Danny Dorling on the UK election and hope for change

06/21/24 • 36 min

Danny Dorling and Jess Miles talk about his concept of peak injustice - that injustice and inequality are now so bad in the UK that it might just be that they can't get worse.

In advance of 4 July, they talk about Keir Starmer and what the Labour party may offer, why higher taxes aren't a burden, how fear wrecks societies and the data that gives us hope that getting down from the top of the mountain of injustice might be possible.

Danny Dorling is Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Peter’s College. He is a patron of RoadPeace, Comprehensive Future and Heeley City Farm. He has published over 50 books, including the best-selling Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Timebomb (2018) and Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists (2014). Follow him on Twitter: @dannydorling.

Find out more about the book: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/peak-injustice

The full transcript of the podcast is available here: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2024/06/21/podcast-danny-dorling-on-the-uk-election-and-hope-for-change/

Timestamps:

01:39 - What are the signs things might be getting less unequal?

5:33 - How far are the parties going to tackle injustice, and are there any standout policies?

9:59 - Why are people afraid of tax rises?

13:01 - What are individuals going to have to accept in order to move away from this peak injustice?

20:57 - When discussing what the next government have to do to move us away from peak injustice you said they have to want to do it. What did you mean by that?

28:40 - What is the important role the left have to play in this election?

33:09 - What do you want people, including the new government, to take from your book, 'Peak Injustice'?

Intro music:

Cold by yoitrax | @yoitrax

Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com

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creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

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Danny Dorling and Jess Miles talk about his concept of peak injustice - that injustice and inequality are now so bad in the UK that it might just be that they can't get worse.

Find out more about the book: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/peak-injustice

The full transcript of the podcast is available here: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2024/06/21/podcast-danny-dorling-on-the-uk-election-and-hope-for-change/

Timestamps:

01:39 - What are the signs things might be getting less unequal?

5:33 - How far are the parties going to tackle injustice, and are there any standout policies?

9:59 - Why are people afraid of tax rises?

13:01 - What are individuals going to have to accept in order to move away from this peak injustice?

20:57 - When discussing what the next government have to do to move us away from peak injustice you said they have to want to do it. What did you mean by that?

28:40 - What is the important role the left have to play in this election?

33:09 - What do you want people, including the new government, to take from your book, 'Peak Injustice'?

Intro music:

Cold by yoitrax | @yoitrax

Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Follow the Transforming Society blog to be told when new articles and podcasts publish: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/follow-the-blog/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

How listening to convicts can transform justice

Convict’s voices have traditionally been ignored and marginalised in scholarship and policy debates, but how can we improve if we don’t learn from these lived experiences?

Richard Kemp speaks with Jeffrey Ian Ross, author of ‘Introduction to Convict Criminology’, about why listening to convicts is essential to positively impacting corrections, criminology, criminal justice, and policy making.

They discuss the origins of convict criminology as a discipline, the importance, and difficulty, of receiving higher education during incarceration, and the policy decisions that are necessary to improve our criminal justice systems.

Jeffrey Ian Ross is Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Research Fellow with the Center for International and Comparative Law and the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter: @jeffreyianross.

Find out more about the book: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/introduction-to-convict-criminology

The full transcript of the podcast is available here: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2024/06/14/podcast-how-listening-to-convicts-can-transform-justice/

Timestamps:

1:41 - What was the literature on prisons before convict criminology, and what does convict criminology do differently?

4:08 - What is prison life like and why is it important for us to understand it?

7:08 - Was convict criminology 'rocking the boat' when it came to be?

9:31 - Education in prisons is important, so how did it end up in the state it's in?

15:56 - What's the financial support for inmates doing education?

18:56 - How achievable is it for educated inmates to write academically about their experiences?

25:30 - What do you say to people who disagree with inmates being educated?

28:35 - What are the impacts of race, gender and class, and what are the dangers of activism?

32:22 - How does convict criminology want to influence policy?

Intro music:

Cold by yoitrax | @yoitrax

Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Follow the Transforming Society blog to be told when new articles and podcasts publish: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/follow-the-blog/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Veganism: imagining a world beyond contemporary food systems

If the way we eat now is bad for our health, bad for animal welfare and bad for the planet, is veganism the answer? That’s the key question that Catherine Oliver of Lancaster University pursues in the latest addition to the What is it for? series.

In this episode of the podcast, Catherine tells George Miller why she hopes 'What is Veganism For?' helps reframe the often-polarized debate around veganism by showing the role it plays in wider justice movements, talks about how veganism has gone from fringe to mainstream in the past decade, and describes how vegan eating (including banana blossom fritters) can be a joyful experience.

Catherine Oliver is a lecturer in the Sociology of Climate Change at Lancaster University. A geographer interested in research beyond the human, she works on historical and contemporary veganism, the ethics and politics of interspecies friendship through human-chicken relationships, and multispecies ethnographic research, most recently with seabirds. Follow her on Twitter: @katiecmoliver.

Find out more about the book: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/what-is-veganism-for

The full transcript of the podcast is available here: https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2024/06/25/podcast-veganism-imagining-a-world-beyond-contemporary-food-systems/

Timestamps:

01:10 - Why did the seemingly straightforward question, what is veganism for, appeal enough to write a book?

04:51 - Broadening the perspective on what led to contemporary veganism

07:00 - An invitation to take the idea of change on board in a serious way

09:51 - How do you see the aim of the book?

13:05 - Looking outward into the ways in which veganism can be practised and the various other things with which veganism can fruitfully intersect

15:00 - Can you say something about your own particular trajectory that led to you writing this book?

17:51 - Is it becoming easier to become vegan?

21:48 - Should the emphasis be on eating a bit less meat and leaving veganism for later?

26:00 - The complications of big corporations