Could a degree make you less employable?
A few years ago my employer, the advertising agency Ogilvy, introduced a recruitment scheme called ‘The Pipe’. It was a…
Why don’t we order houses from a catalogue?
One possible solution to the housing crisis is to convene a group of experts in property, housebuilding, planning and local…
My portable charger obsession
A femtosecond, derived from the Danish word femte meaning ‘fifteen’, is a unit of time in the International System of…
Why men are the disposable sex
I am a proud father. Both my daughters got good degrees. But better still, they smoke, go to pubs and…
To win, the Tories should be the party of motorists
The path to electoral success at the next election is straightforward. Just follow what I call the Channel 5 strategy.…
The customer isn’t always far-right
One of Dominic Cummings’s many insights in the run-up to the Brexit referendum was that ‘most people were both more…
Why YouTube Premium beats the BBC
YouTube has now overtaken ITV to become Britain’s second most watched media service, beaten only narrowly by the BBC. Hardly…
My plan for a wealth tax – with a difference
Reading Careless People, an exposé of life within Facebook written by a Kiwi, it occurred to me that one potential…
Land value and the Somebody Else’s Problem paradox
‘The Somebody Else’s Problem field can be run for years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies…
The roundabout is a symbol of British liberty
In my last article, I introduced you to the ‘paceometer’, which shows how the relationship between an extra unit of…
Why driving at 80mph won’t save you time
The device you see on this page is called a ‘paceometer’ and was devised by behavioural scientists Eyal Peer and…
The rise and rise of the ‘tantric sector’
For the past 25 years I have commuted to London from Otford, a delightful village outside Sevenoaks. I do this…
In defence of the Trump playbook
The standard explanation for why charges for plastic bags reduced waste is economic. People were reluctant to pay 10p for…
A challenge for the electric car sceptics
I once heard of a couple who were teachers in their mid-fifties. Having pooled the proceeds from selling both their…
How emotions shape our decision-making
Ask any estate agent: most potential house buyers arrive with a detailed list of criteria for their new home, only…
Texas is the perfect holiday destination
Business travel isn’t quite the perk it is cracked up to be. For one thing, you have no say about…
The unsayable case for cars
Rob Henderson is justly famous for coining the phrase ‘luxury beliefs’. These are opinions which are unshakeably held irrespective of…
Why the restaurant world hates beer drinkers
I’ve always thought working in hospitality is like getting a free MBA – but one rooted in the real world…
What’s the point in spending a fortune on a wedding?
I follow the YouTube postings of a maverick young economist called Gary Stevenson, author of The Trading Game. Whatever you…
The case for a daily limit on social media posts
A few years ago, my old school magazine featured a pupil’s brief account of a geography field trip. Before the…
How to get your husband to do the vacuuming
This column nearly didn’t happen. Just as I sat down to write, disaster! My dishwasher lost its connection to the…
Has email destroyed decision-making?
The discourse around ‘flexible working’ has degenerated into a narrow debate over whether people come into the office on three…
The case for ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Ugliness’
I was leaving the car park of my local shop yesterday – a manoeuvre which involves a hair-raising reverse on…
In defence of BA’s new loyalty scheme
One of my favourite cartoons shows a couple sitting in luxury at the front of a plane, the wife peeking…
What’s really killing business
Late in the evening six months ago, my wife and I were driving back to our hotel in the dark…
