For insurance/customs purposes, we’re having to list and value everything we own. I would recommend the exercise to everyone. I’ve tried to halve our possessions since we moved to Malawi but it’s still quite obscene how much we own and its value. Maybe I need to aim for two-thirds reduction instead?

The European Council meeting tonight and tomorrow will be unbelievably important for several reasons. One of them is that it should determine the EU response to the fossil energy price shock that has been triggered by the situation in the Middle East.

Something I’ll miss about living in Malawi - being able to purchase a beautiful painting on the side of the road 🇲🇼 artist Sergio Kasongo (resident of a refugee camp just outside Lilongwe, having fled from DRC in 2016)

Our senior policy advisor @lerayner.bsky.social is back with another Future-Fit Policy Watch blog - this time on the painful price Europe is paying for #fossilfuel dependence. 🔒 ↪️ Can the Iran war be an overdue 'Zeitenwende’ for EU energy independence? 🔗 zoe-institut.de/en/news/futu...

#proudmummoment as my son chose the importance of green spaces for communities as his passion project at school. Last night’s exhibition was the culmination of several month’s work, as well as taking action doing a litter pick at Lilongwe Wildlife Centre 🌍

Couldn’t be more delighted that these companies are going to have to stand responsible for their actions. It took me more than 2 hours to work out how to delete a YouTube account last week. Enough time for me to decide that they’re deliberately awful platforms rather than accidentally awful.

Forbes@forbes.com · 4mo ago

The lawsuit concerned allegations that Meta covered up its platforms’ impact on children's mental health and its knowledge of child exploitation online.

Excellent #GRANULAR Knowledge Transfer Accelerator Bootcamp today, exploring how we measure and monitor rural development in the EU. I got an opportunity to preach #BeyondGDP policymaking, and why we should always be using sustainable & inclusive wellbeing indicators to measure what matters 🌍

I guess I won’t find guys like this in the kitchen sink once we leave Lilongwe for Vienna… 🇲🇼

At long last, the Industrial Accelerator Act is out. #MadeInEU criteria and robust European employment requirements for foreign direct investment feature, despite political fights. ‘Made in EU’ criteria can support EU prosperity and social cohesion, if used wisely: zoe-institut.de/en/publicati...

Strategic use of European Preference Criteria

European Preference Criteria – so-called ‘Made in EU’ criteria – are a means to support EU industries, boost manufacturing and protect employment. This paper presents a structured seven-step framework...

zoe-institut.de

I’ve really appreciated the focus Martin Wolf has put on the issue of demographic change and the situation of mothers over the past few months. All of the past columns on this issue are well worth a read.

FT Edit@ftedit.ft.com · 5mo ago

Mothers pay a heavy economic price. Want them to have more children? Help them, argues Martin Wolf. Read the full story on #FTEdit 👉 ft.trib.al/M9Gjgf1

In this month's @zoe-institute.bsky.social newsletter I reflected on European unity (or lack thereof) as leaders try and make progress on improving #competitiveness, as well as the recent calls by UN Secretary General Guterres to go #beyondGDP. zoe-institut.de/en/news/futu...

Future-Fit Policy Watch – February 2026 - ZOE Institute for Future-fit Economies

In this Future-Fit Policy Watch blog, our in-house 'policy-watcher', Laura Rayner, gives her take on events in and around Brussels. This time she reflects on the EU leaders’ retreat and calls from the...

zoe-institut.de

This is really excellent news, smart politics and I would hazard a guess that Ed Miliband has a hand in it #beyondGDP

Luke Tryl@luketryl.bsky.social · 2y ago

Think this from playbook is a good reposition from Labour - a GDP growth target means very little to people (even more so if it’s unevenly distributed which has caused many of UK’s problems). Shifting the focus to living standards and what the growth is in aid matters much more.

My dear Leuven ❤️ glad others appreciate it as much as I do www.thetimes.com/travel/desti...

