Автор: David Boyle

If you thought being middle-class meant your own home, something set aside for the kids and a comfortable retirement – think again.For the first time ever, today’s middle classes will struggle to enjoy the same privileges of security and comfort that their grandparents did. How did this situation come about? What can be done about it?In this beautifully shaped inquiry, David Boyle questions why the middle classes are diminishing and how their status, independence and values are being eroded. From Thatcher’s boost of the mortgage market to Blair and Brown’s posturing over public…

Only our limited idea of money is keeping us poor. David Boyle introduces us to alternative cash and people who can conjure money – that is, spending power – out of nothing.Until recently, the growth of alternative cash had been the province of big business: phone cards, stamps, air miles and Tesco’s clubcard points all have purchasing power, yet are not cash as we know it. Now, locally created money systems like ‘time dollars’, ‘Womanshare’ and ‘Ithaca hours’ are being invented by communities for communities.With clarity and great humour, Boyle tells the story of this…

Never before have we attempted to measure as much as we do today. Why are we so obsessed with numbers? What can they really tell us?Too often we try to quantify what can’t actually be measured. We count people, but not individuals. We count exam results rather than intelligence, benefit claimants instead of poverty. The government has set itself 10,000 new targets. Politicians pack their speeches with skewed statistics: crime rates are either rising or falling depending on who is doing the counting.We are in a world in which everything designed only to be measured. If it can’t be measured…