A century ago you had to be rich to get any kind of choice over your clothes. And if you weren’t in the upper echelons of society you could forget going on a foreign holiday. Today, mass production ensures there is an abundance of clothes to choose from at all budgets, and cheap flights have […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Bath, where councillors are at loggerheads over the concept of safety. I dislike Bath, and do not think it agrees with me, and yet Bath is to be my home? Aren’t you full of surprises? I didn’t have you down as a fan of Jane Austen, and here you […]
Can you imagine anything worse than a foreign company whose software saved lives, cut NHS waiting lists, put more police on the beat and reduced crime? It’s appalling, isn’t it? No British government or public sector body should have any dealings with such a company. Obviously. Much better to let patients die, cut police jobs […]
I was in a field in Kent as the local election results came in. As an unapologetic adherent of the metropolitan elite, it’s not my natural environment. But over the weekend it became increasingly clear that I’m not the only Londoner who’s out of touch with the rest of the country. The capital is now […]
Even though the final local election results won’t be declared for a while yet, it’s clear there are glum faces in our two traditionally-biggest parties, an enormous trademark grin from Nigel Farage at Reform UK, and that Zack Polanski’s Greens are on the march. The populist parties aren’t gaining because they discovered a magical […]
The Green Party is proposing that CEO salaries should be capped at ten times the minimum pay within a company. Given the current leadership of the Greens, this is not surprising. But what is surprising is that, according to a YouGov poll 65% of Brits seem to agree – including 77% of Labour, 58% of […]
The Green Party has a new plan to solve the housing crisis that is simple: make it worse. With local elections looming, the Greens are set to offer rent controls and various measures against ‘commercial housebuilders’ as part of their local election offer. It is the political equivalent of treating a fever by smashing the […]
We are facing one of those delightful clashes between equity and efficiency. Sadly, it looks like equity might win, which would mean a ‘fairer’ society – by the estimation of some people – but also a decidedly poorer one. I refer to this from Zack Polanski – the unthinking man’s Left populist du jour: ‘And […]
Amid some brief research about the new MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, I came across her campaign against a boutique poverty measure I hadn’t previously been aware of: ‘furniture poverty’. The campaign ‘End Furniture Poverty’ defines someone in furniture poverty as being unable to access or afford furniture or appliances that are ‘essential […]
The Green Party’s victory in last week’s Gorton and Denton by-election was a grim indicator of where British politics could be heading. With 40% of the vote, Hannah Spencer won her campaign by stirring the pot of local sectarianism; releasing campaign videos in Urdu and Bengali, accusing the Government of funding ‘genocide’ in Gaza, and […]
There is something endearingly ridiculous about Matt Goodwin. The gamekeeper turned poacher of national populism is like the Alan Partridge of political studies: self-important but not self-aware and in a relentless pursuit of self-promotion. He was responsible, during his (very) brief time as a ConservativeHome columnist, for the funniest article that I have ever edited. […]
This week’s edition of Nimby Watch comes to you from the under-reported and frankly underrated borough of Islington, North London… I see we’re really pushing out the boat on the Nimby Watch travel budget this week, then? Yes, we are in what is indisputably London’s greatest borough – Islington. And yes, that does happen to […]
How can people without capital be expected to believe in capitalism? This is the challenge of our age, as ‘own nothing and be happy’ hardens into a new dividing line in Western politics. Westminster risks ignoring the emerging political economy of housing, even as public anger grows. Green Party leader Zack Polanski is already courting […]
On Friday, in a back-and-forth tweet with Daniel Finkelstein, Zack Polanski wrote: When you interviewed me – you asked me repeatedly and I told you repeatedly GDP is a terrible way to measure health & well-being. As a Tory peer who also is a radio host – you seemed confused by that. It’s also a […]
A wealth tax is a hugely attractive concept for many, as it sounds simple and fair: the wealthy, of course, are those whom we ought to be taxing, since they have, as Labour politicians forever remind us, the ‘broadest shoulders’. It is certainly popular with the voters, and a YouGov poll last week found that […]
For Trumpians, tariffs have become an all-purpose tool, which supposedly achieves multiple policy objectives all at once. Tariffs are presented as an easy way to raise revenue (‘a tax on a foreign country’). They are also presented as a tool to discourage imports, and thereby stimulate domestic production. Thirdly, tariffs are also presented as a […]
Europe has been hit by a Green wave in politics, with environmentalists structurally outperforming establishment social democrat parties. But it isn’t so much about climate change as it is a rebranding of socialism for young voters. Beware of the consequences. The Green Wave Green parties, as a phenomenon, have their origins in Europe. In the […]
According to the Green Party, we should have a new economic target: leisure time. This, they argue, should be a formal measure of the economy. Our free time should be measured on an annual basis and be continually rising. And why not? Leisure is great. Leisure is valuable. And so the more we have of […]
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