Danny Dorling discusses recent findings from a major study of mortality across UK countries and cities, and highlights unprecedented worsening mortality among the UK’s poorest communities:

In 1890, when he was still at school in Harrow, Winston Churchill wrote a poem

As Eva Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan explain in the Introduction to this book, high economic inequality has,

In 1968, at the height of the last great influenza pandemic, at least a million people worldwide died

In the week after the schools went back in England and Wales, an extra 538 people died (77 a day).

Growing alarm has been expressed over the rising numbers of people who are testing positive for COVID-19 in the UK.

Long before the 2020 pandemic swept the world, almost everything was already slowing down.

It is a conundrum. For much of the past two months, many people have been convinced that mortality associated with COVID-19 would rise as the number of people testing positive with the disease increased. But this has not happened so far.

If you are a little older than I am, then you may well remember worse pandemics than that of 2020.

On July 8th 2020 the Treasury released a document titled “Impact of COVID-19 on working household incomes: distributional analysis as of May 2020”.

Why should the exam debacle of 2020 matter to Geographers?

The COVID-19 crisis has coincided with worldwide Black Lives Matter protests

It need not have arrived first in Europe in Italy. The disease could have arrived elsewhere on this continent first, and it could have arrived much earlier than it did.

Great economic inequalities will be hard to sustain during and following slowdown.

It’s a pity that in early 2020 the Conservative party and its leader were not more alert. Greek scholar Boris Johnson should have known that hubris – excessive pride and boasting – annoys the Gods

The human world is slowing down and has been for some time. It has been slowing in many ways, and this can be seen most easily in OECD (mostly richer) countries.

Popular wisdom has it that everything is speeding up, including population growth.

Coronavirus deaths shocked us with how rapidly they rose from a base of none at the start of the year, to many thousands within the space of mere weeks.

Ahead of the publication of Rule Britannia in paperback, authors Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson take a look back the past two years of electoral chaos and what that might mean for Britain going forward.

Did you think that the rate of innovation was rising and that more and more was being invented every year?

Danny Dorling, and Sofie Furu discussing the Book Slowdown and the illusion of speed and growth in our society, an on-line talk held with SoCentral – nordisk inkubator for samfunnsinnovasjon, Oslo, Norway, May 20th 2020.

The rate of population growth is slowing – and it’s time for human activity to relax too. It’ll do our species so much good, says Danny Dorling.

As reported in the Financial Times; Le Monde; News Week Españo and many others, an open letter: Uniting Behind A People’s Vaccine Against COVID-19, May 14th 2020 signed by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Imran Khan, Cyril Ramaphosa and many […]

Over the NHS fundraiser’s lifetime, inequality has dropped but shot back up again. After this crisis we must keep it down.

My father still remembers the H3N2 influenza pandemic of 1968 when over a million people died worldwide.

Humanity has been here before, facing what appeared to be an imminent end (figure). The rise in nuclear weapons was rapid, from the first two used on Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945, through to 10,000 held by 1960, almost 40,000 in 1970, and peaking at over 60,000 in the mid-1980s. […]

On April 7, The Conversation published three graphs showing the rise of deaths from COVID-19 in seven countries. This is an update 20 days later.

Danny Dorling giving a short keynote at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference (on-line in a time of Covid19) on April 24th 2020.

Danny Dorling giving the final talk at the Geographical Association annual conference (on-line), on April 18th 2020

This article is republished from The Conversation – first published April 7th 2020

“But once this is done, there must be complete transparency about how the NHS came to be left in this exposed position, how social care had been stripped away, and how those in power will be held accountable.”

A message for A-Level geographers: Suddenly you have time on your hands. You would have been spending these weeks and months memorising facts for regurgitating.

We need to quickly accept that this is an era of slowdown, not fast-paced change.

For some time this pandemic will focus almost all of our attention. It is a tragedy that will play out differently

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

by Danny Dorling, University of Oxford

The speed of the global spread of coronavirus is staggering.

Hensher contrasts the abuse Corbyn received while attempting to become Prime Minster with that Margaret Thatcher received when in office

Polly Neate is right that “social housing and homes for first-time buyers don’t have to be either/or”.

So much goes wrong when a state is at peak inequality. We convert offices into rabbit hutches for people to live in and their life expectancy also falls.

Danny Dorling demolishes myths about the Brexit Referendum result of 2016 and the General Election result of 2019. The old, and predominantly the middle class of southern England, achieved victory in both.

This Christmas and New Year 2020 have been mercifully warm in Oxford, with the temperature staying at (or above) two degrees at night – so far.

A short talk on what the future may bring given the spatial dimension of the distribution of property and resources, followed by a debate with Gabu Heindl, the Vienna-based architect and planner.

Danny Dorling talking about ‘What’s So Funny About Brexit? on the Treehouse stage, Greenbelt Festival,

Many thousands of words have been written on the subject of Prince Harry’s announcement in Vogue last week that, when it comes to children, he intends to have ‘Two, maximum!’

“Ministers will still claim, to their dying breath in some cases, that there is no ‘evidence’ linking their actions to the rising numbers of premature deaths in the UK, but eventually they will buckle under the weight of reports showing they are wrong.”

Here’s some good news for the planet: the human population is set to peak and stabilise, not rising much above 9.7 billion, the total that it will reach around the year 2050, according to the latest UN figures.

It might not be sexy, but the answer to the endemic housing crisis not just in Britain but across the West is something relatively simple: effective property taxes

Something went very wrong in the UK, and especially in England, during the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Housing became too expensive for young adults to afford and then, by 2012, we made half of them take out huge debts to go to university. It’s time to fix both problems.

