Latest news with #socialcontract
BBC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
People Fixing the World Being better citizens
Citizenship is a kind of social contract that exists in democracies. To function effectively, members of society need to feel like they can engage with and improve their communities. We take a look at two projects helping people do just that in Portugal. We explore a scheme that has helped 30,000 teenagers team up with politicians to transform their local areas. And we hear how another project has enlisted older people in society to train as agents in disaster prevention and spread their knowledge in the wider community. People Fixing The World from the BBC is about brilliant solutions to the world's problems. We release a new edition every week. We'd love you to let us know what you think and to hear about your own solutions. You can contact us on WhatsApp by messaging +44 8000 321721 or email peoplefixingtheworld@ And please leave us a review on your chosen podcast provider. Presenter: Myra Anubi Reporter: Alison Roberts Producer: Claire Bates Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound mix: Hal Haines (Image: Students at a school in Portugal take part in a MyPolis session, MyPolis)
New York Times
13-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?
Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife's younger brother. I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama's speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician's license. My early memories of Matt are hazy — I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events. Then the pandemic hit, and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn't shocked when Matt didn't get the Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I'd imagined we shared. Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. As it was, on the rare and always outdoor occasions when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets. 'Work's been good?' 'Mhrmm.' My frostiness wasn't personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways? I wasn't the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, 'It's time to start shunning the 'vaccine hesitant.'' An L.A. Times piece went further, arguing that to create 'teachable moments,' it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers' deaths. Shunning as a form of accountability goes back millenniums. In ancient Athens, a citizen deemed a threat to state stability could be 'ostracized' — cast out of society for a decade. For much of history, banishment was considered so severe that it substituted for capital punishment. The whole point of Hester Prynne's scarlet letter was to show she had violated norms — and to discourage others from doing so. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Sun
22-06-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Nigel Farage vows to slap rich foreigners with £250k ‘Robin Hood' tax – and hand the money to poor Brits
NIGEL Farage will today pledge a Robin Hood tax to take £250,000 from rich foreigners and hand it to the poor. The Reform UK boss plans to slap a one-off fee on the newcomers and returning Brits who want to settle in the UK. The 'entry contribution' would target non-doms — high net-worth individuals who live in Britain but pay no tax on overseas income. Unlike most levies, every penny would go to the lowest-paid full-time workers, HMRC handing it out as a tax-free bonus. In a speech, Mr Farage — who has made it clear he wants Reform to represent those who 'set their alarm clocks in the morning' — will vow to restore the social contract between rich and poor. He will argue that his plan will boost the country's hardest grafters. A party source told The Sun: 'Since the 2008 crash, the Bank of England pumped billions into the economy — but the working class didn't see a penny. 'This is about repairing the social contract. 'For once, the working class should be getting the bonus.' 1 Nobody who enters UK illegally should EVER be allowed to stay – it's totally unfair on law-abiding, taxpaying Brits But the Tories last night slammed Reform's announcement as 'fantasy economics'. Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said: 'The British public need a real plan for putting more money in their pockets. "Reform's promises are ruinously irresponsible.'
Irish Times
20-06-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on caring for older people: deserving of dignity, gratitude and respect
Much is rightly made of the statements of intent and idealism that characterised the foundation documents of this Republic. These included the Democratic Programme unveiled at the meeting of the first Dáil in January 1919, in which 'The Irish Republic fully realises the necessity of abolishing the present odious, degrading and foreign Poor Law System, substituting therefor a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation's aged and infirm, who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation's gratitude and consideration'. At the centre of that poor law system established under British rule was the workhouse, which was feared and detested in equal measure. While independent Irish governments subsequently sought to develop a more humane and empathetic social contract, the care of our elderly population has for far too long been compromised, sometimes egregiously. There is excessive reliance on nursing homes, a dependency more alarming given the shortcomings in Ireland's history of institutional care. There has also been a dramatic shift towards the privatisation of these homes. In the 1980s, public nursing homes accounted for roughly 60 per cent of total beds nationally, but a report from the ESRI last year highlighted that in 2022, '83 per cent of all Long-Term Residential Care (LTRC) home beds were provided by voluntary/private sector LTRC homes, with private for-profit operators alone contributing 74 per cent'. Considering the recent revelations by RTÉ Investigates, the Minister of State for Older People and Housing, Kieran O'Donnell, has said he has 'concerns' about the scale of privatisation and has ordered officials to study this issue . The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has highlighted the need to give it more power in relation to private nursing homes and their corporate owners. READ MORE The current controversies are all the more disturbing given it is 20 years since distressing images of the use of Buxton chairs to restrain elderly nursing home residents at the Leas Cross home in Dublin. A subsequent report by consultant geriatrician Desmond O'Neill described the care shortcomings at the home as 'institutional abuse'. As was often and remains the case, various concerns had been raised but it took journalistic exposé to bring matters to a head. In 2022, our population aged 65 years and over was 781,400 and is set to reach over one million by 2030. The number aged over 85 is projected to rise to 301,000 by 2051. What has been uncovered must generate an urgent dynamic to address the care of our elderly, who now, no more than when their needs were voiced by the architects of Irish independence, need to be treated with the dignity, gratitude and respect they deserve.
Wall Street Journal
04-06-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Who's in Charge of Keeping a Good Republic?
In Mark Helprin's 'A Good Republic Is Hard to Keep' (op-ed, May 27), readers are reminded of what we got out of a secretive convention held behind closed doors in Philadelphia in 1787 and a portion of the lofty ideals expressed in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. But Mr. Helprin leaves out an essential component of the Lockean social contract articulated therein: To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. Unless government upholds its end of the bargain, all of the talk about the inviolability of the inherent, unalienable, natural rights of the individual is, to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, a hypocrisy that spits in the face of our sacred ideals. If the ongoing struggle for individual freedom teaches us anything, it is that the security of our rights depends on ourselves. When one considers what we hold self-evident—that government doesn't possess the power to grant or deny our inherent and unalienable natural rights—we find that all we got from Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues was a federal government that has rarely upheld the terms of our social contract and poses the greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity. The 'good republic' of Mr. Helprin's dreams is exactly that: an aspirational republic the Founders challenged us to establish.
