document, and not made explicit in loan agreements themselves, contravening responsible financing principles.

These economic policy conditions restrict the right of Ghana - a country with good democratic credentials - to decide for itself how to recover from the global crisis and boost sustainable investment. The reforms that the World Bank imposes may hinder not help Ghana's development and democratic institutions.

Inflated commissions from arms sales to Saudi Arabia probably made their way into personal and party coffers. If the allegations are proved, the USA has some power – including pursuing parties through its courts – to punish

The Giving Pledge promoted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett is a huge commitment of funds by the super-rich to philanthropic ends. At its core is a view that business, however conducted, is just a means to an end, the source of money to be distributed to good causes by wealthy elites. Business leaders would do well to apply their zeal and skills to reforming the objectives and operations of their vast engines of wealth.

CDC has made a long journey from supporting rural development in British colonial territories to pursuing high returns, often channelled through tax havens. The author argues that CDC has lost sight of wider development goals and needs to reset its ethical and investment standards.

Excessive national debt in low-income countries, sometimes incurred by dubious means and parties, is a major hindrance to development and a burden to creditor country citizens. An international mechanism is needed to offer countries a way to negotiate balanced resolutions with their creditors.

Fulfilment does not come from self-government in Toy Story 3. Can Pixar ever let the Toys go free? See Related Articles for Jeremy O'Grady's reply

Non-profits have suffered in the financial crisis no less than their counterparts in the private and public sectors. But could this be a 'Greenpeace moment': might philanthropic foundations support the creation of a civil society conscience for international finance?

Brief post - also out of the Cable talk - on efficacy of QE

Vince Cable explains that the City is a bit like the oil company compounds in Gabon - surrounded by barbed wire, paying a levy to government, but otherwise distant from the host country

The UK government's decision to re-base pensions won't work, and even if it does, will be counter-productive. It's evidence of the inability of governments to think beyond the corporate view of economics and consider the economy as a whole.

The co-option of “fairness” by the UK's new government has unnerved many on the left. Yet in reality, all sides have always drawn on the language of fairness. What is at stake is really the interpretation of the causes of inequality; a matter of economics. This article suggests how we should interpret the inequalities of modern society from a post-Keynesian perspective

Historical and cultural detail provides a rich understanding of India's powerful new business houses

Yes, great, independent content costs and if the readers don't pay for it who will? Why you should want openDemocracy to be supported by voluntary reader donations and give if you can

The guardians of learning can no longer allow the Library to be surrounded with barbed-wire fences. It is time for the academe to liberate scholarship

After a brief resurgence of Keynesian economics in response to the crash, neoliberalism is back in the ascendant. For the Liberal Democrat party in the UK this signals the abandonment of a proud liberal tradition.

Technology should have improved access to knowledge much further than it has, and nowhere more so than in the academe. Here is a simple and low-cost proposal to democratise learning in the UK

In a review essay of Matt Ridley's "The rational optimist" and Mark Boyle's "The moneyless man", scavenger and squatter Katharine Hibbert sympathises with alternative living but also wants clear thinking

The UK's Coalition has delivered its first and potentially defining budget under the banner of fairness. How do its figures stack up? An insider from Brown's policy team responds.