No one likes to talk about it. The taboo subject at the dinner table – something for private admonishment.

Although for some their failure is far more public; broadcast across the world for all to see and laugh.

Look at them, they have failed. The business, the actor, the politician. The more public the rise, the sweeter the fall.

Yet those who laugh in glee are never forced to face their failure; either their ambition is so little that their failure is of no consequence or their admonishment is in private – a courtesy they fail to give to others.

I have often thought there could be few worse fates than to face failure in the way of politicians.

Traipsed out into a leisure centre at the darkest hours to hear what your fellow citizens think of you.

Few would empathise with the public failure of Liz Truss. Yet I can’t help but do so.

There are a million mantras on failure. All of them essentially boiling down to keep trying.

In the past I would see my failure to meet my goal as an excuse to cower away but in reality it is the opposite.

Only in failure can you persist.

The ever-prescient German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his classic Faust, writes: “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”

For me, there is no greater mantra in life than that.

How you perceive the world is what the world will give you; if you only see failure and despair, the world will be a hostile place.

Yet if you carry yourself with hope, love, and an open heart, the world can’t help itself but be a beauty.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone is far more interconnected than we realise, and the effect we have on one another reaches far beyond our own knowledge.

Some ideology would have us believing that humans are “blank slates”, ready to be written upon by the state, but identity is far more organic and historical than that. We are, quite simply, the sum of everyone we have ever known.

This is why I believe there is a hidden beauty in the “unknown” of our relationships. People twist and turn in and out of our lives, sometimes leaving forever, yet we never truly move on. There is a level of intimacy in those final endings – those friends or partners we never speak to again – because they remain part of us. We carry them with us.

The effect of another person can be as large as a revolution or as small as a single letter. Since the age of thirteen, I have written my E’s differently, imitating the way my history teacher did. On the face of it, this is an inconsequential, minute detail. He likely never thinks of me; he probably never even noticed the imitation.

I have never told anyone why I write them that way, yet every time, I think of him. Some might call this a mimetic desire to be unique, but I would argue it is a form of pure admiration. Any form of copying is, at its core, an act of love for a legacy.

In some sense, this forms the heart of what conservatism is for me. Conservative philosophy speaks of “little platoons” – the small, local connections like teachers, neighbours, and friends that shape us more than a distant state ever could. Unknowingly, my Year 8 history teacher formed part of my little platoon. He didn’t sit me down to lecture me on the aesthetics of a letter; I simply wanted to imitate his excellence because he was a wise, funny, and likeable man.

Long past his death, my handwriting will continue that living tradition and I am sure neither he nor I will be the last links in this chain. If we are an archaeology of every encounter we have ever had, then we cannot be the “blank slates” that ideologues imagine.

We do not move on, not out of nostalgic despair, but because to move on would be to leave parts of our own selves behind. We are the curators of the people who made us and to me that is quite a freeing thought.

Your life is not unique, your troubles are not unique. There is always someone who can relate to you.

As James Baldwin said in his Life interview almost 61 years ago

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

Steinbeck introduces Cathy with the line: “I believe there are some monsters born in the world to human parents.” She is a creature of pure evil, missing the parts that make us human. She is evil not by choice, but rather by nature.

The core theme in East of Eden surrounds our capacity to do good or evil, suggesting the choice is ours. This appears in the theological debate over Genesis 4:7’s use of the Hebrew ‘Timshel’. Traditional interpretations of ‘Timshel’ – such as the King James Version’s “thou shalt” or the American Standard’s “thou must” – are deterministic. They order Cain (and by extension, Man) to rule over sin; your fate is sealed.

But Steinbeck offers a translation of “thou mayest” – introducing the concept of choice. Freedom, but also the possibility of damnation. If you can fail, you can also be redeemed.

Yet for Cathy, Steinbeck reserves a fate worse than death: she lacks choice. Her actions are deplorable; she kills, she lies, she robs, and she embodies every sin imaginable.

To say I dislike the woman would be an understatement; her evil almost flows off the page. Yet I cannot help but feel empathy for her.

Cathy is trapped in a world of evil with no choice and no redemption. How can we expect her to do good when she is incapable of it?

Cathy’s fate has stuck with me. East of Eden is a thinly veiled allegory for the Bible, and she represents Satan in the form of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

She is meant to be hated, but part of me thinks Steinbeck was intentionally overwrought in his description to prompt the reader to question her supposed evilness. The manifestation of this is my empathy for a character I should loathe.

By coincidence, this past weekend I had an experience that fed into this thinking. I was invited to a singles party – twelve people, six men, six women. It was an interesting premise and an opportunity for me to bake a Tiramisu; those who know me, know that to bake is a pleasure in itself.