Belgium’s quieter under-the-radar alternative to Bruges

Lovely Leuven, outside Brussels, has everything you need for a festive city break: ancient architecture, cobbled streets, breweries … and there’s not a tourist in sight

thetimes.com

I do enjoy the period when European Commissioners are halfway out the door. The speeches and remarks are much more telling 😆 Here is Gentiloni on the new fiscal rules:

How can countries meet the basic needs of their citizens without overburdening the 🌍’s ecosystems? The mainstream economic paradigm is unfit to address this challenge, as it lacks a satisfactory description of how the economy is embedded within broader societal & environmental systems.

Out of curiosity, am reading a bit about the market for farmland. This briefing is from January. "Meanwhile, non-farmer buyers – who are a mix of private and institutional investors and lifestyle buyers – accounted for 56% of sales" rural.struttandparker.com/article/engl...

Agricultural land values in England reached a new record in 2023

Q4 2023 edition of Strutt & Parker’s English Estates & Farmland Market Review which shows that non-farmers bought more farms than farmers in 2023.

rural.struttandparker.com

The moon rising over Lake Malawi

Mothers are working more than in the past - but are still most impacted by childcare requirements. On current progress, it would take until the 2220s to reach gender parity and close the gender parenting gap.

This fascinating MERGE project report presents the findings of survey & interview data which explored the significance of GDP in policymaking, the use of metrics, datasets and models, awareness of #beyondGDP concepts and the barriers and drivers of moving #beyondGDP. mergeproject.eu/survey-report/

A Survey Report on the Perceptions on Beyond-GDP Approach - MERGE

Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the EU’s policies on environmental and social sustainability requires a comprehensive measure of human progress […]

mergeproject.eu

#JUST4ALL project webinar today on empowering and engaging marginalised people in the #justtransition giving me an opportunity to talk about the wonderful Fair Energy Transition for All Project and its valuable lessons on integrating vulnerable people in policymaking fair-energy-transition.eu

In Malawi, the letter L and the letter R are pretty much interchangeable. In one US election when Obama was elected, the front page of the national newspaper led with the headline, “The Great US Erection.” Shame that this time it is such a turn off.

It’s positive to see that Commissioner-Designate Executive Vice-President for People, Skills and Preparedness, Ms Roxana Minzatu has made commitments in her written answers for the Parliamentary hearings in November on #socialinvestment, especially in the context of the #EuropeanSemester.

On the new 🇪🇺 European Commission structures, a few observations. First, it is positive that there is an effort to have cross-cutting themes which better recognises the complexity of policymaking. How this works in terms of DG oversight, cooperation and coordination remains to be seen.

In May, I moderated a roundtable looking at the desirability, feasibility and potential impact of a transformative indicators initiative aiming to overcome the pre-eminence of conventional socio-economic evaluations such as GDP. Here is the final report👇🏼 zenodo.org/records/1368...

You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you? I’m not sure whether this is good or bad…

Such an interesting policy dialogue today @EPC, part of the ToBe Horizon Europe project. It looked at historical efforts of sustainable, forward-looking policymaking, current examples and expectations for the UN Summit of the Future. Watch here👇🏼 eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Planning for the future: Lessons in sustainable policymaking from past and current economies

Planning for the future: Lessons in sustainable policymaking from past and current economies

eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

This is simultaneously a deeply uncomfortable read and a very important one by Adam Tooze on.ft.com/3AIoqJm

Rich countries tilt the scales when it comes to aid

Large-scale western support for Ukraine contrasts with smaller efforts for poor countries that are in dire need

on.ft.com

Oh, my dear Eden, you’re not as angry as I am… lerayner.wordpress.com/2024/08/26/m...

The supermarket in Lilongwe city centre might need to update its magazine offerings at some point

Might not look like much to you but this earned me a spontaneous round of applause. You try drawing a portrait of someone with the paper held on the top of your head! lerayner.wordpress.com/2024/08/23/a...