“Facing Reality” is Murray’s lament for America. He dissects the two key problems of race, and prescribes a reaffirmation of the American Creed of equality under the law, but is hoping against hope that those noble aims are achievable, and doubts his suggestions will be heeded. His short book might be briefly summarized as: “It’s... Read More

The UK Parliament Education committee has produced a report on left-behind white pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds entitled: The forgotten: how White working-class pupils have been let down, and how to change it (This provides the page from which you can download the report). It’s about time, you may say, that as everyone parades their genetics... Read More

Many Western countries began immigration policies without feeling any need to monitor the long-term results. Indeed, many considered that immigration was an expedient response to labour shortages, and that the labourers, such as Turkish guest-workers in Germany, would probably eventually want to return home with their earnings at retirement. The United Kingdom seems to have... Read More

The British Broadcasting Corporation is one of the world’s largest (35,000 employees including part-timers) and best funded news organisations, against which few can compete. Not only does it have a budget which in 2018-19 amounted to £4.0 billion ($5.6 billion), but it is virtually guaranteed the continuation of that level of income by a government... Read More

One hypothesis about the Anglo-Saxon world is that Britain 1.0 has been superseded by Britain 2.0, such that the latter gets updated first, and the former always lags behind, under threat of being discontinued. As a consequence, the US fashions in race relations have late echoes in the UK. Here are two little stories about... Read More

I recently commented on the UK report “Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities”, which dared to suggest that systemic racism was not the major cause of race differences in Britain. The wave of criticism continues. One line of attack is that the Commission did not give sufficient weight to studies which show that racial minorities... Read More

An official UK report “Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities” has got into trouble by coming to the wrong conclusions. It has stated that the UK is not a racist state, and although there are instances of racism, in most ways the UK is a model of non-racism. The report says that the main source... Read More

Max Roser does great work at “Our World in Data”, virtually all of which I read and retweet approvingly. He has just written a paper calculating the amount of economic growth which will be required to lift people out of poverty. Lots and lots of growth, he argues. I think it likely that lots of... Read More

On Monday England was given an indication as to how it will eventually get out of lockdown. Gradually, and in very careful stages, seems to be the answer. We are in our third lockdown, and have staggered through two false dawns. What is different now is that vaccinations have been completed on 17.7 million citizens... Read More

At a time when there are concerns that Covid is being over-diagnosed, and its impact exaggerated, it is useful to look at another claim: that traumatic events in childhood have a major effect for the rest of a person’s life. On 18 November 1987 a fire at King’s Cross Underground station in London killed 31... Read More

In this part of the world, the first side effect of vaccines has been political. Europe’s nations are now competing to get vaccinated, and the ructions have been considerable. From the start, the UK took a vaccine friendly stance. Early on it decided that vaccination was the long-term solution, and all else was merely a... Read More

In the continuing story of coronavirus, this week brings two stories about limitations. The first is that production of both Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines in Europe is faltering, and from Monday supplies will be reduced for the next few weeks. There have been production problems, of the sort which happen in all manufacturing. It should... Read More