The demographer Paul Morland caused controversy at the weekend by arguing that Britain needs to tax the childless to tackle our declining birth rate. Intervening in people’s fertility decisions is tricky territory, especially given the storm over the US rolling back abortion rights. But Morland is right that this isn’t a subject we can duck. […]
This week marked a turning point in our journey to Net Zero. For the first time, the debate focused on how we’ll get there, with little noise about whether it’s the right destination. There was little discussion, however, about one of the trickiest challenges: how we ensure green policies alleviate hardship rather than making the […]
Private schools aren’t charities and we shouldn’t treat them as if they are. The services they provide aren’t primarily for public benefit, they’re for the benefit of those who can afford them. Yes, they offer bursaries and a few other nods to the public good. That’s no different to thousands of businesses with corporate social […]
July has been a bumper month for rich blokes going into space. It’s therefore also been a bumper month for outrage and ridicule. On July 11, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic ‘spaceplane’ flew, not into space, but to the edge of it. The mission lasted two and a half hours, so about the same as my […]
Last week the Government published the UK’s first official statistics showing how many people are going without food because they can’t afford it. Some of the findings are startling: 43% of those receiving Universal Credit are food insecure. And these statistics represent the situation between April 2019 and March 2020: before the pandemic took hold, […]
