Much of Western Europe is living beyond its means, with current welfare programmes promising benefits that are not fully financed by today’s taxpayers, thereby shifting the bill to future generations through debt, higher future taxes, or reduced services.

That someone would like to do something to make pubs great again is welcome.

Many commentators have noted that poor health diet and habits seem more prevalent among lower income groups.

One of the decisions of the past that could be seen to have been in error is the closing of the asylums and the outsourcing of the necessary attention to Care in the Community.

Greenland has a population is about 57,000.

The latest and greatest medical treatment for something that ails all too much of society is now available for one hour’s average work a week.

The Adam Smith Institute approaches 2026 with confidence, not because it underestimates the problems Britain faces, but because it believes those problems can be solved, and because it intends to spend the year proposing solutions to them.

The UK is poised for a rise in unemployment in 2026 fuelled by the collapse of “zombie” companies that have struggled to adapt to a rise in business costs, according to a report.

Although 2025 was, in Edward Gibbon’s words, ‘a register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind,’ with the usual acts of terror and mass murder, earthquakes, floods and wildfires, one of the biggest stories was not about politics or nature, but about science.

Or, apparently, government isn’t simply the things we do together. Even, it’s possible to do things together without it being government - at which point Edmund Burke and the Little Platoons win once again.

It appears that The Spirit Level’s much vaunted finding about inequality - that it makes us all miserable in and of itself - is not, quite, wholly true:

Apparently Uber is allowed to trade under the same terms as all other taxi hailing operations: