Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett are back to tell us that inequality makes us miserable, causes crime and, ultimately, kills. The authors of The Spirit Level, a screed against inequality, have just published a follow up, The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being. The Spirit Level was ably demolished by […]
We’ve just been handed a get-out-of-jail free card over NHS funding. Contrary to recent reports, we just need to be doing more of what we are and she’ll be fine. That’s the lesson to take from today’s story about how a computer has learnt to identify skin cancers with more accuracy than human doctors. As […]
The IFS has released a report today calling for an increase in taxes to fund the NHS. This would amount to a four per cent increase in health spending and cost £2,000 per household. This is the same old story. Hardly a day goes by without stories of how cash-strapped the service is and how […]
Five years ago, the nation’s favourite culinary millionaire, Jamie Oliver, bemoaned the manner in which poor Britons were happy to spend money on a “massive fucking TV” but still choose to eat “chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers”. Perhaps this is because, as Oliver’s own website informs us, “Without question, the humble fried potato, […]
In recent decades, China’s suicide rate has declined more rapidly than any other country’s. It has fallen from among the world’s highest rates in the 1990s, to among the lowest — below the US and only slightly higher than the UK. Rural women are responsible for the lion’s share of the decline. Unlike in most […]
In 2015 there were 134 student suicides at UK universities, the highest figures on record, and three suspected suicides have been recorded among students at Bristol University in just the last three weeks. With almost half of all young people attending university and 75 per cent of mental health issues becoming established before age 24, […]
The Resolution Foundation published a report this week, “The New Generational Contract”, aimed at redressing the breakdown of a contract between baby boomers and millennials: namely that pensioners’ social care is being paid for by today’s taxpayers (millennials) who cannot afford baby boomer-priced houses. The report is debilitated by two crippling misunderstandings. First, that millennials […]
You probably don’t understand the world very well. At least you didn’t before reading Factfulness, a rather wonderful little book by the late doctor, educator and public health guru Hans Rosling. If you are among the 35m or so people who have watched the Swede’s lectures on YouTube, you may be familiar with his natty […]
Imagine a version of history in which the National Health Service had never been created. What would healthcare in Britain look like today? Would we have luxury healthcare for the rich, and Wild West medicine for the poor? Would people live in fear of being bankrupted by medical bills? Would the poor have to choose between […]
NHS England is the UK’s largest quango. It is one of the most complex organisations in the world, yet is run according to a model designed for small agencies without responsibilities to deliver services directly to the public. Crucially, this also means it is constantly exposed to political meddling and under siege from a plethora […]
When it comes to designing public policy, it’s never good to be wrong in both strategy and tactics. But that appears to be what is happening with the various public health campaigns on sugar and diet. The problem, as some are belatedly finding out, is that we humans are an ‘ornery lot. For example, the […]
A standard trope of British politics today is that the National Health Service needs ever greater amounts of money. New medicines, it is claimed, are horrifically expensive and we’ve just got to divert more of everyone’s money through the tax system to pay for them. This is not so. Indeed, it’s an inversion of the […]
The last ten years have witnessed an explosion of government regulation. Never before were the people’s health and financial well-being subject to as much state intervention. This despite the fact that the world is today healthier and richer than ever before in history. But regulators haven’t always had it so good. At the end of […]
According to The Lancet, deaths from non-communicable diseases are rising globally and that something must be done about it. This is a strangely negative spin on what is fundamentally good news. In fact, it is a result of the great victories of us humans against pestilence. We are all going to die of something and […]
From fears that a trade agreement with the US will lead to an American takeover of the NHS, to hand-wringing over the “wrong” products entering our market, public hysteria about a US/UK trade deal has reached epidemic levels. And now, anti-American sentiment, long a hallmark of the chattering classes, has found its way into the […]
There has been much debate in recent months as to whether or not the UK should leave the Customs Union with the EU. Doing so could result in additional costs to UK businesses, but also gives the UK the ability to strike free trade deals with the rest of the world and to set its […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
