Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
Hurrah. Housing is now more ‘affordable’ for first-time buyers than it was a year ago. Or so says Halifax, which has produced figures this morning showing that the average home now costs 6.7 times the earnings of the average worker, down from 7.3 times a year ago. This is thanks to two opposing trends. The
At what point are we going to drop the fiction that acquisitive crime is on the wane and admit that we are in an epidemic of fraud? Today, Barclays Bank has appealed to social media firms – rather than banks like itself – to refund victims of online scams. I am sure that social media companies could
Following last week’s news of unexpectedly strong economic growth in June of 0.5 per cent, today’s retail sales figures for July come as something of a shock. Across the month, the volume of sales fells by 1.2 per cent compared with June, and was 3.2 per cent lower than in July 2022. The fall occurred
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is meant to implore us to ignore hearsay and folklore, and to follow the scientific evidence. So why is it now suddenly promoting the likes of herbal medicine, homeopathy and acupuncture? In a series of tweets this week, the WHO has launched a campaign to extol the virtues of what
Imagine that, just as Britain was closing down for the first Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020, you were 18 years old and had received an offer from the university of your choice, subject to good exam results. The grades proved to be no problem – with all exams cancelled, you were graded in
So, Britain has finally awarded itself the real-terms pay rise that the unions would say workers ‘deserve’. This morning’s inflation figures show that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is up 6.8 per cent in the year to July. Yesterday’s earnings figures showed that wages grew by 7.8 per cent. So, in other words, the UK
I am happy to add my name to many reactionary causes, but sorry, I draw the line at trying to save the urinal from the onward march of the unisex loo. On Sunday, equalities minister Kemi Badenoch published proposals to oblige every new building to incorporate separate toilet facilities for men and women. To be fair
Has a well-meaning international effort to cut pollution from ships contributed to a sudden warming of the waters in the north Atlantic this year? That is the extraordinary claim made this week in an article in Science magazine, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It asserts that limits on the sulphur content
So the economy has defied the predictions of doom once more. The latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning show that the economy grew by 0.5 per cent in June, more than countering a 0.1 per cent fall in May, widely attributed to the extra bank holiday for the coronation.
For once we are having an old-fashioned silly season, with no pandemic, no insurgency by the Taliban, no leadership election in the Tory party and no energy crisis – with the result that a few migrants moving onto a barge has become the main story of the week. Or at least we didn’t seem to
First the good news – the fall in living standards may be coming to an end, with wages starting to run ahead of inflation. Now the bad news: it is as much because wages are rising than inflation is falling – which suggests that high inflation is beginning to become embedded in workers’ expectations. Capital
Have high house prices succeeded where decades of government efforts at regional development have failed? That is, have they managed to redistribute economic development around the country? According to the estate agent Hamptons, nearly one in three buyers looking to move out of London in the first six months of this year was a first
Not so long ago, some were arguing that cheap food was a problem in Britain. We’re unlikely to hear such complaints now that food inflation remained at 17.3 per cent in June, not far off its peak of 19.2 percent in March. Is this a blip? An economist from PwC thinks not and has declared that the ‘era
The Bank of England has raised the base rate yet again, this time to 5.25 per cent, a high not seen since April 2008. Like a child trapped in the back seat of a sweltering car, the response of many people will be: ‘Are we nearly there?’ Many people seem to think so – that
What is duty on alcoholic drinks for: to raise revenue or to make us better, more sober people? A close reading of the new duty rates which were announced in the spring budget, but which come into effect today, provide little enlightenment. You can read them for yourself, but here is a summary: To try to put some sense
There has been plenty of evidence published over the past three years of the severe effects on children’s education and wellbeing of closing schools during Covid lockdowns, but a new study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London (UCL) has a slightly different emphasis – linking children’s social and emotional development
Rishi Sunak has shown no indication that he is considering dumping the government’s legal commitment to achieve net zero by 2050. Nor, so far, has he indicated that he will relax any of the controversial targets for the next decade or so, such as banning new gas boilers or petrol and diesel cars. But his
The lesson from the Uxbridge by-election was clear to both parties: the public will not accept green policies at any price. Whilst in general, the public support cutting carbon emissions and other forms of pollution – support drifts away fast when people are confronted with measures which threaten to make them poorer and their lives
If you want a laugh, I recommend an article which appeared in the March 1998 issue of Scientific American, ‘The End of Cheap Oil’. In it, oil geologists Colin J Campbell and Jean H Laherrere used terribly clever models to tell us that global oil production would peak around 2004-05, after which we would be
Expanding London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) may be a bad policy, a regressive tax which will impact on people of modest means while leaving the not-very-much-less-polluting cars of the wealthy untouched. But that doesn’t mean the High Court is wrong to reject the case brought by Conservative councils against the scheme. On the contrary,