On the day, whilst watching England get thrashed, I received a message. The person who invited me had also invited another to make up the numbers. This was a warning of the evening to come. Indefatigable as ever, I turned up ten minutes early, dessert in hand.

From that point on, chaos ensued.

For their sake, as well as mine, I have changed their names – not that it is likely they will ever read this.

I have met many people in my life, nearly all of them lovely but there are rare exceptions where a single look conveys an immediate and definitive distaste. Tonight was one such exception.

From the moment I shook Rory’s hand, I knew how the night would go.

Rory was brash, entitled, and arrogant – in every way, I hope, my opposite. To make matters worse, he was my mysterious competitor. He had also been invited by Lucy, my date. From the start, his intentions were clear: Rory was “going for gold.”

Once I realised this, I mentally checked out. My intentions shifted. I am sure many know the embarrassment of being second – the first amongst losers.

My goal became simply to enjoy myself and chat with interesting people. As the food began to roll and the alcohol flowed, the tone shifted. It was clear that others in the room had different intentions than I did.

At first, I was batted out of the kitchen; my attempts to help clean up were swatted away. But by the time of the main course, my persistence won out and I found myself in my favourite place at a party: the kitchen, washing dishes.

Some would argue it was a way for me to deal with the awkwardness; I wouldn’t disagree. But how many times have you found yourself in a room full of strangers whilst in direct competition for romantic affection with a man you detest?

In the end, the kitchen proved a fruitful place for conversation with one of the guests – a lovely person.

Finally, multiple protests dragged us from the suds and into dessert. As befitted its baker, I was the one to cut the slices. The night progressed like a river into a thrashing torrent. From the Tiramisu, we quickly found ourselves in a club.

A key detail to this ensuing travesty is that I had forgone alcohol from the start of the main course.

By the point I found myself paying £17 for the privilege of a mediocre Old Fashioned, I was almost entirely sober.

In the club, Rory was a practised operator. He had separated his date from the others and quickly shared a private kiss – although how one can describe a club as anything but public, I have always failed to understand. It is as though people think dimmed lights and blaring music combine to dim the senses enough to create a bubble of intimacy against prying eyes. An obvious falsehood.

At this point, I had mentally checked out of romance and was more interested in simply enjoying the music. As the early 2000s hits rolled on, the group dwindled as couples separated into their assumed privacy. Yet three things happened in quick succession – far too fast for me to comprehend.

Firstly, more of Lucy’s friends joined our group; secondly, Rory was told to “fuck off” by Lucy; and lastly, multiple people came up to me calling me a “great guy.”

The combination was far too much for my brain to handle at 1 am. I desperately needed to think, and a club is the last place for thinking.

But what was blindingly obvious to me was Rory’s dejection.

At that moment, I should have been the last person to feel sorry for him. He had already screwed me over before I knew him and from the moment we met I disliked him intensely.

Yet I saw him sitting down, staring into blank space. Surrounded by people using loud music and dark lights as escapism, he shone as the only one not partaking.

Faced with the possibility of speaking with a woman I was interested in or helping someone I detested, I gritted my teeth and chose the latter.

I tried to console him and get his mind off things – asking about his life, where he was from, what his goals were, any detail bar the current surreal situation.

Lucy’s friend, Heather, tried multiple times to get me to speak with Lucy, but by this point, all I could think about was helping Rory.

The fact that I was the only person who cared irritated me more than anything. I had the most reasons to ignore this guy and return to my original intentions, but I just couldn’t.

As the night progressed, Rory repeatedly wanted to speak with Lucy, which I persuaded him out of. When we were kicked out of the club, he tried to wait for her. All my senses were screaming at me to just go home; I had done what I could and I owed Lucy or him nothing. Yet, seeing him standing by the exit, I couldn’t help but dive back into the fray of his emotions.

Directing him away from the club – letting Lucy make an escape without Rory descending upon her – I simultaneously waved goodbye to the possibility of ever speaking to her again and subjected myself to a trapping at 2 am.

In the ensuing hour-long conversation, my preconceived biases were confirmed. I disliked the man more, not less, after our talk. Yet I could not help but feel empathy for him.

My point is not that Rory and Cathy are truly comparable. Rory, I am sure, isn’t a psychopath or the representation of pure evil; he is as human as the rest of us and likely has many redeeming features. But it leads me back to how Steinbeck portrayed Cathy. Was he intentionally overwrought to prompt the reader to question her supposed evilness.

Is anyone truly born evil? I don’t think so.

Is anyone irredeemable evil? I can’t possibly think so — Fundamentally I think we are all good despite our many flaws. Although maybe that is the naivety of youth.

