I asked a much-acclaimed headteacher the other day about the secret of his success. Consistency, he said. Schools did best when they had consistent approaches to behaviour, teaching and learning. People thought consistency was dull; in fact, it was exciting, even sexy.

We did not then go on to discuss whether creationism and intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons. But it later struck me that [...]

Most Britons, and particularly readers of this column, will be familiar with the extent to which the super-rich are soaring away from the rest of us. Over the past five years alone, the average earnings of chief executives of FTSE-100 companies have doubled to £3.2m. Their pay has been rising five times faster than their employees'. The top 1 per cent of the population now enjoy 23 per cent of [...]

When a report from the World Health Organisation came out a few days ago, the media highlighted an extraordinary fact: that life expectancy in one deprived area of Glasgow is lower than in India, Philippines, Poland, Mexico and Cuba. This, you might think, is attributable to booze, fags, bad food and lack of exercise.

You would be right - but only partially so. The WHO report (Closing the Gap in [...]

Within living memory, Britain was a country where recycling was a way of life and waste was abhorred. Milk was delivered in glass bottles and the empties were left on the doorstep for collection the next morning.

The silver tops were kept to buy guide dogs for the blind. A beer or soft-drink bottle carried a deposit that was recoverable on its return. Rag-and-bone men toured the streets seeking waste [...]

Which world-beating British industry employs 1.2 million people, has grown by 126 per cent since 1995, grosses revenues of £76bn a year, accounts for nearly 6 per cent of GDP, and comfortably exceeds, in value added (the difference between what is paid for goods and what they cost to produce), the food, drink and tobacco industry? The answer is the public services industry (or PSI) - comprising third sector (not-for-profit) [...]

The NHS could quite easily consume the country's entire GDP. As more people survive into extreme old age, more drugs and technologies become available, and the population becomes more hypochondriac, the potential for spending is limitless. The service is plagued by shrill pressure groups, all clamouring for more resources. Newspapers that normally demand lower taxes and spending cuts weep over 90-year-old grannies denied expensive treatments that might give them a [...]

August, the month when children aren't at school, is when the English spend most time talking about education, as results of GCSEs, A-levels and Key Stage 2 Sats (tests for 11-year-olds) are published. Alongside the stories about the nerdy geniuses who get 15 A-levels, newspapers argue about whether standards are rising or falling. This year, the bungled administration of Sats by a US-based company has added an extra twist.

Otherwise, [...]

Hilaire Belloc, a Frenchman by birth, once advised us that "when you have lost your inns . . . you will have lost the last of England". On current trends, we have about 50 years left. More than 1,400 pubs closed last year alone. A few days ago, the British Beer and Pub Association reported beer sales in pubs had fallen to their lowest level since the 1930s and, at [...]

Has David Cameron discovered his guru, who can do for him what Anthony Giddens did for Tony Blair or Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek for Margaret Thatcher? The man of the moment is Richard Thaler, a Chicago University professor (as Friedman was), co-author of the newly published Nudge, and a recent visitor to London. The press isn't usually much preoccupied with ideas, but for the past month upmarket papers [...]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sound like a popular singing duo or the latest craze in children's dolls. Until a few days ago, even most Americans hadn't heard of them. Now they threaten, if you believe some accounts, to bring down American capitalism. It's not quite as good (oh, all right, bad) as that, but they can certainly inflict further damage to the US economy and housing market, to say [...]