Why do people vote for politicians and rhetoric which actually puts their own lives at risk and what can be done about it?

On the evening of 17 June at 7.30pm Oxford Civic Society held a public debate in the Assembly Room of the Town Hall on the effect on Oxfordshire of the planned Expressway and related issues.

Penny Bickle, David Wengrow, Kate Pickett and Danny Dorling speaking at the Festival of Ideas, Ron Cooke Hub, University of York, on June 10th 2019.

The vote to leave the EU was the last gasp of the old empire working its way out of the British psyche.

Brexit has been a disaster with silver linings. The process of trying to leave the EU and the end result could finally jolt the British elite out of their superior complacency, and thereby make the country a fairer and more humane place.

In Japan, I once met a man who was starving. He was proud and he was dying.

Some ideas to share with current London-based Social Science PhD students.

We believe there are issues of concern over the governance of the UK’s largest private pension, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The collapse of Britain’s empire in the decades after World War II was followed by a huge growth and then persistence of extreme economic inequality.

Sally Tomlinson and Danny Dorling speaking at the Hay Festival, on the Oxfam Moot Stage, May 25th 2019 – the day after Theresa May resigned.

How did it come to this? What is happening to Britain and why? Why now? Why such an enormous mess?

With gratitude to the woman who founded the Brexit party for coming along and asking the world’s longest ever question. Hopefully you are intrigued.

With gratitude to the man from the Stoke area who asked the first question, after listening to this argument, and said: ‘You put me right’.

A talk on ‘Rule Britannia, From Brexit to the end of Empire‘ – at Komedia Comedy Club, Brighton, May 5th 2019.

Having enough to eat of a decent quality and quantity has long been a central expectation of what it means to live in a Western country.

An illustrated talk by Danny Dorling (on one small part the book Rule Britannia) given at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub on April 25th 2019.

Mustn’t grumble. Mustn’t make a fuss. England’s suburbs are slowly dying, as years of austerity slowly changes the landscape.

The crises which have engulfed this government should not blind us to the fact that the Conservatives are supremely successful at what they are best at.

Universities helped foster the environment in which Brexit became possible. It is time to make amends.

Dear Sir
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the letter of February 25, 2019 from Professor J Hanley.

There’s no reason to be pessimistic about the future. The UK and the USA are probably at a peak of economic inequality right now.

Danny Dorling speaking at the Cambridge Literary Festival, introduced by Cathy Moore, in the Palmerston Room, St John’s College, University of Cambridge, April 6th 2019

Inequality is the key political issue of our time. The dramatic rise of income inequality in the UK, from the mid 1970s through to today’s peak, created a state that was so unstable that Brexit was attempted.

The deadline is now Friday 11pm April 12th 2019. A 30 minutes talk by Danny Dorling in the free Blackwells Marque, Oxford Literary Festival, The Bodleian Quad, Oxford, March 31st 2019.

A seminar for the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, London School of Economics, March 29th 2019.

On the eve of the House of Commons trying to break the Brexit deadlock, a public lecture concerning what Brexit tells us about the British.

Whatever kind of Brexit occurs – hard, soft, or even a last minute cancellation and staying in the European Union – the public and

A provocative vision of the future in which the global population plummets, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscape.

On 8 March 2019 Lu Hiam and Martin McKee, referring to the most recent report from the Institute of Actuaries

There may be a silver lining. Brexit is a much larger national disaster than the 1956 Suez crisis, and more embarrassing.

What on earth will happen now? Will some people never learn about the British past, the nature of its empire, its decline, and how all this is linked to Brexit?

You read this magazine [The Oxford Magazine] and because of that you almost certainly know how the start of the story goes

The ides of March, March the 15th, is the date on which Romans traditionally settled debts.

In the ‘Origin of Species’, Charles Darwin described how a population explosion occurs. He called the events required – ‘favourable seasons’.

How did Britain’s wealthy take the end of the British empire? Not well — and the rest of us are still paying the price.

Brexit represents the last gasp of the British empire

What does Brexit tell us about ourselves – and what will happen now?

Danny Dorling speaking at the monthly meeting of “Global Justice Now”, Oxford Town Hall, February 12th 2019.

Things fall apart when empires crumble.

Take a minute to think about where current education policy is likely to take us in England, and to some extent in Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland run things a little differently.

The first of an interdisciplinary seminar series on the topic of ‘Inequality and the Environment’, organised by Alex Milden.

In the era of Brexit attempts have repeatedly been made to associate recent immigrants with criminality; and despite all evidence to the contrary this slur continues.

Brexit may be key to the future of inequality in the UK, and inequality may have been key to making Brexit possible.

Brexit’s all about Geography; it’s all about borders; it’s all about issues of identity; and a lot of it is about history.

Will 2019 see an end to austerity? Last year, the Chancellor announced that the ‘era of austerity is finally coming to an end’

What is happening with Brexit? Why is it happening and what are the reasons behind the reasons for how the British are behaving?

The UK has fallen down the rankings significantly … for life expectancy at birth. In the most recent two years ONS has reported statistically significant increases in infant mortality across England for all infants.

We gave people a choice, back in 2016 between carrying on with David Cameron, with life as it was, crap as it was, or a unicorn. The unicorn was Leave. The unicorn was a promise: “Leave and everything will get better”.

Today, one person in every two hundred in England and Wales is homeless – either sleeping rough or living in temporary accommodation. In London the proportion is even higher: one in 53. In Kensington and Chelsea it’s one in 29: in that borough alone 5,263 people are homeless.

