27 June

Politicians who believe we live in economies, not societies, adore transport projects. Do we stop and ask why? Transport is displacement, and displacement is dispossession. Taking goods and people from where they live, and shifting them somewhere else. That's all 'the Economy' is. Imagine a leader announcing tens of billions in spending to help people work from home, to strengthen neighbourhood resilience. It won't happen when the Economy is the priority. A 'job' is the key thing there - work divorced from location. It's no accident that conservative politicians prioritise 2 things in this pandemic - getting borders open, getting people back into jobs. The pandemic itself is nothing more than the result of all of this displacement, of people and things. A society of continuous, disconnected movement. If we'd all stayed home for a few weeks, it would never have happened.