A People's History with John McDonnell

New Thinking Series: Five simple steps to eradicate poverty

Episode Summary

"5 Simple Steps to Eradicate Poverty" a session in the New Thinking Series with John McDonnell, presented by Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford and author of a number of books on social inequalities in Britain.

Episode Notes

Please note: this session also contained a visual presentations of the graphs and stats to back up Professor Danny Dorling's arguments. We suggest listening to the podcast with the aide of the slides that you can view here

 

In this episode Professor Danny Dorling discusses the wide range of inequalities in family incomes and other key measures, and how these have changed over time, using social statistics, graphs and charts to highlight the extent of the crisis. 

When there was last a similarly rapid rise in prices, in the 1970s, the UK was one of the most equitable of European countries by income: what will a cost-of-living crisis mean now that we have become one of the most unequal countries? And could one of the implications of the crisis be to help begin to reduce income and wealth inequalities in future? 

With contributions from John McDonnell and Ian Byrne MP.

 

About Danny Dorling: 

Danny is a British social geographer and Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford. He has lived all his life in England. In his own words - to try to counter this potentially myopic world view, in 2006 Danny started working with a group of researchers on a project to remap the world to show who has most and least. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty and he has published more than a dozen books on social inequalities in Britain, on issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty.

The New Thinking Series is a series of discussions in the House of Commons, which present innovative ideas to shake up the status quo.