People protest when they can take no more, but also when there is a glimmer of hope: When it becomes obvious that there is enough to go around

As Bobby Duffy explained in November 2018, when it comes to Brexit and our understanding of what is going on, we live in a remarkably divided society today

How important is Britain in the world today, digitally, socially and financially? A talk by Danny Dorling looking at globalisation in the context of the digital social world and consider key trends in development and global inequality.

Whatever kind of Brexit occurs – hard, soft, or none – people are going to be asking questions for many years about why this has happened and what it means.

A review of ‘The Distribution of Wealth – Growing Inequality?’ By Michael Schneider, Mike Pottenger and J. E. King, The History of Economics review, Volume 68, No. 1, pp.75-78, by Danny Dorling.

Fixing the health crisis is a choice for politicians, not people

It was the night before Christmas, and just a few days before his well-documented fall from grace – in response to the publication of an academic paper Sally Tomlinson and I had published a year earlier, the Conservative government’s advisor, Toby Young, posted this Tweet:

Geography and Climate Breakdown, by Danny Dorling, The Oxford Magazine, No. 402 pp.11-12, November 30th, (eight week, Michaelmas term)

Danny Dorling giving the Institute of Applied Ethics Public Lecture, University of Hull, November 29th 2018, introduced by Colin Tyler.

Why is the UK so bad at housing people? One reason is that some things, big bulky one-off ‘goods’ like heart surgery, a university degree and a home are very badly allocated when you mostly use the market to allocate them.

A keynote lecture given at the Canadian National Housing Conference, Ottawa, 22 November 2018.

Two decades ago, leaving the European Union was a minority pursuit. Now British politics is defined by Brexit.

Benjamin D. Hennig and Danny Dorling plot the re-emergence of Conservative and Labour dominance in British politics:

Brexit may be key to the future of inequality in the UK, and inequality may have been key to making Brexit. Growing inequality created so much, from tax-evader-vote-funders to mass discontent.

We used to plan our cities. In most European countries they still plan their cities. What would a plan for the future of Oxford look like that was sustainable, environmentally responsible and affordable?

The unjust student debt can be written off – if we choose to have a fairer society. Don’t let anyone convince you this is not so.

People voted Leave most often in those parts of England which had the worse health trends, which saw the greatest rises in mortality rates in the two years after the vote, and to which the least immigrants had come in the year before the vote.

Philip Hammond delivers his budget on Monday 29th October 2018. He may be tempted to suggest that any new taxes he introduced are hypothecated. Is this a good idea?

What policies could be enacted to end homelessness in England, to ensure decent quality affordable housing, to prevent speculation and to control greed?

Life expectancy is rising in Finland – unlike in the UK. What’s going right?

I’m interested in inequality and what is happening with that.

Institutions must recognise the extent to which they are partly responsible for their cities and country’s problems.

(1) In every university city in which I have lived a colleague has always pointed out how remarkably socially divided that city is.

The 17-year war has been a costly disaster, deepening the country’s crisis and helping to spread violence across the region and beyond, say actors including Mark Rylance, MPs including Imran Hussain, and other campaigners

The author of a recent BMJ editorial claims that: “In summary, the general deceleration in mortality improvements in many high income countries since 2010 has been compounded by periodic bad winters.“

The English suburbs are dying. Years of austerity have slowly changed the landscape. Poverty is now common in the suburbs. Since 2014 life expectancy has been falling across most of England, especially in the suburbs.

I came home this evening to hear the local BBC news begin with the headline ‘Oxford hospitals NHS trust suspended midwife services‘

Audio recording of the Keynote Lecture given by Danny Dorling at the annual British Society for Population Studies conference, Winchester, September 12th 2018

‘And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light’
(Dylan Thomas, 1947)

In June 2018 the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) released data for England that revealed mortality rates to be rising across the country. This rise in mortality rates had occurred even after having taken out the likely impact of population ageing.

Britain in 2025 will be very different from today. London and the UK reached peak inequality in 2018.

In early 2018, Britain reached a peak of income inequality. The last peak was in 1913, and so much goes so wrong when inequality peaks.

Despite the evidence DHSC claims “..generally people are living longer.” The government’s response is not sufficient. Persistent concerns from academics, doctors, professional bodies, and public health experts have been consistently disregarded by the DHSC

In hindsight we should have seen it coming. But none of us did, or at least no one who looks for the best in others.

Hidden in the detail of these figures was the news that Britain’s finance and insurance industries had shrunk, albeit only by a tenth of one percent.

The majority of the poorest fifth of children living in the UK have no summer holiday – or any holiday at all each year – and this has been the case for at least a decade now. However people are now learning to lower their expectations.

The last time inequality peaked in the UK was around 1913/1914. It appears to be peaking again this summer.

In the eight years since the May 2010 general election, the health of people living in the United Kingdom has faltered.

Yes we need a basic income. Yes we will get one. But we in the UK will very probably have to wait until other European countries have had one for some time.

Almost six weeks after the inquiry was announced no deadline has been set for Public Health England’s inquiry report into mortality rate rises across all of England.

Video and slides of Danny Dorling speaking at the Royal Society for Arts, London, July 19th 2018.

When we think of economic inequality we tend to think of a trend that is ever rising and destined to continue rising; that is far from inevitable.

In Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Time Bomb, Danny Dorling presents the evidence that in 2018 the growth in UK income inequality may have finally peaked.

Is great change coming? 4 July 2018 – First published in the New Statesman, by Danny Dorling

A talk given to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Social Science and Policy, Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, July 3rd 2018.

Britain is a highly segregated society. It boasts the widest Gini coefficient of all the OECD countries in Europe when income inequality is considered.

