The lack of recent new content is due to my retirement, giving me the chance to trek in the French alps, visit Athens and rural France. Between loving the views and getting fit, I have been pondering this blog. Originally designed as a re-think of Marx to show the relevance of his analysis of inequality without his dated political views, it spells out his method in plain language, then talks about how to extend it to include feminist, green and anti-authoritarian perspectives. That emphasis on method is rather dry.

I’m thinking a good use of my retirement is to rewrite this based on actual data, probably from Australia which I know well, plus a developing country with good data (India?). That’s a long term project. Meantime, a bit of travel has started me researching the following blog posts for the next month or so:

• new political responses to global inequality – anarchism in Greece, Melenchon’s talk of reinventing participative democracy in France
• the pros, cons and future options for the European Union
• levels and forms of migration which balance global equity, national stability and equity
• pros, cons and future options for international trade – and the value of preserving cultural uniqueness, local food production, and national sovereignty against corporate power
• new incentives for long-term investment, taxation on speculation and hidden income
• the scale of reinvention needed for participative democracy to have any hope of reducing the power of globally integrated corporations and empowering the workplace