Incentives matter. No, really, a very basic law of life - incentives matter:

When this idea was first floated we were all in favour of it for the joy and amusement that would follow.

As we keep insisting the beating heart of the very idea of a market economic system is that we get to try many - even all - things and then do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Apparently the National Health Service - that Wonder of the World - is not, in fact, very good. In fact, it could be significantly better if it were simply managed better:

Putting Tony Juniper - who ran Friends of the Earth for many years - in charge of what may be built, where, at Natural England might not have been a good idea.

It is, of course, imperative that society is driven forward by mission oriented, cross cutting, technological solution providing plans of only the sort that government can provide. Otherwise, how can anything happen? Obviously!

As we’re all aware the excuse for socialism and a planned economy has changed. A century back scientific socialism was said to be more efficient than that chaos of markets and capitalism. So, a planned future would be a richer future. We also, with the benefit of hindsight, know how that worked out. It didn’t, etc.

Aditya Chakrabortty has just had one of those shocking little experiences: Among the first acts of Starmer’s government was to slash the discount available to council tenants wanting to buy their homes.

There really are people who believe this is true: Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, signalled on Sunday that “reciprocal” tariffs will mean emulating VAT policy.

This shouldn’t be this difficult for people to understand: The NHS is nearly a fifth less effective than it was before the pandemic despite a £30bn funding boost, official figures show.

This is wildly wrong: Britain’s “increasingly complex” tax system is costing businesses £15.4bn a year just to comply with, the public spending watchdog has warned.

What was striking was that it also split along another fissure: Collins’s possible motives. It was OK, some felt, to use a surrogate if you have infertility problems. But not in order to keep your figure, help your career, or because pregnancy is taxing and you are rich enough to outsource it.