We can find it hard to believe that an era has come to an end, that a peak has been passed. But when, finally, such a change happens the memories of commentators change with it.

We know that you’re busy and that while you’d love to donate more time to progressive advocacy, life gets in the way.

In May 2018 the Department of Health and Social Care responded to the recent rise in deaths in England by saying…

What becomes possible when you begin to demand (what they tell you) is impossible?

The ASMR has risen by 5%. So, once again, we repeat: how many deaths will it take for the Government to take note?

The Labour Party must draw up plans to write off the majority of the debt run up by students who paid fees under England’s post-2012 funding regime.

It is scandalous that politicians are whittling down public housing budgets and failing to take action to keep residents safe.

A talk arranged by the Northern Villages Branch of Henley Constituency Labour Party, Wheatley, Oxfordshire, June 11 2018.

Life expectancy in England and Wales has stalled. At some older ages, it is declining.

In the eight years since the May 2010 general election, the health of people living in the United Kingdom has faltered.

In Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Time Bomb Danny Dorling presents the evidence that in 2018 the growth in UK income inequality may have finally peaked.

This summer is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service. On June 30th a demonstration will be held in London in defence of the NHS.

To better tackle mental illness, look to the societies in which it occurs.

We have to stand up to these things because otherwise we are faced with a very simple situation. Today’s unacceptable becomes tomorrow’s norm.

The UK voted to leave at the peak of its economic inequality.

The first of three Free Summer Lectures on Inequality. Given by Danny Dorling in London on Tuesday May 22nd 2018 at 6:30pm in Bethnal Green.

A progressive economy might seem like a pipe dream, but is it achievable?

In April 2018 we heard an enormous amount about gender pay gaps as all the data was revealed.

Health researchers have urged the government and MPs to investigate rising numbers of deaths in England and Wales, after new figures showed over 20,000 “excess deaths” so far in 2018.

Britain is a highly segregated society.

I used to be a Republican, but that was before Brexit.

The current system of university student funding in England is a confidence trick.

Since 2011, something unusual and, in modern British history, unprecedented has happened to life expectancy: it has flatlined.

A 15 minute talk on the Brexit Referendum of 2016, Rule Britannia in 2017, and stupidity in 2018, given by Danny Dorling at St Georges, Bristol, as part of a 5×15 event, April 16th 2018.

Syria, the west’s response and international law, Letter, Wednesday 11th April 2018: “Readers including Mark Rylance, Brian Eno and Francesca Martinez respond to the escalating situation in Syria”.

The first words on the inside cover of this book announce that it has been written by one of the world’s leading economists.

We know they used to keep plans for war secret from us. We know just how wrong they were in the past. So what are we not being told today?

Re: Rise in mortality in England and Wales in first seven weeks of 2018: Rapid response by Lu Hiam and Danny Dorling, published in the British Medical Journal, March 23rd 2018

Decent rights, trust, and fairness all require greater economic equality.

For years schools have been sending pupils the message that women are worth less than men. It’s our moral duty to fix that.

Immigration has been suggested as the reason for why a narrow majority of people in the UK voted for Brexit. The concept was used to stoke up fear in areas of low immigration.

A fall in inequality can begin without policy and political changes, but they help sustain it.

Until recently we had been using the rising profits of undertakers to gauge how unusual recent rises in mortality have been. However, we can no longer do that.

In March 2018 we learnt that, in contrast to all other countries in Europe, both adult and infant mortality are now rising in the UK making an already awful situation worse.

In the eight years since the May 2010 general election, the health of people living in the United Kingdom has faltered.

Life expectancy in the UK has stalled. In many places, and for more vulnerable groups, it is now falling – on-line report in the New Statesman (March 2nd 2018).

The Nationwide Building Society has reported today, March 1st 2018, that prices fell by 0.3% last month, crushing expectations of a rise” Commentators explain: “Brexit and a weaker economic outlook reinforced a slowdown in the property market”.

As Brexit looms closer, various schemes for Britain to “find new markets” will be touted.

Utopia for Realists ends with its author professing admiration for Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

Immigration has been suggested as the reason for why a narrow majority of people in the UK voted for Brexit. The concept was used to stoke up fear in areas of low immigration.

Our housing system is in a mess. A child looking down from the window of a tower block on to Britain’s streets today will see the widest and clearest picture of what is getting rapidly worse.

When inequality is high people lose face, they lose confidence, they suffer from comparisons in which it is implied that the vast majority warrant little or no respect.

Brexit Vote 2016, Hung Parliament 2017, what in 2018?

Fifty years ago Martin Luther King argued that on poverty: “the programs of the past all have another common failing—they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.” He argued for a guaranteed citizen’s income to eradicate poverty.

Towards the end of January 2018, 60 heads of state or government, roughly 300 other political leaders, and at least 1000 of the world’s highest paid chief executive officers, media celebrities and the like will meet again at Davos in Switzerland. How are they likely to view changing world events and what […]

From the history of the Cold War, to the peril of the 2008 financial crash, what can a radical perspective on geography teach us about the world?

Researchers have known for some time that high economic inequality has a detrimental effect on peoples’ lives. However, with the release of new data we can now compare all of the richest countries of the world alongside the states of the USA. The results are shocking.

On Thursday 16th November 2017 the Journal BMJ Open published an article which concluded that severe public spending cuts in the UK had contributed to causing 120,000 additional premature deaths between 2010 and 2017.

As pay scandals continue to embarrass British higher education, with university chiefs receiving eye-watering salaries and golden handshakes, it’s time to ask: why can’t we be more like Germany?

