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Torsten BellHuffPost |
An interesting history lesson this week. We’re all used to stories about the inbreeding of monarchies across early modern Europe. Austria’s...
We’re not very productive. Stagnant productivity is the reason wages have flatlined since 2008, leaving our pay packets £14,000 lighter than if...
In policy making, as in life, the goal is to recognise when you have a problem, without getting it out of perspective. Otherwise nothing gets done....
As the dust settles on the budget, it’s time to reflect on the real task facing anyone trying to govern Britain. The tax cuts announced are paid for...
The budget hasn’t moved the polls. They never do. But it may mark a change in politics. Why? Because it didn’t prioritise pensioners. The...
It’s important to worry about the right things. Interest rates are up, sparking worries about our debts – in my case, the mortgage. Consumer debt...
That was a grim week for British politics. Making an unspeakable tragedy in the Middle East about ourselves takes some doing, but the Commons managed...
There are so many elections this year but how to go about winning them? Labour has a sub-optimal, but impressively consistent strategy: waiting...
Almost none of the long-term changes people said the pandemic would bring have turned out to be true. The gratitude and respect for carers and lower...
What makes us happy? I don’t mean in general – this isn’t a column about the good life, your plans to escape to the country or the latest...
Competition policy normally focuses on the dangers of big companies exploiting consumers. Thus, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced...
There’s an election coming and you should vote, but a healthy democracy requires more of its citizens than rocking up to the polling booth. Ideally,...
The meaning of life? Famously 42, according to a supercomputer asked “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” in Douglas...
Inflation is down. The rate of annual price rises fell to 4.6% in October, from double digits back in March. As Rishi Sunak reminds us, inflation has...
I have a tea problem, drinking far too much since my teens. The addiction is bad, though cheap as addictions go. My justification is that there are so...
Britain has huge strengths, but it is now impossible to miss that we’re in a phase of relative decline. A year or two of poor productivity growth...
There’s lots of chat about slimming down the UK’s civil service – it’s grown by 25% since the Brexit referendum (albeit only back to its...
The biggest tax cuts since the 1980s were announced last week, but also published were official forecasts confirming that the tax burden was rising to...
Should we envy Americans? There are the wonderful national parks, but also the widely available firearms. Purely on the economics, though, millennials...
If TikTok is to be believed, all the cool kids are trainspotters these days. Luckily, economists can get in on the act, because transport connections...
We got the official data on UK earnings last week. It included the joyful reminder that last year our pay didn’t keep up with rising prices, for the...
Good schools are good, for the children and for the parents’ blood pressure. But what gets us good schools? An effective headteacher helps....
Are you in the right job? We spend so much of our life working that this is a question people ask themselves a lot. But what actually helps match...
We tell the kids not to worry if they’re not “cool” at school. A common reassurance is that the nerds shall inherit, if not the Earth, then at...
W e need to talk about economic change – how fast it’s happening and what it looks like when it does. Everyone says technology means economic...
T here’s a lot more wrong with UK public investment than HS2. I see that as a governor of a small primary school relying on parents to support new...
L iz Truss is back in the news, but a small state is out of fashion – or at least with the punters. The new British social attitudes survey finds...
G lobal politics might not feel quite as grim as it did a few years back, but there’s still a lot of populism around: about a quarter of countries...
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have reshuffled their top teams. The Labour leader has probably done so for the last time before asking the country if...