In the second of three blogs released alongside his new book, “DEMOCRACY: A User’s Guide”, Joss Sheldon takes a look at the democratic schools... Education! It has the force to do so much good — to inform and inspire, encourage people to think for themselves, and prepare youngsters for adulthood…

In the first of three blogs released alongside his new book, “DEMOCRACY: A User’s Guide”, Joss Sheldon takes a turbo-charged tour through the history of democracy… In the beginning, we were all hunter-gatherers. Living in bands of twenty or thirty souls, it was hard for a single individual to lord…

Blog 3 of 3 in the INDIVIDUTOPIA series. Margaret Thatcher once said, “There is no such things as society”. The second half of this statement is not so well known. Thatcher would go on to claim that instead of there being a society, there were only “Individual men and women”. …

Blog 2 of 3 in the INDIVIDUTOPIA series. You will have probably have heard of entrepreneurs who, blowing their own trumpet, describe themselves as “Self-made”, or perhaps “Self-sufficient”. Alan Sugar is the king when it comes to making such statements. The millionaire presenter of The Apprentice regularly describes himself as…

Blog 1 of 3 in the INDIVIDUTOPIA series. We live in a neoliberal era. And neoliberalism, in case you’re unaware, is dangerously ideological. This belief states that the private sector is always efficient, even when it is not. The public sector is never efficient, even when it is. Greed is…

Blog 3/3 in the ‘History of Money’ series So far in this series, we have seen how metal money was imposed on societies by states, and how it was replaced with paper and wooden money. …

Blog 2/3 in the ‘History of Money’ series In my last blog, which covered the early history of money, we saw how gold and silver coins were imposed on people by states, via taxation and conquest. In this blog, we shall see what happened when those states failed… The Romans…

Blog 1/3 in the ‘History of Money’ series Neoliberals often claim that reducing the size of the state will create a more efficient economy, as if the existence of the state is an impediment to the free market. This ideology has been used to justify the selling off of national…

When I wrote my first two novels, I dedicated many months to research; reading for countless hours, and interviewing people in several countries. I took a new approach when I wrote The Little Voice: I looked within myself, and then wrote a personal story. A deeply personal story. I asked…