Researchers at the Universities of Liverpool, Oxford and Glasgow revisited a study carried out 175 years ago which compared the health and life expectancy of people in different parts of the United Kingdom, including Liverpool, to see if its findings still held true.

The most important benefit of the equality effect may be that it leads us to behave in ways that are less environmentally damaging.

Buried deep in a note towards the end of a recent bulletin published by the British government’s statistical agency was a startling revelation.

One week ago today, on Wednesday 22 November 2017, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, gave a budget speech that was designed to confuse and distract.

London, November 2017: Research linking cuts in government health spending to higher mortality rates in England has been published in the British Medical Journal

Alongside the human costs, cuts have hurt our economy, and we’ve now reached a dangerous tipping point, say Joseph Stiglitz, Ha-Joon Chang and 111 others

Almost all European countries both have lower income inequality than the UK and also ensure by law that tenants who rent their homes enjoy much longer tenancies.

Life expectancy for women in the UK is now lower than in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

What does the world look like when you map it using data?

Open letter to Commission President Junker and European Council Presidents Tusk, 31 October 2017

The current system of university student funding in England is a confidence trick.

It is hard to believe that it is any coincidence that by far the most economically unequal large country in the European Union, the UK, was the one that narrowly voted to leave it in 2016.

Seminar by Danny Dorling in a series helping to celebrate 25 years of Development Studies in SOAS, University of London, given on October 17th, 2017

The world isn’t a plum pudding anymore. It’s time for Britain to stop pretending it can carve it up—and scrap its Imperialist approach to post-Brexit trade.

Inequality has become the defining issue of our times. It is what makes the years we are currently living through so different to those of our parents and grandparents.

The increased prevalence of patients being delayed in discharge from hospital in 2015 was associated with increases in mortality, accounting for up to a fifth of mortality increases.

This limited survey of the effects of inequality and high house prices in cities is part of the problem, not the solution.

We are concerned about the transparency of decision making in the USS pension scheme. The USS has announced a substantial deficit, but the data and methods they have published are very limited, making them impossible to judge.

Oxford Alumni Weekend Lecture, Oxford, September 16th 2017

There was one noteworthy feature of the 2017 General Election that has not been commented on at all. For the first time since 1979 the segregation index of British Conservative voters fell.

New statistics offer hope—but the accuracy of such figures is notoriously difficult to assess.

From buying stuff to eating meat to wasting water, there is growing evidence that countries with a bigger gap between rich and poor do more harm to the planet and its climate.

This has never happened before. No UK political party has seen such a large and such a rapid rise in support as Labour saw in May 2017.

The Equality Effect is almost magical. In more equal countries, human beings are generally happier and healthier, there is less crime, more creativity and higher educational attainment.

Improvements in mortality in England were seen for a generation before the year 2011. They now appear to have ended.

People in different countries make different choices. In Norway they chose to deal with the financial crash of 2008 in such a way that the population did not suffer unduly and life expectancy there has risen by a year since 2011.

Every so often a social statistic is released that confirms something extraordinary has occurred, something so strange that it cannot continue, suggesting that the trend has to change again soon.

Politics in Britain and in many other countries would be better if politicians concentrated on the things which are most important to people.

Review of ‘Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, by Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght’

We think of cities as having existing for millennia, but only a few cities are that old and they were almost all extremely small.

Geography is the subject that shows you how everything is connected to everything else.

There has been a rapid deterioration in self-reported health in recent years

Excess deaths in 2015 may be linked to failures in health and social care

Since at least the early 1900s almost all affluent nations in the world have continually experienced improvements in human longevity.

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I am always surprised that more people in the UK do not know that we now have the greatest economic inequality of any large country in Europe

If high and growing inequality is benefitting fewer and fewer people in the UK and the USA we should be glad that more people now recognise this

Equality in Europe, the landscape, battle and war, public lecture by Danny Dorling, St Cross College, Oxford, January 24th.

The Prime Minister has launched her much-vaunted industrial strategy. The measure of its success has to be whether it works for cities like Sheffield and the rest of the North.

On January 20th 2017 the BBC announced the first fall in the numbers of people moving home in the last five years. The reason was the growing housing crisis.

It’s remarkable how little research is available comparing the success of different countries’ immigration policies.

In mid-December the Land Registry revealed its latest data on housing prices. These showed that average prices had fallen in five London boroughs in October, up from three in September and just one borough in August.

In 1968 Ursula Le Guin wrote the Wizard of Earthsea for me. I knew it, as I am sure thousands of other children also knew.

Brexit voting patterns appear to divide along the lines of age (above all else), then by social attitudes, and then by education

The old myth about the ability and variability of potential in children is a comforting myth

This paper presents a human cartographic approach to the analysis of the impact of austerity and the economic crisis across Europe’s regions.

The Left are busy looking back instead of devising laws to address inequalities.

Public Lecture given by Danny Dorling at the University of Swansea, December 12th 2016.

The outcome of the French presidential election, in which the Republican Francois Fillon, Front National’s Marine Le Pen, and the Socialist Party will be vying for position in April 2017, could have wide reaching implications for public health in Europe.

In October 2016, at her party’s annual conference, the Prime Minister (Teresa May) set out a vision for a more inclusive Britain

Melissa Benn, Danny Dorling, Kayleigh Garthwaite and Owen Jones, Speaking on the future of Social Justice, at the Bristol Festival of Ideas and Policy Press Evening, University of Bristol, December 5th.

Margaret Thatcher’s government sowed the seeds of today’s housing crisis when it abandoned rent regulation in the private sector.