This experience, correlating directly with my thoughts on East of Eden, has led me to two questions:

• Can you be too kind?

• Can you be too empathetic?

Should I have stepped up and pursued my date after consoling Rory? Should I have forgone his feelings, stripped off the empathy, and “gone for gold” as he intended? Should I have disregarded my understanding of how awkward it would have been for him to watch me do so?

To many, that would be a “no-brainer.” Of course, you make your intentions clear; it isn’t as though I turned up to a party of eleven strangers with entirely pure intentions.

Yet I find myself in this bizarre scenario where I care about the feelings of a person I intensely dislike, mirroring my exact feelings about Cathy.

I cannot quite say what I learned. Human emotions, and the moments they express themselves, are intensely delicate. There is certainly a book to be written solely on what occurs in the wee hours of a nightclub.

But I am sure that this experience, for better or worse, will stick with me for far longer than I expected.

To many, I could be defined as a rootless cosmopolitan – two years in South Africa, four in Swaziland, thirteen in the UAE, summers in France, parents in Jamaica, and now Scotland. Countless houses, neighbourhoods, and friends.

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I am not quite Scottish, nor South African, yet definitely not English, nor Emirati, nor French. I have an affinity for all of them, yet no true sense of place.

To many this is a dream, a life abroad exploring the world and learning about different cultures. It has, in some sense, been that. I’ve known people from all over the world – I went to school with over sixty-five nationalities. I can easily relate to people from all over, whether it is Switzerland, Colombia, Hong Kong, or Botswana.

Yet often when I speak to an English person, I feel rootless. The first question I am asked when I give someone the spiel is whether I miss Dubai. Frankly, the answer is no. I feel little connection to the place. Oddly in my first year of university, I discovered I never felt homesick.

The Welsh have a word, Hiraeth, which is untranslatable into English. It roughly means a deep, bittersweet longing, nostalgia, or yearning for a home, place, or time that is lost, gone, or perhaps never existed. There is a school of thought in Welsh nationalism that would detest my twisting of Hiraeth, but linguistics is fluid. I think I often feel Hiraeth in the sense of longing for a place that I have never had.

Pride of place is so strong in British culture – see the devotion to being a Southerner or a Northerner. Yet my experience makes me an alien in this cultural ritual, my accent places me as a Southerner yet I am ethnically Scottish but born half a world away.

I am not an envious person, but one evening in the wee hours which always make us more truthful I asked a partner to tell me about her childhood in Cornwall. She described the flowing beaches, the blazing sun, the sense of community, and the striking beauty of her childhood.

In that moment I was truly envious to have that love of place. To know in one’s heart you are from there, a product of a place, a culture, and a community. It’s an experience I can’t relate to and to hear it told in such vivid detail gave me both joy for her but also a twinge of longing for the same.

Environmental psychologists talk of the bond which develops between children and their childhood environments. The location of your childhood forms part of an individual’s identity and is a key point of comparison for considering subsequent places later in life.

As people move around as adults, they tend to consider new places in relation to this baseline landscape experienced during childhood. In an unfamiliar environment, a sense of place develops over time and through routine practices.

In some sense that is comforting; whilst I do not think I will ever have that childhood sense of place, I know that at some point there will be a place which will at last be mine.

I loathe the drama, the whispered name - The one so obviously crying for fame.

"Who’s up? Who’s down?" the journalists cry,

While underfoot, the pavements crack and dry.

A Damascus road paved with polished lies,

Where odious men wear their new disguises.

They circle-jerk in a mirrored room,

While the rest of us wait in the rising gloom.

The psychodrama swells and grows,

And the courtiers drift where the power-wind blows.

All while the country staggers along,

Deaf to the notes of their idiotic song.

I hate politics, yet I love it - What a hell of an oxymoron.

I sit here after a weekend of wining and dining some of my closest friends – a weekend full of nothing but love. Yet I despair as I haven’t consistently written once a day as I promised myself.

I am wracked with this hatred of myself for not being consistent with writing, as with many things in life; this battle of obsession versus laziness constantly fighting, making my skin itch.

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This mental block exists whenever I sit down at a computer: ‘Oh, I will get to that later’ – yet I know that I won’t. The irony, of course, is that it is something I enjoy.

The self-destructive habit of not doing it is entirely my own fault, yet I am incapable of stopping it.

This extends to so many things in my life – whether that is exercise, reaching out to friends, or the variety of hobbies I enjoy.

For the last few years I have been obsessed with coffee; this has gotten to the point where, in my office, I have a manual lever espresso machine setup with a manual grinder – highly excessive, I know – I have been subjected to a variety of ridicule by my boss – but it creates great coffee and looks amazing (see below).

