Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Ecosystems and economics turned inside out
Amid increasing floods and drought brought about by climate change, water security and its effective management are going to become pivotal factors in tomorrow’s politics, warns ALAN SIMPSON
ON THE WRONG PLANET: Former Bank of England governor Mervyn King

WHEN systems break down, contradictions pour out everywhere. Just as the floodwaters washed whole districts of Derna, Libya, into the sea, former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, claimed it was unreasonable to give the bank climate duties. Mervyn lives on the wrong planet.

Over 20,000 people remain unaccounted for in Derna. It could be many more. Relatives of the missing search for them among bodies washed back onto the beaches. The scale of losses is difficult to imagine.

It isn’t much better further along the north Africa coast where emergency relief teams are still trying to access remote villages in Morocco, all devastated by the earthquake.

In praise of heretics

    Rethinking risk, rain and roofs

    Rivers of doubt

    Chasing the leaks

    When less is more

    A spoonful of sugar

    The 95th Anniversary Appeal
    Support the Morning Star
    You have reached the free limit.
    Subscribe to continue reading.
    More from this author
    Workers pack orders on the warehouse floor at the Amazon UK Fulfilment Centre in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
    Features / 22 July 2025
    22 July 2025

    From Amazon’s monitored warehouse hell to delivery workers being paid per package, exploitative work destroys collaborative relationships young people need — more screen time and 12 new AI ‘friends’ will only make things worse, writes ALAN SIMPSON

    Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves the end of a press conference on the Immigration White Paper in the Downing Street Briefing Room in London, May 12, 2025
    Features / 19 May 2025
    19 May 2025

    ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right

    Franklyn Roosevelt, November 1932
    The Futurue / 2 May 2025
    2 May 2025

    ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all

    US President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box as
    Features / 20 March 2025
    20 March 2025
    As the ‘NRx movement’ plots to replace democracy with corporate-feudal dictatorship, Britain must pursue a radical alternative of local food security and genuine wealth redistribution to withstand the coming upheaval, writes ALAN SIMPSON
    Similar stories
    MODERN FEUDALISM:
New US President Donald
Trump
    Features / 30 January 2025
    30 January 2025
    Some hard political choices must be made in Trump’s post-truth era – starting by abandoning any illusions about the ‘special relationship’ and waking up to the need for bold policy-making on the climate, argues ALAN SIMPSON
    STANDS TO REASON: Climate change protest in Whitehall, centr
    Features / 2 December 2024
    2 December 2024
    Undaunted by Big Oil success, ALAN SIMPSON looks at alternatives to lack of courage and imagination stifling the Labour government and it policies
     A volunteer rests during a clean-up in an area affected by
    Features / 1 November 2024
    1 November 2024
    As deadly weather events spread death and destruction, ALAN SIMPSON argues that Labour’s first Budget has failed to address the converging crises of climate breakdown and democratic alienation that require transformative change
    An aerial view showing a flooded New Road Cricket ground in
    Editorial: / 21 October 2024
    21 October 2024