What does the world look like when you map it using data about people? See the world anew — a connected, ever-changing and fascinating place in which we all belong. You’ll never look at a map the same way again.

The Annual Political Studies Association Lecture given by Danny Dorling in The British Library, London, November 28th. Introduced by Carolyn Quinn

Danny Dorling’s Review of Ecotopia 2121: A Vision for Our Future Green Utopia – in 100 Cities, by Alan Marshall

You need to agree that we have failed, because if we are incapable of recognising that we have failed, what hope is there for this country?

Keynote speech by Danny Dorling: Placeshapers conference :Building Homes and Lives, Trade Union Congress Centre, London, November 16th.

Innovation in Education Lecture by Danny Dorling given in Committee Room 10, House of Commons, London, November 15th.

Comprehensive schools have improved our lives. The evidence that they are better for our children and for all of us is overwhelming.

Housing is fundamentally a debate about
 social goods and social evils – TAP blog 6, 11 November 2016

On education the left need to recognise public disquiet over our current system of allocation to state schools by area and hence by housing price.

Economically, the financial crash of 2008 set UK society on a course that led to the 2016 EU referendum.

Since 2010 council tax benefit has been cut all across the UK, and rent, gas and electricity costs have gone up. A quarter of British households, mostly with children, can no longer pay for rent, fuel and food and manage to save at least £10 a month.

An annual public lecture given by Danny Dorling generalizing from Oxford’s current housing dilemmas for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Sustainable Urban Development Programme

How much of you is you and how much of you is a product of your geography? Have a look at these maps. Areas are coloured red and dark red if many people are poor in those places. And they are coloured green, and especially dark green, if very few people are poor.

Invited Student Lecture given by Danny Dorling at Ruskin College, Oxford, October 19th, 2016, Introduced by Parveen Alam.

A thirty minute talk for lower sixth form students studying A levels by Danny Dorling of the University of Oxford, School of Geography & Environment

A talk for sixth form students at many schools studying A level Geography in Manchester by Danny Dorling of the University of Oxford

Danny Dorling talking on – Epidemiology: abandoning the social: How deaths in England and Wales rose in a year by 5%, in Scotland by 9%, but epidemiologists were too busy with the genome to notice the bills of mortality,

Danny Dorling: Talking about Brexit on BBC Newsnight 29th September 2016, starting in Tewksbury:

In 1983 your chance of owning your own home was over 70 per cent for people aged between 29 and 49. In 2012 the lucky group who had a 70 per cent or more chance of owning their homes were aged 58 to 85.

It is no coincidence that Thomas More set Utopia on an island. He was a teenager when the Americas were discovered, a time when the world learned that more was possible than we knew.

Self-reported health had been progressively declining year on year since 2010. In the years before 2010 up to 70% of the population were somewhat, mostly, or completely satisfied with their health and there was no downwards or upwards trend.

A talk given at the Edinburgh Book Festival on August 29th, 2016.

What are the implications of Brexit for the housing crisis in the UK? Danny Dorling offers some answers at Urbed’s 4×4 event, held in Manchester on July 13th 2016.

Two lectures for the summer. First Some ideas about protecting the earth’s environment and its people:
A talk given as part of the Summer Minds lectures at St Davids in Wales on August 3rd 2016.

Oxfordshire could be so different and was so different not very long ago. In the novel Larkrise to Candleford, the story of a very different Oxfordshire is told

The vote to leave the European Union is a moment of both crisis and opportunity. Now the need to build a progressive alliance has become urgent.

Across the UK self-reported health has been progressively declining year on year since 2010 with the fastest falls to the worse recorded levels having been confirmed by official data released in March 2016, but not yet reported until now.

The rise in mortality in 2015 was shocking. In England and Wales (alone) the rise of mortality of 9% in the year to July 2015 was, as far as can be known from published statistics, the largest proportional increase in mortality rates in a year recorded since 1940.

If we start by considering what is most important to people in their lives, then we end up advocating a very different politics and set of priorities to that which is usually presented.

Blame austerity not immigration for the inequality underlying Brexit. The underlying reason for worsening health and declining living standards in Britain is not immigration but ever growing economic inequality and the public spending cuts that have accompanied austerity.

In Amsterdam in 1699, a house sold for 28,100 guilders. This was a very fine house. Its equivalent would be found in Kensington today.

One hundred years ago today the battle of the Somme began. Today the British can only talk about leaving the European Union. What might we look back on in one hundred years from now?

Many tenants say that they don’t recognise themselves in the descriptions of social housing tenants that are bandied about. They are all too often distorted or stereotyped.

Brexit has its roots in the British Empire. So how do we explain it to the young? The EU referendum was the last throes of Empire working its way out of our systems.

Immigration, The EU Referendum, and the real reasons why our schools are so often full, our housing is so expensive and our health service is underfunded as compared to the rest of Europe.

Manipulating the market mechanism to promote frugality, prudence and deferred gratification without the perversion of profit

Recording from the Telegraph Stage at the 2016 Hay Festival

Is Economic Inequality Falling in the World? In this webinar Danny Dorling presents some of the most recent data made available through the World Top Incomes database and the statistical releases of the United Nations Development Programmes Human Development Reports. These suggest that there may be some tentative evidence that a tipping point could have […]

Two Talks at ‘Also’ the Festival with Ideas – Warwickshire: http://www.also-festival.com/ideas/

Danny Dorling speaking at the Hay Festival

Carl Lee and Danny Dorling speaking at the Student Compass Venue, Hay Festival

I want to ask you to play a little game with me. I want you to pretend you are being driven to Dalston Junction in London to look at one of the penthouse flats on the twelfth floor of a new development to decide if you are going to buy it

…The clever Conservatives have to hope that the anti-Corbyn minority win. What they need is a Labour party that gains office once every ten or fifteen years but does not upset their project.