Yet for the last year I have wanted to purchase a coffee roaster to replace my popcorn machine roaster. I had a second-hand seller, it’s not expensive – it’s a text and a tube ride away. Yet for some reason there is this extreme mental block; I have led the person selling it on like a confused lover who doesn’t know what they want. Yet the frustrating thing is I know I want it, but in my period of idiocy it was sold.

Before I meet anyone for a drink, lunch, or a coffee, I am wracked with dread and the gut renching desire to cancel. I know I will enjoy myself when I see them and be so glad to have them in my life, yet I want to cancel badly.

Just this prior Thursday, when I had planned a lovely Burns supper, I had this overwhelming desire in my gut to cancel – just this complete stomach churning attitude towards cooking and hosting.

Yet those are two of my most favourite things in the world. As I leaned back in my chair sipping a glass of Riesling, telling a story surrounded by friends, the overwhelming desire to cancel felt so foreign as to be another person – yet I know it was me.

As with so many people, my pile of books climbs so high as to be a mountain; my room looks like an unorganised library spanning from Aristotle, to Carl Jung, to Jane Austen. All books I was keen to devour and immerse myself into at the moment of purchase, yet I don’t have that desire. I am simply sucked into algorithms and, in the few moments I can breathe, I feel so tired as to simply want to sleep.

I don’t quite understand it; I feel the desire to go to extreme lengths for others, going as far as making dairy-free chocolate ganache macarons for a date who mentioned it offhand, or learning to make sourdough for a gluten-intolerant mother – yet I am incapable of going to the gym consistently for myself.

I know the pile of books will climb higher, the list of movies to watch ever longer, the backlog of articles to write ever greater – yet I will persist.

Nietzsche did not mean a literal death, but rather that belief in God had become unbelievable for modern society – signalling the end of the framework that Christianity provided for European culture.

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Nietzsche was highlighting a potential crisis where people lose purpose and values when traditional religious anchors disappear, and how only the Übermensch will be able to move European society beyond traditional good and evil through new, life-affirming values.

Theologians in the 1960s suggested that God would require reinterpretation in a modern world, and that faith will need to adapt in an environment where traditional religious language no longer resonates.

Religion since the mid-20th century has been a story of decline.

From its peak in 1947 of 45 per cent of the US population attending church weekly to the low of 21 per cent in 2025.

The image is similar in the UK, with a peak of 15 per cent weekly attendance in the 1930s to a collapse at 4.7 per cent. The trend seemed to be a slowly closing book on faith.

Yet, there is an odd image.

The generation with the highest average monthly visits in the US is now Gen Z at 1.9 times. This trend is mirrored in the UK; in 2018, just 4 per cent of 18–24-year-olds said that they attended church at least monthly. Today, this has risen to 16 per cent – second behind the 65+ cohort (third in attendance is actually the 25–34 group). The shift is even more dramatic amongst young men; there has been a fivefold growth in attendance from 4 to 21 per cent.

As researcher Dr Rhiannon McAleer says, “These are striking findings that completely reverse the widely held assumption that the Church in England and Wales is in terminal decline… There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago.”

Strikingly, this extends beyond the traditional conception of faith, as 62 per cent of 18–24-year-olds claim to be “very” or “fairly” spiritual, compared to just 35 per cent of those over 65. Only 13 per cent of Gen Z identify as atheists, in contrast to 20 per cent of Millennials and 25 per cent of Gen X.

This all leads to the question: why has faith been reignited by Gen Z? I think that can be neatly summed up in three factors.

One that is likely to be overplayed is the influence of online “manosphere” types. Many alt-right creators explicitly suggest religion; foremost amongst those is Jordan Peterson, who suggests that through faith the youth can revive that forgotten moral framework. The influence of this explains some part of the male rise in attendance but is overblown.

Secondly the pandemic. Gen Z and Millennials are anxious and lonely; the pandemic only worsened those issues. However, after the restrictions lifted, Zoomers were desperately searching for community but also, interestingly, tradition. Zoomers have largely favoured liturgical or orthodox traditions, seeking structure and a strong moral framework as opposed to the looser spirituality of the 90s.

Lastly, the search for meaning. Gen Z has a unique problem: it is a generation paralyzed by the lack of purpose. Many Zoomers look online and see a hellscape of influencers, hustle culture, and meaningless consumerism – which they sought to reject. They turned towards faith to help them find a purpose in life and try to grapple with the question of why they exist. For many Zoomers, faith is a rejection of consumerism and a search for ‘why’.

