This week’s post takes foreign policy as first serving the people of the UK, then our friends, then the rest of the world. Once this was known as “realism”.

We do - no really, we do - wonder what goes through minds like these: UK urged not to exploit poor countries in rush for critical minerals

There is a strong case for proposing that those living on the basic UK State Pension or the National Minimum Wage should be exempt from income tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs).

We await the usual insistences as a result of this story: Thames Water refuses to rule out a hosepipe ban as drought looms.

Taxation is collected under the threat of punishment such as fines, asset seizure, or imprisonment, making it non-consensual.

One of those differences between political, bureaucratic, action and markets. In a market environment the Dodd Frank rules on conflict minerals would be dead and buried now.

My colleague, Dr Eamonn Butler, will not like this proposal at all because he has expressed the view that Bank holidays are an anachronism that should be abolished, although he did once grudgingly tell the ASI staff that they could take Christmas morning off.

The only correct answer to that question is that we’re all as rich as Croesus.

One idea to improve UK national healthcare has been the proposal to give everyone an NHS debit card they could use to access private treatment if the NHS delay in treating them were deemed unacceptably long.

Back in the mists of time the British Government hired Sir Nick, now Lord, Stern to produce a great big 1,200 page report on climate change.

This post risks an ungracious tone, a few days after learning that Trump’s first trade deal is with the UK.

A little example of what near everyone gets wrong about trade.