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Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

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Zed Books's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/zed books
Bio: Zed is celebrating 30 years as one of the most distinctive voices in independent, progressive publishing. Over the last three decades we have published more than 1,000 titles. Each of these book... (More)

All Books Blogs

MARAIS:7 Reasons why a Universal Income makes Sense in Middle-Income Countries

By Zed Books at Dec 08, 2011


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South Africa, like many other middle-income countries, is rich but plagued by high unemployment combined with a high poverty rate. In such contexts, social policy has a key role to play in alleviating poverty – but which form should it take? Brazil has gone the conditional cash transfer route with Bolsa Familia but, in this week’s Global Labour Column, Hein Marais provides seven compelling reasons for using a Universal Income Grant to alleviate poverty. Marais argues that while job creation is essential, it has to be part of “a wider realisation of social rights”.

Not only would a universal income grant lift the unemployed out of poverty, it would also provide economic independence to unskilled workers who receive low wages. Moreover, because a universal income grant would be given to everyone, the cumbersome administration associated with means-tested grants can be avoided. Finally, a universal income grant would allow women who are not employed in the labour market to be paid for the social reproduction conducted in the home. All in all, it is an emancipatory tool that would immediately reduce“the depth and scale of impoverishment”. Writer and journalist Hein Marais is the author of the new book South Africa Pushed to the Limit: The political economy change, published by UCT Press and Zed Books. It is available online and at good bookstores.

Here are 7 reasons why a universal income grant makes more sense.

  1. Earning a decent secure wage is not a prospect for millions of South Africans..
  2. Having a job does not automatically shield against poverty.
  3. Social grants separate millions from destitution but it is ill-suited to today's realities.
  4. Targeted and means-tested social protection is burdensome, costly and humiliating administration.
  5. A universal income is developmental and would boost wellbeing.
  6. A universal income can be powerful emancipatory tool, especially for workers.
  7. A universal income treats women as citizens, not merely as caregivers and bearers of children.

Read the full reasons click here. 

 

 

 

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