Demographically, Britain has changed more in the last 15 years than the previous 50. Economically, the crash of 2008 has changed our society in ways we are still only just coming to recognize.

A BETTER POLITICS: How government can make us happier
Talk and debate on a new book by Danny Dorling

Using beautiful and unfamiliar maps drawn by his colleague Ben Hennig, and shown in colour for the first time, Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, shows us how we are changing as a species.

These are dangerous times. Ken Loach has argued that we should vote to remain in the EU because the alternative of a rise in far-right politics is so very dangerous. I, and many others agree

Danny Dorling speaking on Fairness and the City – A Better Politics, University of Brighton’s Festival of Social Science Annual Lecture, Brighton, May 19th, 2016

Keynote lecture at the Human Welfare Conference

Danny speaking with Afshin Rattansi on Russia Today’s Going Underground

Annual “Europe in Question” lecture, LSE

So how do we explain it to the young? (by Sally Tomlinson and Danny Dorling)
The EU referendum is the last throes of Empire working its way out of our systems.

Talk at the Frome Architecture Club

Launch event with Richard Wilkinson and Rupa Huq MP

Royal Geographical Society Monday night lecture with Mark Maslin and Danny Dorling

Britain is still a society deeply divided by class. The same schools, established church and universities dominate public life, but under the façade of immobility, changes are afoot.

The Panama Papers revealed what a few suspected for some time, but many people did not believe – that a large proportion of wealthy people were trying very hard to avoid paying much of their tax.

BBC World Service World Business Report

Happiness – Should the government promote it? Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, talks to Laurie Taylor about the necessity to inspire a better politics

Carl Lee and Danny Dorling talk about geography, what it means to them and why it might be of interest to you: 3.30pm Saturday April 16th 2016. Free entry, Blackwell’s Bookshop, Sheffield University

A low resolution PDF of the book is available by clicking here:

Download PDF (2 MB)

On 25 January 2015 the MSC Oscar, a Panamanian flagged ship laden with goods, set sail from the port of Dalian in China.

Owen Hatherley and Danny Dorling at the Aye Write Book Festival

The aim of this book is to inspire a better politics: one that will enable future generations to be happier.

Violence was declining worldwide a hundred years ago. Back in 2016 you would not have thought it

Twas day before budget day… March 15th 2016: A talk for civil servants an policy makers in the Cabinet Office and Treasury

Danny in conversation with Andrew Bradstock

The New Economics event at Garth Hill College, Bracknell

I’m Danny Dorling – I am the one member of the London Fairness Commission not to live or work in London. My vision is that we should concentrate on what appears to be most unfair and tackle that unfairness.

Danny Dorling in conversation with Stefan Stern

People often think that a certain level of inequality is normal in our societies, says the social geographer Danny Dorling.

Keynote: British Academy and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) seminar on Growing Cities, Divided Cities

Danny Dorling, Bruno Rinvolucri and Leah Green

Annual Public Health Lecture, University of Southampton

When answering questions on “sink estates” in the House of Commons on 13th January the Prime Minister displayed a breath-taking degree of ignorance on housing that can only have been sustained by a growing arrogance.

Public Lecture at the York Union

Keynote by Danny Dorling and Kate Pickett

Spare a thought for the 1% lowest earners in the UK. Read on if you care…

Schools in Britain are among the worst in the world for ‘teaching to the test’ because of high levels of social inequality

A Fifteen Minute Lecture with Danny Dorling

Causal links with depleting mental health in the young, the increased use of anti-depressent drugs, and high rates of infant deaths than in similar affluent countries, sketching a narrative of the insidious potential social consequences for our society in a hundred years’ time.

Two talks recorded at Southgate School 6th form, Cockfosters, London (December 8th) St Helen and St Katharine School, Abingdon (December 9th 2015)

Having a large police force is a temporary feature. They have no longterm future and no lengthy history.

Talk at Labour students, Queen Mary University

Lecture at Kinvig Geography Society, University of Birmingham

Conservation with Caroline Macfarland

King’s Chevening Distinguished Lecture

Panel contribution, and answering questions with Michael Edwards, Kate Macintosh, Anna Minton, and Zoe Williams at the Festival of Ideas

Contribution to Oxfordshire Community Foundation’s annual debate

Danny discussion with Owen Jones

Lecture at the Thomas Hardye School, Dorchester

Talk at the Blackfriars Poverty in Britain Group

Danny speaking at the Young Foundation, London

Environmental Sustainability and Demographic Change Conference, The Martin School, Oxford University

E. Kosmin, V. Coulter, and D. Dorling speaking at the University College Lecture theater, Oxford

Audio recording from the event at Housman’s bookshop, London

Royal Society of Arts and Commerce

Future of Cities Seminar, Wharton Room, All Souls College

How do we understand this new conservative rhetoric of equality and an assault on poverty when we place it against the reality of rising inequality and the expectation that tax credit cuts will put 200,000 more families in poverty?

A view from the future

Why Better Statistics are Needed

Contribution the the BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme

Talk at The Woodstock Society

Ilkley Literature Festival

Public Lecture, School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham

Economic inequality and our grandchildren’s future

The Annual Arthur Lewis Lecture, University of Manchester

Danny speaking as a special guest alongside Maggie Black, Peter Stalker and Danny Chivers

Evidence is beginning to surface of the possible health effects of the rapid social polarisation that is taking place in the UK.