These are, of course, not all the reasons for the revival of faith amongst the youth; however, I think they play a key part in it. And in a world of such turmoil and unknowns, Gen Z are finding faith is helping them find light through all the chaos.

The vast majority of the British public is pro-ban; some polling has support at around 75% of the population.

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I am not so convinced.

For one, any ban will be bypassed in no time. Whilst some amongst us are not as technologically capable, evidence from the ban in Australia shows the failures of AI age verification, as well as how many platforms are incapable of accurately enforcing age limits.

One immediate problem obvious to me is: how do you even determine if it is a child using a social media account?

The typical way would be user-inputted age; however, without accurate checks, there is no way of proving this. A friend of mine who registered a Facebook account in 2014 officially turned 120 years old last year according to the site – now, personally, I think he looks barely a day over 110, but he registered the account at 14. How is Facebook to know his real age?

In Australia, social media platforms are essentially using gathered data to infer the age of users. This then prompts them to verify using either ID or a video, for one this is likely to miss many users and the AI systems are easily foolable. Beyond that, kids will just download a VPN and bypass any restrictions; this is not complex, it simply requires a Google search.

For many kids, social media is their place for community. If they lack a social support network in person or belong to more marginalised communities, social media is a way for them to build a social network. I, for one, built connections with people who lived in different countries and connected to communities surrounding nerdy hobbies – Substack is a prime example of this.

From the other angle, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that social media is bad for kids.

• 87% of teens say they have been cyberbullied on social media.

• Social media use is linked to a 70% increase in self-reported depression symptoms among teens.

• 41% of Gen Z users say social media makes them feel anxious, sad, or depressed.

• Spending too much time on social media raises the risk of developing eating disorders by 2.2 times.

• 50% of people aged 14–24 say Instagram makes them more anxious.

Yet I still remain unconvinced by the merits of the ban.

Teachers complain about the role social media has played in students’ attention and attainment. Regarding attention, the clear answer is to ban phones in school; that is fairly obvious.

But on attainment, I think it is a different question. There are continual anecdotal reports by teachers about children being unable to read, focus, or perform simple maths, and how, as a result, they are doomed.

One could sum it up with a quote describing the attitudes of the youth: “They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannise their teachers. Children are now tyrants.”

But of course, that is a quote attributed to Socrates in 470 BC.

Every generation since time immemorial has held the view that the generation after them is doomed. So, I would back away from such inflammatory language, but there clearly are still issues.

In an annual survey of primary school teachers in England, they estimated that 26% of children in their reception class were having frequent toilet mishaps. The survey also found that 28% of children were unable to eat and drink independently and 25% were struggling with other basic life skills.

There certainly is something going on with the younger generation; however, I think this hinges almost entirely on parents who have seemingly abdicated the responsibility of raising their children in favour of a “nursery by iPad.”

It again raises the question of how much you can really expect your government and your politicians to do for you. They can’t raise your children, and they won’t be able to enforce a social media ban. The responsibility for this lies, as ever, with the parents.

My final issue with the social media ban is likely to be more incendiary. The policy reeks of intergenerational unfairness.

The same statistics cited above also included the following:

• 58% of American adults who use social media feel it harms their mental health

• Approximately 10% to 30% of adults aged 18–25 report signs of social media addiction

• In 2024–2025 surveys, roughly 18.5% of women reported struggling with poor mental health related to digital use.

If the argument can be made that it is so negative to every user, why is the conversation only around under-16s?

Why is the cut-off 16 and not 18? The argument is made that development under 16 is important, but it could be argued that there is necessary development until the mid-20s. Why isn’t the conversation actually about banning social media platforms as a whole?

The counter to that, of course, is that the individual is capable of controlling their usage.

Therefore, why isn’t it the parents’ prerogative whether their teen is on the platform? Instead, there is a desire for “daddy government” to handle all the difficult parts for parents.

The whole policy reeks to me of a society that is keen to let parents abdicate their responsibility and further cede everything in their lives to the government.

And enter where a thousand winters sleep;

Through the Hall where ancient hammerbeams span,

A theater for feast, for ghost, and man.

She has seen the rackets swing, the monarchs fall,

The weight of war scratched onto her walls.

Then upward, through the Lobby’s vaulted grace,

Between the Commons’ grit and the Lords’ lace.

An august masterpiece, a gilded mask,

Performing every heavy, history-laden task.

But look beneath the face to find the soul,

Where rot thrives and hungry shadows stroll.

In the lightless depths where stone begins to weep,

The mold and mortar secrets strictly keep.

From the soaring gods to the basement’s grey decay,

Fire waits to take it all away.

