Columbus, Monsanto and the monopoly peril

Columbus, Monsanto and the monopoly peril

A decade or so ago, I was finishing my book about the relationship between Columbus, Cabot and Vespucci, and their race for America (you can buy it here as an ebook these days I’m glad to say). I became convinced that the real story there was the friendship between...
Why the NHS swamps its own A&E

Why the NHS swamps its own A&E

Fancy going to Accident and Emergency with conjunctivitis. I mean, what kind of feckless, ignorant type would do that? That was the sort of attitude I felt from the handful of medical staff I encountered there early on Saturday morning. It wasn’t even bad...
Should we aspire to a Japanese economy?

Should we aspire to a Japanese economy?

I am just back from Japan, where I concentrated on eating as much rice and sushi as I could. It was a fabulous trip and I learned a great deal, and perhaps the most important lesson I learned is about Japanese growth. Put simply, there isn’t any but it...
Towards a narrative-based economics

Towards a narrative-based economics

Trisha Greenhalgh and other health writers developed the idea of narrative-based medicine to explain the importance of what patients tell doctors that can’t, or doesn’t, tend to get included in data. In fact, the idea of stories as a policy-making tool has...