The Books Blog

"It seems to me we have a choice to make if we want to change things for the better in this world. And the rich aren’t going to like it."

"It is no longer acceptable to live in a world where young girls are taken out of school and forced into early marriage, where women’s employment opportunities are limited, and where the threat of gender-based violence is a daily reality — at home, in the street, at school and at work." - Michele Bachelet, Head of UN Women

"We can overcome these barriers and shift to a safer, fairer way of doing things – but only if everyone who cares about this stuff starts working together to challenge the power of corporations and promote genuine alternatives."

"Risk-taking is after all what you would expect from entrepreneurs, many of whom have not just made huge fortunes but also lost them in spectacular bankruptcies. The real shock was to discover the extent to which banking had evolved into a special case of state-subsidized capitalism that underwrites one-way bets."

‘What is glimpsed at such times is a sense of what democracy could be: a notion of radical self-rule.’

"The really quite extraordinary growth of fair trade has not, of course, come without pain. To my mind, it works best as a clear contradiction of the principles (such as they are) of free-market corporate globalization."

"The young people of today should have the courage and confidence to know that they too will be able to tackle the problems that they face."

‘Given the 1 billion hungry people in the world today and the need to increase global food production by 50% by 2050 under increasingly challenging conditions, you don’t have to be a greenie to lose sleep over climate change.’

Peter Steven explores the diversity of world media in the No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media and in this blog introduces a media phenomenon in Africa.

‘We want to make it easy and exciting for all those people who care to come together to make a difference.’ David Babbs, 38 degrees

‘Active young citizens in Britain can do lots of really useful things. You can help work out how best to involve many more young people in the decisions taken in your area and further away… There is also a lot of opportunity to become involved in public and community life locally.’