She is a marvel built of love and rust,

A soaring dream that settles into dust.

For as she may burn, burn once again as before,

We’ll weep for the wings that will beat no more.

love in the eyes of every passing face.

A “hello” to a retriever,

a soft word for a stranger’s teeth.

I drank the light in their lungs

when they laughed, knowing

none of it was mine to keep.

But I am not empty for the giving;

the hearth is here.

For the joy is to have loved,

not the despair of never loving.

I am love.

To my detriment, I have isolated myself from others in the past. I often prefer to solve my problems myself. Over the last year, I have attempted to open up those inner layers, but there always remains an inner core that I let so very few into. I know that there are people who love me, many who like me and enjoy my company; yet, when I show people that inner shell, it feels as though they recoil. With the abyss staring back, they simply run away.

After your millionth attempt, at what point are you just unlovable? Likeable, fuckable, but just unloveable.

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Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I know this is very far from the truth. I am lovable because I am loved. But one can’t always have complete confidence in oneself; it wanes in those moments of rejection and reflection.

Modern dating is flawed. One doesn’t have to go very far to see that. It creates situations of toxic anxiety and fear. Ghosting, breadcrumbing, love-bombing, situationships - the list goes on and on. These absurd concepts require an encyclopaedia to understand, all encapsulating the entirely vapid and soul-destroying nature of dating.

Humans were never meant to have this many options. Because the options are plentiful and time in your 20s feels endless, people are swift to make a judgement. Yet, no one wants to be honest. There is a game of chicken with little clarity from either side on how they truly feel, for fear of being seen as “too much”. No polite rejection; rather, both sides get hurt and it drags on. Don’t get me wrong, getting hurt is a fact of life - it’s all a Sisyphean struggle to the top - but it’s nature in modern dating can feel soul destroying.

People ghost because the next person is right round the corner. Why would I invest in this one person when I can speak to the next person in five minutes?

Because they are at risk of getting ghosted, everyone has to hedge their bets; Few experiences are more humiliating than seeing the person you are on a date with receive a notification from a dating app. But that is just part of the game you play: like a Wall Street broker, always hedging. Viewing every person, every date, and every comment simply as a number to be tabulated against a risk profile - and the second the position turns red, you cut anchor and run.

There is also an immense social pressure to have your life fully formed, to know yourself, and to be the person you really want to be. To the detriment of being with a person, many who are young make their career their priority—sticking to the “hustle”. But as the classic film Before Sunrise said: “When you’re young, you believe there will be many people you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realise it only happens a few times.”

But in the end, it can all feel so pointless. You spend your time with a person learning, listening, and appreciating every detail: their life, their parents, their career, their goals, their laugh, their smile - all the little things. Yet the nagging call of options pulls them away.

Their reasons are plentiful, whether it’s work or school, or the lack of some mythical “spark” that is, frankly, bullshit. The reason is ultimately perfunctory; the result is the same, condemned to a grave of pointless conversations in the WhatsApp archive.

Yet, as with any person, they all matter. In life, you never truly move on. You are the sum of everyone you have ever known, and you will always carry them with you. Whether it is something random, like a preference in food, or the name of a sister, or a career - there will always be a part of them that sticks around.

Currently, Trump is trying to wage economic war upon a multitude of European powers as an attempt to exert pressure upon the Danish Government to hand the territory over and to punish European partners for attempting to pressure the negotiations.

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Most ask why Trump is so interested in Greenland. The interest is threefold.

Firstly, Greenland possesses a prime position in the Arctic. The traditional Mercator projection provides a poor perspective.

In the map above, you look down upon the Arctic and immediately the fear of the Americans becomes understandable.

The Russians for decades have been posturing in the Arctic with a significant buildup of military bases. Based on a report by The Simons Foundation in Canada, Russia has 32 “continuously attended military sites” in the Arctic region as of 2024. Norway has 15 “continuously attended military sites,” while the U.S. has 10, Canada eight, Denmark three (situated on Greenland) and Iceland one.

Whilst NATO as a whole has more sites than the Russians, the view from the White House is that America will have to operate independent of its allies to protect itself. Therefore, they see Greenland as a vital staging ground for any potential Arctic conflict.

This is further heightened by climate change, which has enormous ramifications for the defence of the region. As raised by the defence think tank RUSI, Russia relies on the cover of Arctic ice and background noise to protect its nuclear submarines. However, climate projections suggest ice-free summers by 2050; this will therefore require escorts and patrols to ensure security in the water. To project power in the region there will need to be adequate infrastructure in the form of permanent bases and Greenland provides the perfect location for the Americans to exert control over the region.

