How the ONS rewrote Britain’s productivity statistics, and why the government’s economic strategy has a rather awkward problem. Nine years ago I accidentally lied to the Office for National Statistics. I was taking part in the Labour Force Survey. My working hours varied enormously, the questionnaire wasn’t very good at coping with this, and eventually … Read more
Three months after Durham High School closed its doors for the final time, the future of its 13.77-acre site on South Road may be about to become clearer. The administrators have announced that prospective purchasers for the land and buildings must submit their best and final offers by 29 October, following what the selling agents … Read more
There is some good news coming for your electricity bill next week. From 1 October the government is temporarily abolishing the 5% VAT charged on domestic electricity. The Treasury reckons that will save the average household about £45 a year. Unfortunately, on precisely the same day, the energy price cap is going up. From October … Read more
I went to school in Durham. Belmont Comp, then Durham Johnston. Durham High School for Girls was posh. Prim green uniforms. This will be the first year since the late nineteenth century that there isn’t a new intake at DHS. It closed over the summer, following a takeover by a Chinese education company. There are … Read more
Football is exciting. Accountancy less so. The transfer window has closed and Premier League clubs are once again spending extraordinary amounts of money on footballers, over £3 billion. That follows more than £3 billion spent in summer 2025 and just under £2 billion in 2024. £1.29bn (43%) of that money was transfers within the Premier … Read more
Commonwealth nations are pressing King Charles for some form of reparations for slavery. This is a question that isn’t going away. Predictably, outraged online right-wingers are outraged about this. But there are really two separate questions: should Britain pay reparations for slavery? And, if so, how? The first question should be the easy one. Britain … Read more
A few years ago I proposed Chadwick’s laws of Government: I was working for a DWP quango in 2010, and sitting on the commercial board of DWP. It was the age of austerity, and Osborne proposed huge cuts to Government to free up money for tax. I would be the first to admit that Government … Read more
The funeral 8th May 1980. The funeral of Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia. From Moscow came Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union; from Washington, Vice-President Walter Mondale and the President’s mother, Lillian Carter. Margaret Thatcher came for Britain, Helmut Schmidt for West Germany, and from the other Germany came Erich Honecker. President … Read more
Last week I published a blog based on interviews with Iain Carlisle or the Grand Orange Lodge, and Doug Beattie, MLA. While talking to Iain Carlisle of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, he used a phrase I hadn’t heard before. “Economic unionists.” He wasn’t talking about people like himself. For Iain, Britishness is historical, … Read more
Another week, another set of shop closures.Retailers and restaurant owners complain about rising costs, newspapers publish photographs of boarded-up shops, and inevitably somebody blames the Government. There is some justification for this. In April 2025 the National Living Wage increased by 6.7%, from £11.44 to £12.21 an hour. At the same time employers’ National Insurance … Read more