Barefoot into the light
By Marguerite FinnThe debate continues as to whether overseas development aid is working or not. I want to tell you a story about a group of women in rural India. It is the most optimistic tale I have heard in a long while - a testament to the indomitable resilience of the human spirit. This is the story of India's female barefoot solar engineers.Tinginaput is an ordinary village in remote rural

Leaving the pleasuredome
By Charlotte Du CannLast November at an Energy Fair in a Suffolk village John Gummer MP declared how people like us were making a difference and how that lady in the front wearing the woolly hat had the right idea about keeping warm. He then went on to say how frightfully important it was he kept his five cars and in particular the 4x4 outside in the car park.In another era I would have spent

No we can't?
By Lee MarsdenThis time last year the world celebrated the incredible victory of America's first African-American president. Barack Obama mobilised popular support and ran an impressive campaign which promised change. The not-Bush candidate with his soaring rhetoric and youthful good looks charmed American voters and interested onlookers around the world, promising a brighter future, one where

It's the inequality, stupid
By Rupert ReadAre big ideas dead in politics? I don't think so. For there is a big idea that is coming back, and strongly. The idea is: equality. That people are equal to each other. That economic and social inequality is a huge harm, in itself. The leading scholar of inequality is Richard Wilkinson. Here are a few of the key results that Wilkinson has shown:Life expectancy is closely related to

The Commonwealth @ 60
By Marguerite FinnThe last four years have been good years for diamond anniversaries: the United Nations in 2005, the local branch of the United Nations Association in 2008 and now in 2009, the Commonwealth is sixty years old.All three organisations originated in a world reeling from the devastation of two World Wars, to promote common humanitarian values.The Commonwealth of Nations came into