'Gentleman' George Monbiot's Left Hook
Wed 16 Feb 2011 7.15pm
Conference Room £12 (£10)
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CloseDirect from a string of verbal victories at the Hay and the Edinburgh Book Festivals, will you please welcome in the red corner, the Guardian newspaper’s unbeaten intellectual heavyweight champion of free speech, one of the UK’s foremost thinkers and environmentalists, and polemicist supreme ‘Gentleman’ George Monbiot.
The gloves are off for a barnstorming evening of topical debate in which our man Monbiot selects a hot topic for his first half lecture and then invites members of the audience to contest this with him. In the second half, he throws down the gauntlet to all comers and will take any subject from A to Z as the audience pit their wits against him in bouts of verbal fisticuffs.
Conference Room
With seating for 250 in a horseshoe, this is the perfect space for presentations and talks
1 Comment
Left Hook debates – Great Work! We would love to hear you in Australia. Are the debates being filmed? If so, could we subscribe?
In "New Community Quarterly" our NFP community development journal we regularly publish some of your articles previously published in the Guardian. www.newcq.org
Whilst you have written splendid articles on taxation and poverty, I'm concerned also concerned about the reduction in jobs, especially in manufacturing.
Here in Australia we have 880.000 consultants and only 1.000.000 jobs in manufacturing. Soon we will have more consultants than people who actually make something. The Australian ABS definition of being employed is "one hour of regular paid employment". That's why the government can boost that Australia only has 5.5% unemployment. Underemployment is another matter!
Worldwide, partly due to unsustainable population growth, unemployment amongst the under thirty is unsustainable high, and as we see now in the Middle East, but also in the EU, results in civil unrests. More jobs are needed not just to overcome poverty, but to respond to the aspirations of young people anywhere.
Free trade, globalisation and mass production has increased the wealth of some, and whilst it has provided cheap consumer goods to the masses, is by its very nature, unsustainable as it denies employment to an increasing number of people seeking meaningful jobs.
Approaches such as learning to become more self sufficient, share, barter, grow own food, do more with less, participate actively in a Transition Town, buy local, use less energy and related activities would enable us to live more sustainable and reduce the impact of climate change and peak oil.
But is that enough to meet the aspirations, and needs and expectations of young people in the world? If not, what are the consequences? More civil unrest?
What can we do to increase worldwide economic social justice? What happens if a growing proportion of the world population, (including the increasing number of educated people) become increasingly frustrated?
Your comments would be much appreciated.
Ben Leeman at 12:04am on Thu 24th Feb 2011