Furthermore, for the Americans, control of Greenland will allow them to have control over shipping routes currently used by Russian “shadow fleet” ships — something of key concern after their capture of the Marinera off the coast of the UK.

The second angle of importance for the Trump administration is mineral wealth.

As Greenland melts, its natural resources have become more accessible. Greenland has a large untapped potential for critical raw materials – including the rare earth metals graphite, niobium, and platinum group metals. Most of which are very important for the green transition, and a point of contention for the Trump administration as the US is currently reliant on the Chinese for most of these rare earth minerals.

Additionally, Greenland is believed to have huge untapped oil and gas reserves. In 2008, the estimate was approximately thirty-one billion barrels of oil equivalent — if Greenland was its own state, it would have the 12th highest reserves of oil.

There are huge difficulties in extracting this mineral wealth, though. The vast majority of Greenland is an ice sheet; only 20% of the island is ice-free, consisting of craggy mountains and fjord-cut cliffs. Beyond the few towns that exist, there is little infrastructure, with no roads or railways outside of settlements. Exploration has to occur via plane or boat.

This is further exacerbated by both the difficulty of mineral exploration and mining itself. As Simon Jowitt, director of the Ralph J. Roberts Center for Research and Economic Geology, notes, for every 100 mineral exploration projects, only one might turn into a mine. Beyond which, the progression from discovery to production can be 10 years — with delays highly probable in Greenland due to the aforementioned lack of infrastructure.

The third angle for the Trump administration is that of trade.

Above is the map of the three major Arctic trade routes.

Currently, only the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route are in use. The Northwest Passage faces thick multi-year ice and complex straits that make navigation especially challenging. Whereas the Northern Sea Route is relatively easier owing to lower overall ice extent and open water in the Barents Sea. Unlike similar latitudes in Alaska or Canada, this area remains ice-free due to currents of warm water from the Gulf Stream.

The economic value of either is clear. A usable sea route would cut time at sea and fuel consumption by more than half for trips between Northern Europe and North Pacific ports. It also significantly reduces reliance on the Suez Canal, saving on payments, queues, risk of piracy, and obstructions such as the Ever Given in 2021.

The geographic position of Greenland puts it in a prime position to act as a trade hub in the eventuality that the sea ice reduces so much that the Transpolar Sea Route becomes viable.

Currently considered a highly fringe route as it requires heavy icebreakers, the Transpolar Sea Route would provide the most direct path. While Northern Sea Routes decrease sailing times between Europe and East Asia from 30 days through the Suez Canal to 18 days, the Transpolar Sea Route provides even more time savings by cutting an additional one to five days from the journey.

Additionally, the Transpolar route passes outside the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Arctic coastal states, in comparison to the other routes that weave intimately through multiple EEZs.

For the Americans, there is a further fear of the Chinese getting involved in the region. China currently calls itself a “near-Arctic state” and is seeking to increase its economic and military role there. China has four icebreaking vessels, compared to Russia’s roughly forty and the United States’ one.

The American administration is therefore fearful of Canada’s vulnerability to the Chinese and the Russians in the Arctic, as Trump is concerned about what he sees as Canada’s inability to defend its borders, arguing that they need to spend more money on defence.

Recent reports by the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, about there being “much alignment” between the Canadian view of Greenland and the Chinese will only alarm the Americans more.

Whether the Americans eventually wrestle control of Greenland from Denmark is a different question. But the reasons for wanting the island are clear.

Jenrick claimed that he wasn’t motivated by ambition or self-interest in his planned defection to Reform after he spent twelve months moping about losing the leadership election over a year ago. Jenrick proceeded to get on stage and trash the Conservative party and their record in power — after having been in 4 different Ministerial roles.

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That Jenrick has gone on a road to Damascus in the last few years, from a Cameronian Conservative to some right-wing saviour, is remarkable. I have met very few people so clearly motivated by self-interest.

British politics - in my opinion - is very insular. Some would call it a circle jerk. Conversations revolve around gossip: who knows who, and what or who they are doing. On my first day, I was presented with a variety of open secrets: “Don’t talk to this person” or “Don’t spend time alone with them.” Does anything happen? No, of course not.

But worse for me is the obsession with SW1 stories. I am sure very few of the people reading this know who Robert Jenrick is, nor what actually happened in the correct order. Very few people actually care about any of this; it has no influence on most people’s lives. Yet it dominates the headlines and the minds of politicians. Political drama is like catnip to journalists and politicians alike.

I remember speaking with a very close friend who lived in the UK a couple years ago about Keir Starmer (whilst he was Leader of the Opposition); their response was, “Who is Keir Starmer?” - two years after he was elected LOTO. My own landlord the other day couldn’t name the current Leader of the Opposition — this actually represents the higher percentile of political awareness.

