The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.
1. Sean Kemp in The Guardian
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The Lib Dems’ by-election victory offers a route to their resurgence
“This is the importance of last night’s result, not as a pseudo opinion poll or a straight indicator of how the parties would fare in an election, but as the latest sign that the Liberal Democrats are a valid option for the many people opposed to Brexit and for those worried by a Conservative party that has decided it doesn’t need their votes. For a party that didn’t have enough MPs for a game of five-a-side football a couple of years ago and was still being written off as practically finished as late as this spring, the last few months and the possible opportunities ahead have felt like rain after a very long drought.”
2. Former Tory MP Rob Wilson in The Daily Telegraph
on a different interpretation of last night’s result
The Tories may have lost, but the Brecon by-election bodes well for Boris Johnson
“This was an election that the Lib Dems threw the kitchen sink at and should have been a shoo-in for them. The fact that it wasn’t and that the Conservatives finished a close second, suggests Boris Johnson has got the Conservatives back into play electorally in what is a high risk winner takes all general election strategy. All the same, nothing in this result suggests anything other than ongoing voter unpredictability.”
3. Ed Conway in The Times
on the underlying problem with economics
You can’t always put a price on what matters
“All too often the market price doesn’t reflect real, underlying value. The classic example is the diamond and water paradox. We would all die without water while diamonds are simply sparkling lumps of carbon, so why is water much cheaper? The answer is that diamonds are scarce and people seem to like them a lot; water, on the other hand, is relatively abundant. Then again, for someone lost in the middle of the Sahara water might well be worth more than a diamond, which underlines another important lesson: price is in the eye of the beholder. The idea that prices are subjective rather than absolute is at the heart of modern economics but it wasn’t always so. Adam Smith and Karl Marx both believed it was possible to work out an objective value for everything from a diamond to a pin manufactured in a factory. That idea went out of fashion about 150 years ago when neoclassical economists decided that what really mattered were the choices we made and the prices we were willing to pay.”
4. Sean O-Grady in The Independent
on the war on plastics
Recycling isn’t going to save the planet – we need to get tough and punish people for using plastic
“We should always be clear; recycling is not going to save the planet. It will merely delay its inevitable demise, and by a relatively insignificant amount in the great cosmic scheme of things. The real problem is our vast over-consumption of everything, and, of course, in such an unsustainable way. So we need to do much, much more to live greener lives, and for that we need more financial incentives (and penalties).”
5. Anna Leszkiewicz in the New Statesman
on how entertainment portrays real-life issues
TV’s climate change problem
“Supernatural or dystopian stories, despite their parallels with reality, often depict environmental apocalypse as spontaneous or unavoidable, or instigated by inscrutable evil. Zombie apocalypses, unexplained toxins and divine intervention are sexier and less discomfiting villains than sheer human arrogance and indifference. But there are ready-made villains for climate narratives, and they look a lot like you and me.”
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