Funding the Future

Why do we still have poverty in UK?

Why does poverty still exist in one of the richest countries on earth? In this video, I respond to a claim made by Mark Littlewood that poverty “should be over” because the UK spends £300bn a year on benefits.
This video explains how antisocial neoliberal economics deliberately creates poverty — using fear and insecurity to keep wages low, rents high, and wealth flowing up to the richest. Redistribution in that case is not a luxury — it’s justice.
Vote in the poll below and leave your thoughts in the comments 

Reeves' budget: built on fear?

Rachel Reeves' Budget was a damp squib, delivering austerity by stealth. There was no vision, and no investment. There was just fear of the City of London. In this video, I ask why the Chancellor has surrendered economic power to finance and consider what a politics of care and investment would look like instead.

The UK is cursed

For more than 45 years, the UK has suffered not one, but two economic curses: the resource curse and the finance curse. Both were chosen, primarily by Margaret Thatcher, and both inflated the pound, destroyed industry, and left Britain dependent on hot money and speculation. In this video, I explain how we got here — and what we must do to rebuild a real economy based on work, fair reward and democracy.

The Budget: No growth. No hope?

Rachel Reeves says her budget delivers stability. The Office for Budget Responsibility's charts tell a very different story. High interest rates, low investment, falling profitability, rising unemployment and no improvement in household incomes. This government is putting finance first, and people last.
In this video, I break down the OBR data — ignored by the headlines — and show what it means for growth, homes, jobs and Britain’s future. We can do better. And I’ve published the budget that shows how.
Download my alternative budget — available here https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/downloads/
And tell me what you think in the poll below and in the comments.

Reeves’ Budget disaster

Rachel Reeves’ 2025 Budget has already collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. In this video, I explain why tax rises on ordinary people, baseless growth forecasts, and a refusal to tax wealth fairly mean this Budget will fail — and fail fast. Neoliberalism promised growth. It has delivered stagnation and inequality. This is more Tory policy by another name.

The alternative budget we need

Rachel Reeves will not fix Britain today.
So I’ve published my Alternative Budget for 2025 — a complete plan to end austerity, rebuild public services, reconnect savings with investment, reform the Treasury, bring the Bank of England back under democratic control, transform housing, and fund a green transition.
This video is a full guided tour through the ideas in the 20,000-word budget I’ve just released on Funding the Future.
Download the full PDF here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/downloads/  
We can rebuild this country. We just need to stop believing the myths about money, tax and “borrowing”.
Hope is a policy choice.

The Finance Curse: Housing, Banks and Crisis.

In this podcast, I talk with John Christensen, co-founder of the Tax Justice Network, about whether Britain can escape the final stage of a decades-long inflationary cycle without social and political rupture.
We explore Jersey as an early warning of the “finance curse,” the extraordinary scale of the housing shock, the generational wealth divide engineered by decades of rising house prices, and why younger people are locked out of economic security.
We discuss how government policy helped create the crisis, why zombie banks are now vulnerable to falling asset prices, and what the end of a long inflationary wave has meant throughout history.
We end with the reforms that could save Britain: mass social housebuilding, capital controls, redirected savings, and democratic control of credit creation.
The choice now is stark: reform or rupture.

The ultra-processed food crisis

Ultra-processed foods now make up at least half of all food sold in UK supermarkets. The Lancet has described them as a “corporate-engineered public health crisis.” That is exactly what they are: industrial products designed for profit, not nutrition. They override appetite control, promote over-consumption, and push out real food alternatives.
These foods are cheap because wages are low, access to fresh food is unequal, and corporate concentration has eliminated choice. The result is a society burdened with obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancers — and an NHS stretched to breaking point. None of this is accidental.
In this video, I explain how ultra-processed food became unavoidable, why it is a systemic economic issue rather than a personal failure, and what the government can do now: from food labelling and advertising bans to taxing ultra-processed products and subsidising real food. We can change this — but only if we confront corporate power.

Governments aren't like households

Politicians constantly claim that the government must “live within its means”, just like any family. In this video, I explain why the household analogy is not only wrong — it is the foundation of austerity, underfunded services, infrastructure decay, suppressed wages and collapsing public trust.
Governments create money. Households use money.
Governments must manage real resources, not bank balances.
And when governments cut spending, their income falls — the exact opposite of what happens to you or me.
Understanding this difference is essential if we want a better economy, proper public services, fairer taxation and a stronger democracy.

Why did Britain stop making?

For forty years we were told that Britain didn’t need manufacturing — finance would make us rich. That experiment has failed. We import more than we export, our towns have been hollowed out, and our prosperity rests on hot money and property bubbles rather than productive capacity.
In this video, I explain why Britain’s industrial collapse was a political choice, how Thatcherism destroyed long-term investment, why Labour still worships foreign takeovers, and why rebuilding national capability now requires deliberate government action.
We need regional public investment banks, a tax system that rewards real production, not speculation, and a new industrial strategy that blends modern manufacturing with care, education and innovation. This is about well-being, security, and the future of our democracy.