One of a number of posters created by the Economic Cooperation Administration, an agency of the U.S. government, to sell the Marshall Plan in Europe. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Last month, Greenpeace released documents from a secretive and controversial free trade deal currently being negotiated by the EU and US government. The proposed Transatlantic…

It’s nothing new—a politician said something offensive and silly about other countries, angering people around the world. When David Cameron declared last week that Nigeria and Afghanistan were “fantastically corrupt,” my social media accounts blew up. Nigerian friends and commentators were very angry, and rightly so. The sad thing is that Cameron probably doesn’t understand why they’re…

Image supplied by author. Last month, the Natural Environment Research Council invited the public to propose names for its new £200 million research vessel. [1] NERC intended to inspire people to read more about polar history and to generate interest in the ship’s future activities. It captured the public imagination, but in the most unexpected…

Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. To anyone with even a passing knowledge of Victorian and Edwardian charities, the recent spectacular demise of Kids’ Company will have thrown up some strikingly familiar tropes. The charismatic, well-intentioned figurehead and founder, adept at using the media to build support, but then, virtually…