Colin Haslam

Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of our most vital resource. Our water system is a mess. Rising bills and rivers full of sewage grab the headlines, but the greater threat is climate crisis, bringing increased drought and flooding. This book exposes the many problems with our unsustainable water system. Unfair charges limit spending on infrastructure, while financial extraction has turned the water companies into debt-burdened zombies in an increasingly fragmented system. Reforming regulation and tinkering with tariffs will not be enough, and public ownership is just the first step. Murky water shows that the system can only be made sustainable through a radical overhaul of how it is owned, managed, funded and planned. We need a new kind of water management, with national and catchment planning and coordinated action by landowners, local authorities and water companies. Westminster and Whitehall currently stand in the way. To overcome their resistance and secure a sustainable future, we must ignite a social movement capable of challenging power.

Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of our most vital resource. Our water system is a mess. Rising bills and rivers full of sewage grab the headlines, but the greater threat is climate crisis, bringing increased drought and flooding. This book exposes the many problems with our unsustainable water system. Unfair charges limit spending on infrastructure, while financial extraction has turned the water companies into debt-burdened zombies in an increasingly fragmented system. Reforming regulation and tinkering with tariffs will not be enough, and public ownership is just the first step. Murky water shows that the system can only be made sustainable through a radical overhaul of how it is owned, managed, funded and planned. We need a new kind of water management, with national and catchment planning and coordinated action by landowners, local authorities and water companies. Westminster and Whitehall currently stand in the way. To overcome their resistance and secure a sustainable future, we must ignite a social movement capable of challenging power.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that in Britain today nothing works. In the face of mounting inflation and widespread industrial action, this book offers an incisive analysis of the UK’s problems and a new approach to tackling them. Economic growth and higher wages, the traditional responses of mainstream politicians, are simply not enough. This is because the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ is only the face of a deeper crisis of foundational liveability. The UK is confronted not only with squeezed residual incomes but also failing public services and decaying social infrastructure. The only way out is to embrace a political practice of adaptive reuse that works around the constraints that frustrate mainstream policies. Presenting a new model for the three pillars of liveability – disposable and residual income, essential services and social infrastructure – When nothing works challenges the assumptions of left and right in the UK political classes and offers a fresh approach to the economically visible and politically actionable.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that in Britain today nothing works. In the face of mounting inflation and widespread industrial action, this book offers an incisive analysis of the UK’s problems and a new approach to tackling them. Economic growth and higher wages, the traditional responses of mainstream politicians, are simply not enough. This is because the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ is only the face of a deeper crisis of foundational liveability. The UK is confronted not only with squeezed residual incomes but also failing public services and decaying social infrastructure. The only way out is to embrace a political practice of adaptive reuse that works around the constraints that frustrate mainstream policies. Presenting a new model for the three pillars of liveability – disposable and residual income, essential services and social infrastructure – When nothing works challenges the assumptions of left and right in the UK political classes and offers a fresh approach to the economically visible and politically actionable.

The world has moved on in the advanced economies where credit based financial systems coupled with malleable accounting systems disconnect capitalization and wealth accumulation from GDP trajectories and financial surplus. This, the book argues, is the product of economic, financial and cultural imperatives that privilege and encourage financial leverage for wealth accumulation. This text re-works business models for a financialized world and presents a distinctive insight into the way in which national, corporate and focal firm business models have adapted and evolved. It also shows how, in the current financial crisis, financial disturbances can be amplified, transmitted and made porous, by accounting systems, threatening economic stability. By making visible the tensions and contradictions embedded in this process of economic development, the authors have constructed a loose business model conceptual framework that is also grounded in accounting. This is a valuable resource for practitioners, academics and policy makers with an interest in management, accounting and economic policy.

The world has moved on in the advanced economies where credit based financial systems coupled with malleable accounting systems disconnect capitalization and wealth accumulation from GDP trajectories and financial surplus. This, the book argues, is the product of economic, financial and cultural imperatives that privilege and encourage financial leverage for wealth accumulation. This text re-works business models for a financialized world and presents a distinctive insight into the way in which national, corporate and focal firm business models have adapted and evolved. It also shows how, in the current financial crisis, financial disturbances can be amplified, transmitted and made porous, by accounting systems, threatening economic stability. By making visible the tensions and contradictions embedded in this process of economic development, the authors have constructed a loose business model conceptual framework that is also grounded in accounting. This is a valuable resource for practitioners, academics and policy makers with an interest in management, accounting and economic policy.

Through developing an original analytical framework that, for the first time, systematically relates productive, market and financial variables, the authors are able to rewrite the history of the car business since Henry Ford.

Through developing an original analytical framework that, for the first time, systematically relates productive, market and financial variables, the authors are able to rewrite the history of the car business since Henry Ford.