Millions will be missing from the electoral role if constituency boundaries are redrawn this autumn

CLASS Panel Discussion with Danny Dorling, Frances O’Grady and Owen Jones

Danny speaking at London Review of Books Bookshop

Talk at the Oxford Public Health Registrars Symposium

Danny speaking at the Annual Policy and Politics Conference: Democracy, Inequality and Power

Talk at the joint British Cartographic Society / Society of Cartographers Conference

Danny speaking at the Symposium, Annual British Sociological Association Medical Sociology conference

Danny Dorling speaking at the Edinburgh Book festival

Invited talk to Baillie Gifford Fund Managers

Teenagers getting their results this week have little choice but to scramble for a university place and face the huge debt now involved

The Cock and Bull Festival 2015 Summer Sunday Debate

Welcome to West Asia!

Plenary lecture by Danny Dorling and Bethan Thomas at the Census Applications Conference

Expert panel discusses the relationship between London and the rest of the UK

Danny Dorling and Richard Brooks reflect on what fairness really means – from social justice to pure luck

Danny speaking on Russia Today

A short introduction to injustice

Danny speaking at the Way with words Festival

Talk at the Way with words Festival

Classrooms are crumbling and inequality is getting worse, but the government’s priorities are more testing and free schools

Annual Education Lecture, King’s College London

In the five years since the first edition of Injustice there have been devastating increases in poverty, hunger and destitution in the UK.

Recording from the Bristol Festival of Ideas

Danny speaking at Wood Farm Primary School, Oxford

Why Social Inequality still persists, Oxford Empathy Festival

Looking back six generations is a ‘utopian trick’. And looking back at the last six generations suggests that capitalism might have been a transition.

Talk with Mary O’Hara and Danny Dorling at the Hay Festival

Class of 2015, joint Junior Common Rooms of Trinity, Corpus Christi, St Anne’s, Pembroke and Exeter colleges

People on both the left and the right construct their stories, testaments and beliefs as to the way to behave.

Utopias, Temporalities and Futures: Critical Considerations for Social Change Symposium

After Dinner Speech, Halford Mackinder Geography Society at Christ Church College, Oxford

Levellers’ Day Panel discussion

Royal Town and Planning Institute Seminar

Danny Dorling and Madsen Pirie discussing the green belt and housing

Living in a highly unequal society for me means living in a socially dysfunctional society. I live in England.

Danny speaking at the Swindon Literary Festival

Ten research-intensive universities in the South of England will get more than £2,000 each year in quality-related research funding for every student at the institution

Jenny Jones and Danny Dorling discussing

Premature deaths of black Americans alter politics, shows study

What Labour’s plans would mean for higher education

The young and the old know all about renting – it’s those born in the Fifties who managed to cash in

Danny speaking at the PPE course of My Life My Choice

Danny speaking at the SOAS Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Danny in conversation with David Runciman discussing Inequality and the 1%

IMF forecasts show that Britain could join a tiny group of European countries that have shrunk the size of their states dramatically

Panel discussion at the Festival of Debate

Keynote Address at the Annual Geographical Association Lecture

They might think they are comfortably well-off. But middle-income Britons are poorer relative to the super-wealthy than their counterparts anywhere else in Europe

Tariq Ali in conversation with Danny Dorling

Danny speaking at the Free University of London, LSE Occupied

Using newly available data from the Department for Work and Pensions, Danny Dorling, professor of Geography at the University of Oxford and Simon Szreter, professor of History and Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, have mapped child poverty by constituency across the UK.

Video recording of a talk given at the networking event on the eve of the ESRC First Year Student Conference

Audio recording of The People’s Parliament, House of Commons, London

Danny speaking at a Green Party event

Hele Skjervold, Afternposten’s London correspondent, explains inequalities in London to her Norwegian readers.

The housing crisis is already out of control, and no one in politics wants to help

Talk at Innovations in policy, design, funding and delivery, Affordable Housing Conference

Several thousand people are expected to gather in London for a rally calling for more homes in the UK.

The largest falls in the proportions of households that are neither wealthy or poor has been in outer boroughs of London.

Faced with a £3bn repair bill, is the Palace of Westminster still the best place for MPs to meet?

Paperback launch event at City Hall London

Danny Dorling speaking on BBC inside out North East and Cumbria

Student Society invited Lecture, SOAS

Average house prices in the South East, and especially London, rose even faster during 2014 (January to December) than in the same period of 2013, says new research

The average price of sold houses in England and Wales has more than doubled since 1995

A home-owning majority in Britain was a one-generation blip. But if we are becoming a renting country again, we’ll need better regulation

Can today’s British youth “have a life that isn’t simply working to get the money to pay the rent”?

Danny speaking at Inequality and New Economics

The latest admissions data show that the higher education sector is a safe haven in troubled times. With few other options available to school-leavers, universities have opened their doors to unprecedented numbers of young people from an unprecedentedly wide range of backgrounds.

Danny in conversation with Paul Watt

Brian Nolan, Danny Dorling and Fran Bennett speaking about inequality at the 21st Century Challenges Conference

The interview was made in November 2014 and published on Long Term Economy in January 2015

Keynote by Danny Dorling held at the Annual Geography Teacher Education Conference, Hawkwell House Hotel, Iffley, Oxford

Danny speaking speaking at the Cardiff Anti-Bedroom Tax Group, Unite Building, Cardiff

In conversation with Danny Dorling at the Oxford Inequality Series organised by the Oxford Hub

Danny discussing with Ben Southwood of the Adam Smith Institute

This is an extract from a paper published in Social Science and medicine

Danny and the business minister Matt Hancock debate economic growth on BBC Newsnight