Dear all, Upon inheriting the Looking Glass from our predecessors, we identified a number of key issues. Firstly, there were simply not enough articles being published, due both to a lack of submissions from the school community and limited responsiveness from the previous Academic Team. Secondly, the Looking Glass had not been advertised or explained effectively enough to the wider school community. As a result, we plan to implement a more consistent and engaging stream of articles on the Looking Glass. As part of this initiative, we are looking to recruit a select group of keen writers from across the lower school who would be willing to produce one high-quality piece of writing, discussion, or media each month for publication on the Looking Glass. We believe this will be hugely beneficial both to the school community, which will gain access to a wider range of opinions and viewpoints, and to prospective writers, who will be able to reference their experience contributing to the Look...
JACK SHUTE Having watched a TED talk by Guy Standing, co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network, I reflected on the emerging social class called the ‘Precariat’ and how they could, and to a certain extent have already, drastically altered the political landscape. Standing describes how we are in the painful construction of a globalised market economy and states that currently it is a delicate moment, with growing inequalities and insecurities starting to threaten long-nurtured enlightenment values. The supply side economic policies pursued since the Thatcher-Reagan days has resulted in a system of “rentier capitalism,” in which a rising share of income is going to those who own physical, financial and intellectual property. This effectively means that the income distribution system of the 20th century has broken down, and will not come back. As a result, one could certainly argue that it has generated a new global class structure. At the top you have a plutocracy of multi-billionair...