A reminder that, as in the US, so in the UK. Houses have not in fact become more expensive in recent years. Permission to build a house however has.

As so often happens, the fight to extend recording copyrights having failed in the UK it's now been moved up to the European level: where the idiocy might succeed. 

Extraordinarily dubious statistics from the anti-smoking front. If rates of myocardial infarcts are declining anyway, why should a decline that coincides with a ban on smoking in public places be ascribed solely to the ban? Or at all?

Isn't it wondrous when we have to turn to the nation's cook to get sense spoken on matters political? 

Yet more on the importance of mobile phones to development and how to get more of them and it. 

If the price of drugs is dropping, then supply is growing, yes? The alternative, that demand is dropping, seems unlikely. 

And finally, British builder spotted in Washington DC.