Universal Basic Income: Mike Danson delivers ‘webinar’ talk to Green European Foundation event

Mike Danson speaks on the value of and shared learning from universal basic income models and lessons of UBI at Green European Foundation event (November 2nd 2021)

“More and more pilot programs are being developed to test the idea of Universal Basic around the world. What have been the results and what lessons can we learn from them?“

This event was organised by the Green European Foundation with the support of Transición Verde and with the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. (The European Parliament is not responsible for the content of this event).

For more details on this webinar event and related UBI Project focus see here:

https://gef.eu/event/pilot-projects-on-ubi/

Mike Danson : Professor Mike Danson is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Enterprise Policy, Heriot-Watt University, Visiting Professor in Energy Policy, University of Strathclyde, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has published widely on rural, regional and island economies, microbreweries, minority languages, and many other areas of Scottish economic policy and social development. Chair of Basic Income Network Scotland, Chair of the 2021 BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network) world congress, depute Convenor Jimmy Reid Foundation, Trustee of Nordic Horizons and Community Renewal, Mike was on the Scottish Government’s Just Transition Commission and has advised, national and international organisations: OECD, WHO, EC, trades unions and community groups. Mike is Co-Director of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies. Contact: michael.danson@hw.ac.uk.

For more information on UBI research and policy focus in Scotland see:

https://www.ubilabnetwork.org/basic-income-in-the-news/peace-of-mind-exploring-universal-basic-incomes-potential-to-improve-mental-health

Islandness: Identity and Independence Panel MECCSA 2019

MECCSA 2019 (Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association) Annual Conference, University of Stirling

Islandness: Identity and Independence Panel proposer: Dr Kathryn A Burnett, University of the West of Scotland;  Contributors Mr Tony Grace,  Mr Ray Burnett and Dr Kathryn A. Burnett; Chair: Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling.

This Scottish Centre for Island Studies panel contribution is offered in close reflection of the 40^th anniversary of MacDiarmid’s death in 1978, and the 90^th anniversary of the formation of the National Party of Scotland, which involved both MacDiarmid and Mackenzie. 2019 itself is the 50^th anniversary of the release of the iconic island film ‘Whisky Galore’ based on Compton Mackenzie’s celebrated novel. This film continues to offer a set of island tropes that signify both Scottishness and Britishness as well as the ‘national antisyzgies’ of cultural authenticities, the islandness complicities of place and people and the mediated complexities of remoteness, connectedness and independences. A further thematic of ‘island and national liberty’ draws on archival records and new film practice celebrating the ‘father of biography’ James Boswell, and his celebrated accounts of ‘tours’ including the Hebrides (1773) with Johnson, as well as his earlier account of Corsica and most particularly its independence movement.

We are delighted to be working in partnership with The Boswell Trust and hope to revisit aspects of this themed panel later in the year as part of the Boswell Trust’s event and celebrations diary 2019.

Rural Enterprise SCIS Round Table

See  information below on the SCIS round table session  that was held on island and remote rural enterprise at Rural Enterprise conference at UWS Dumfries in June 2013.

“Britain: The Fractured Island” by Ray Burnett

“Britain: The Fractured Island” (pp 228-245) by Ray Burnett  is included in The Political Economy of Divided Islands (2013) edited by Godfrey Baldacchino and published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of the  International Political Economy series.

“Despite the sonorous magnificence of Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt monologue, England is not an island. Rather this ‘England, that was wont to conquer others’ just thinks, acts, governs, talks, plays and presents itself as if it is. For the island polity known as ‘Britain’, more formally as ‘Great Britain (GB)’, the ‘United Kingdom (UK)’ is an odd place. In spite of its self-promotion as the ostensible product of a long, stable and immutable partnership of equals, the ‘national’ institutions of this state-nation consistently present themselves as those of a singular ‘nation-state’ through the monofocal prism of the dominant ‘island race’ of England: the English historical narrative of ‘this sceptred isle’, and a smothering blanket of English cultural referents.”

DOI: 10.1057/9781137023131_13

Full details of the edited collection to purchase are here:

Godfrey Baldacchino (ed.) (2013) The Political Economy of Divided Islands:
Unified Geographies, Multiple Polities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 256
pp., £63 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-137-02312-4.

http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137023124#aboutAuthors

 A review of the book can be found here: Carabelli, G. (2015) [Review of the book The Political Economy of Divided Islands: Unified Geographies,
Multiple Polities], Urban Island Studies, 1, 187-189.

Seminar Series: Whose Economy?

Professor Mike Danson of the University of West of Scotland and Oxfam’s UK Poverty Programme host a seminar series in Scotland under the theme: Whose Economy? This series was held over autumn and winter 2010 and 2011 in Edinburgh, Inverness, Glasgow and Stirling.

Further details at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/Flyer_updated_10_January_2011.pdf

“The Whose Economy? seminar series brings together experts to examine key developments that have influenced the livelihoods of
communities in Scotland and, from the perspective of vulnerable communities, explore the implications of structural changes in the Scottish economy. The focus of the series is a questioning of what economy is being created in Scotland and, specifically, for whom? Persistent poverty exists in Scotland alongside high economic prosperity, leading to gross disparities in income and wealth, and life chances and lifestyles. Poverty and inequalities have historical and structural roots: changes in the Scottish economy in recent decades have seen a shift from manufacturing to a service-led, supposedly ‘knowledge economy’. Glasgow, for example, was once the second city of the British Empire – now it is Britain’s second biggest shopping destination. The economy that is being pursued is not only one-dimensional (in its apparent obsession with retailed growth), but ultimately premised on an inherent contradiction. Trust, relationships and reciprocity are undermined by hyper-consumerism, status-driven consumption and individual instant gratification through material acquisition, themselves driven by inequalities. Individuals are implicitly expected to function as just-in-time inventory – on demand when the needs of businesses require, but disposable when deemed superfluous to production or service demands.

Speakers will discuss the relevant actors and how the interaction of the pursuit of economic growth and other policy trends (such as welfare reform) has impacted on communities across Scotland.”