It’s easy to dismiss ‘nanny state’ regulation as a minor nuisance but the underlying paternalism of those who wish to … Continue reading “Why can’t nanny state campaigners at least admit that they’re anti-liberal paternalists?”

Disentangling ourselves from the EU after four decades will be fiendishly complicated but some elements of Brexit are refreshingly simple … Continue reading “The low-hanging fruit on the Brexit tree: repeal the Tobacco Products Directive”

‘Until 1914’, wrote the historian A.J.P. Taylor, ‘a sensible, law-abiding Englishmen could pass through life and hardly notice the existence … Continue reading “The Nanny State Index – whatever happened to ‘liberal Britain’”

When the NHS was created in 1948, Aneurin Bevan believed that healthcare spending would fall as the population became healthier. … Continue reading “Healthy lives cost money”

The chart below has been retweeted thousands of times on Twitter in the past week, accompanied by such pearls of … Continue reading “A rising tide that lowers the boats? On wage growth and labour market performance since the crash”

I was on The Big Questions (BBC1) recently talking about poverty. Specifically I was trying to help answer the question ‘Will … Continue reading “It’s not all doom and gloom. Beware politicised forecasts”

Last month saw the publication of a Public Health England (PHE) report on alcohol which promoted various interventions in the … Continue reading “Public Health England: a tax-funded neo-temperance campaign group”

150 years after Karl Marx first proposed it, the theory of immiseration continues to have an uncanny hold on the … Continue reading “How Danny Dorling (and Oxfam) recycle Karl Marx’s wretched ‘immiseration theory’”

Every once in a while, Oxfam likes to talk about inequality in the UK, though God knows what that has … Continue reading “Oxfam’s inequality fabrications”