Category: Sociology in the News

  • Coronavirus has made the rich richer and the poor poorer

    30% of those with savings of more than £12000 before Coronavirus have seen their savings increase since the pandemic, compared to only 10% of those with no savings. This is because the closing of so many shops and restaurants has meant high income households have had reduced opportunities to spend their money and so have…

  • Coronavirus Media Narratives

    While Coronavirus is no doubt a real-life event, with real-life social and (for an extreme minority tragic) individual consequences, it is also very much a media event, especially since isolation is correlated with a significant increase our media consumption with news sites especially seeing a surge in visits (U.S. data)… Social media usage (Facebook, Twitter,…

  • Why is the Italian Covid-19 Death Rate so High Compared to Other Countries?

    The Italian covid-19 mortality rate is so high because they record the number of people dying with the disease RATHER than deaths from the disease.

  • Why the Covid-19 Death Rate might be misleading

    The latest figures show that 6% of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 die of the disease. A 6% death rate, and only a 94% survival rate, I don’t fancy those odds! However, writing in The Spectator, Dr John Lee points out that these death rates may be misleading, and that Covid-19 is possibly…

  • Sociological Perspectives on HS2

    Sociological perspectives on HS2 – functionalism, marxism, interactionism, feminism and post-late modernism.

  • Blue Monday

    ‘Blue Monday’ is apparently the most ‘depressing’ day of the year… Accept it’s not. It’s actually the day of the year on which people are most likely to book a holiday, based on the following formula: A psychologist called Cliff Arnall came up with the formula in 2005. He developed it on behalf Travel (a…

  • Contemporary Sociology: The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal by the Russian State

    Contemporary Sociology: The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal by the Russian State

    The recent ‘russian spy poisoning’ is relevant to many areas of the A-level sociology specification, such as state-crime, globalisation and even consensus and conflict theory.

  • Is Capitalism on the Wane?

    John Mcdonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor today announced Labour’s plans to renationalise the railways and many other public utilities at no cost to the public. Does this mean that Jeremy Corbyn’s rejection of contemporary capitalism is now the new mainstream, and/ or does this represent the end of Capitalism as we know it? It does seem…

  • Why is the NHS in Crisis? Yes, it’s neoliberalism – AGAIN!

    The Daily Mail  and their Tory beneficiaries would have you think that the current crisis within the NHS are caused mainly by a combination of the following variables: Winter Viruses Inefficiency Immigrants Lazy Staff Drunks HOWEVER, this is not the case according to some more in-depth analysis by Ravi Jayaram, an NHS consultant (in The Guardian), who…

  • Trump’s Tweets…

    Donald Trump’s recent retweets of inflammatory anti-Muslim videos posted by the far right group ‘Britain First’ sparked outrage last week, a row which intensified when Theresa May said it was wrong for him to do so, which in turn prompted a twitter rebuke from Donald Trump in which he said suggested she should be focusing…