Can we actually encourage developers and land-bankers to build? If land-banking and delayed building are often rational responses to risk and incentives, what would need to change for building homes to feel like the sensible choice again?

OK — so how do we actually move forward? If shouting doesn’t help and waiting feels safe, how do we reduce the risk enough for housing to start moving again — without breaking people or the system?

OK — so we’ve got a Mexican standoff. How do we move forward? Why the UK housing system feels stuck, why everyone’s waiting for someone else to take the risk, and what actually breaks a stalemate like this.

Surely — housing is as important as roads and water? A conversational look at why housing fits the definition of infrastructure, and what changes when we start planning it with the same seriousness as roads, water, and power.

Why shouting at landlords and developers doesn’t help A conversational look at why blame feels satisfying but doesn’t fix the housing shortage — and how incentives, not bad actors, keep the system stuck.

So… who actually benefits when we don’t have enough housing? A conversational look at how housing shortages create quiet winners, hidden risks, and why fixing the system has become politically uncomfortable.

Should homes really be treated like something to bet on? A conversational look at how speculation quietly reshaped UK housing — and the contradiction at the heart of treating homes as investments.

I would love to think that the UK Green Party read my blog, but I know the chances are slim, anyway the leader today echoed the points I recently made wrt drugs and drugs policy, so Yeah me. BBC News - Drugs policy approach needs to change, Polanski says Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Drugs Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – Who’s Been Getting Rich. Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – A cheaper alternative. Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – Cost of Losing the War.

Why does so much land sit empty while housing need keeps growing? A conversational look at why waiting, holding, and delaying have become the sensible choice in UK housing — and what that means for getting unstuck.

When did we stop treating a house as a home? A conversational look at how UK housing quietly shifted from somewhere to live into something to invest in — and why that change still shapes everything that followed.

If financial markets aren’t as complex as we’re told, why do they keep failing? A UK-focused look at regulation, short-term gains, long-term costs, and why we keep relearning the same lesson.

We’ve mentioned incentives a few times now, so we probably need to stop pretending we’re not going to talk about them. This is usually the point where people brace themselves, because they assume this is about greed, bonuses, or “bad behaviour”. It isn’t really. It’s about something much more awkward. It’s about how we behave when rewards are involved — especially when we’re trying to do a decent job inside a system that measures us in slightly odd ways.

What is going on week in, week out in the House of Lords at the moment is simply filibustering masquerading as legitimate scrutiny.

We still talk about shares as if buying one means backing a business. You put some money in. The business does well. You wait. At some point — ideally years later — you share in the rewards. Most people would recognise that description. It feels… reasonable. And the awkward thing is: it’s not wrong. It’s just not the whole story anymore. Because we still use the same language — ownership, confidence, value, long term — even though the behaviour attached to those words has changed rather a lot. So this is less a history lesson, and more a “hang on… when did that shift?” conversation.

You were probably told that finance is complicated. That it’s all maths, charts, Greek letters, and people much cleverer than you. That’s convenient. Because it means you’re not supposed to ask questions. The truth is: financial systems aren’t hard to understand — they’re hard to explain honestly. So instead of textbooks and equations, here are films, games, and stories that do something far more dangerous: They show you how the financial services behave when no one’s watching.

This post brings together the themes explored across the series — punishment, incentives, unintended consequences, and cost — to reflect on what policy does once it becomes a system. It asks how evidence can sit alongside values to design laws that work better in the real world.

Has the War on Drugs delivered what it promised? Looking at fifty years of UK policy, this post explores drug use, harm, and public cost — not to win an argument, but to ask whether “being tough” turned out to be an especially expensive way of managing a persistent human behaviour.

Let’s Rethink Policy-Making: Filthy Lucre What happens if we stop pretending the illegal drugs market will disappear? Using conservative figures for England & Wales, this post explores how costs, criminal profits, regulation, and incentives interact — and why redesigning where money flows may matter more than repeating moral arguments.

Let’s Rethink Policy-Making: The Filthy Lucre. What happens when the public cost of managing illegal drugs is larger than the market itself? Looking at England & Wales data, we explore why drug use persists, how costs accumulate across health, crime and social services, and why pretending demand can be driven to zero may be one of the most expensive policy assumptions we make.

Ok — so before we go any further, it’s probably worth asking a fair question. Is this just how things work everywhere? Or is there something particularly British — or English — about the way we’ve handled it? Up to now, we’ve mostly been looking at the UK. That’s deliberate. It’s the system we live in, pay for, and argue about. But it also risks leaving us with a blind spot. So now feels like the right moment to widen the lens. Let’s have a look at what’s happened elsewhere — maybe we find good examples, maybe someone has cracked it — or maybe different choices just led to different kinds of mess. Because if everyone ended up in the same place, we might just be looking at an unavoidable problem. But if some countries ended up doing noticeably better — or noticeably worse — then what we’re really looking at is design.

So I thought I'd create a nice Infographic for the 2 post I wrote looking at the impact of longer lives on the UK state pension, oh and add links to them and the podcasts. The Infinite Horizon: When Living Longer Becomes a Debt to the Future The Longevity Burden: Why Longer Lives Are Straining Social Care I have also put 2 podcasts up for those who'd prefer to listen than read…