I'm a huge fan of the House of Commons Library. They do some really excellent briefing papers setting out the evidence, context and background to issues.

They've compiled this excellent list of briefings relevant to the EU Referendum coming up in June:

That includes the House of Commons Library briefing paper "
EU referendum: impact of an EU exit ( Read more... )

I saw this article - Could you get into Oxford University - which has a series of interview questions from Oxford.

I thought these were interesting questions so I thought I’d have a quick, time-limited stab at them. Googling not allowed, which was insanely frustrating at times.

Q: Why is income per head between 50 and 100 times larger in the US ( Read more... )

The great economist P. J. O'Rourke once said: [M]icroeconomics concerns things that economists are specifically wrong about, while macroeconomics concerns things economists are wrong about generally.
I had not previously appreciated the depth of his wisdom here ( Read more... )

... it's not very interesting. As I keep saying. Except it is because it has a material effect on people's well-being ( Read more... )

I think there is a tech bubble and it is going to burst soon. Where 'soon' could be anything up to several years.

I vividly remember the moment in 2006 when I was struck firmly with the thought that we were smack in the middle of a credit boom and the bust was on its way:not only in the grips of a consumer credit boom, but that the bust is not far ( Read more... )

I've been struggling to understand my phone's recent behaviour, and I've suddenly come to an important reconceptualisation of what's going on ( Read more... )

We need to replace the double glazing. Best guess is it was fitted in the 80s, and many of the panels are not just a bit cloudy, but are now entirely obscured by internal drip-stains. The frames are in pretty poor nick too, so it's a whole-window job ( Read more... )

I'm a compromise consumer of dairy produce. On pure ethics, I'd be vegan, but for convenience, taste and nutrition I have milk, cream, cheese and butter from time to time. Happily, I carry the exciting new genetic mutation that means I've retained lactase production in to adulthood so I can eat this stuff without gastric distress.

I keep trying to ( Read more... )

So, in case some of you haven't noticed, there's a general election tomorrow. I'm less interested in trying to predict it accurately (that's a job for other people) as I am in trying to capture what seems obvious now, before the votes are in ( Read more... )

I've been reading up on British constitutional law, as you do, or at least, as I do when it's increasingly looking like a constitutional mini-crisis is likely. It's not strictly accurate to say that the UK constitution is unwritten. Lots of bits of it are written; and the bits that aren't written are all written about, at absolute minimum. But they ( Read more... )