Yet, if you immersed yourself in the commentariat bubble, you would not believe that to be the case. Constant murmurs of “Oh, this person is going to Reform” or “He’s going to challenge the Prime Minister.” All whilst the economy staggers along, infrastructure collapses, the cost of living increases, and the quality of life falls.

In some ways, my previous comments are correct: voters do expect impossible results from their politicians. Yet, in many ways, it would be very useful for politicians to have a kick up the arse.

But arguably worse for me is the quality of British political journalists. Journalism is a noble profession at its core, but I fear that the current operators are far from the standards of the past. “Gotcha” questions that prove essentially nothing, the bending of social norms such as the privacy of texts, and - the worst feature of all - a bloodhound-like desire to seek the next story that topples the government a la Partygate.

Whilst I have never been a fan of some journalists, such as Kay Burley, I fear that Partygate emboldened the worst excesses of the journalist class. Suddenly, they felt as though all the levers of power belonged to them. Every story was suddenly “the end” for the government — something the right-wing papers are leaning into with their coverage of Keir Starmer.

Of course, a constant feature of politics will be partisanship. Left-wing papers will bias towards left-wing parties and vice-versa. But ever since the Boris Johnson government, this has felt extra so.

To large swaths of politicians, journalists, or activists, politics is a game; a way to get on TV and have their five minutes of fame. Their ambition is centred around increasing their own profile; a political party is a football team that they must support, not a way for them to achieve change and improve their country.

There are, thankfully, principled politicians (however oxymoronic that seems) and journalists; however, they are few and far between.

With face of yellow and blue, angular and bold

A body full of mold and so old.

I hear the rhythmic hum beneath the floor

The camshaft’s click, the compressor’s steady beat.

Oh what a delight to ride on a 455 once more

Crammed to the doors, forced onto my feet.

Rushing through the dark of the London night

Bathed in the hum of its yellow light.

The brakes give a squeal and a heavy sigh

As the ghosts of the suburbs go rattling by.

No velvet cushion or tearful goodbye

Just iron and oil and a soot-colored sky.

A relic of steel from a different age

Writing its final page.

Some would say – and have done so – it is oxymoronic for someone so private to put their own diary on the internet. But to me this is so very different; to be confronted with it in person is intensely awkward, but to put it online is different.

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I have also attempted in the past year to slowly let more people into those inner layers – once described by someone as onion-like. This Substack is one of those efforts. The more I have posted about myself, the more comfortable I have become when speaking about those layers of the onion.

What is so interesting to me is the reactions I have had from doing so. Some have said I am an intense person, yet others disagree. Some have called me Type A, yet others have insisted I am Type B. Another called me angry at the world, yet I feel content. One person called me a pessimist, yet another called me an idealist.

It raises the question – but more actually the fear – will anyone really ever know you?

But the real question is: can you ever know yourself?

Philosophers have argued over self-identity for millennia. David Hume takes the view that identity is an illusion; we sense our self through our perceptions, as a result of our experiences. If that’s true, then perhaps knowing ourselves is not about finding a single truth, but about collecting and understanding the different pieces of our journey.

If we imagine the self as a never-ending book, each person, each emotion, and each experience is a new chapter, but the story is never finished. The self isn’t rigid; rather, it is flexible – always in motion.

If we accept that we may never fully know ourselves, a surprising thing happens – we become free. If I had accepted I was who I was at 21, I would have never embarked upon anything like this. The fear of putting this online would have been crippling.

Yet I found within myself the desire to be seen, and the feeling that others would both want to see it and enjoy seeing it because I want to see it in others.

My favourite quote from the German writer Goethe encapsulates it best: “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”

So, can we ever truly know ourselves? I think not.

But the beauty of life lies in the constant discovery, in the unanswered questions, and in the journey itself.

Since 2016 there have been 6 Prime Ministers, 8 Chancellors, 9 Foreign Secretaries, and 10 Home Secretaries. Not even stepping down to the Ministers of State where there has been even more change, with there being 17 Ministers for Housing.

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Some would argue that this is just the political instability of the Tories. However, I would argue that instability mirrors the instability in the country.

Brexit, now almost 10 years old, threw a wrench into typical party lines, with both the Conservative and the Labour parties damaged by its influence.

Then the resulting oscillation from the Boris Johnson majority to the Keir Starmer majority - built on one of the lowest voter percentages ever - shows an electorate that can’t quite make up their mind. Their only objective is change. Further evidenced by the surge of third parties threatening the two-party system.

Take for instance the below voting intentions: at the end of 2025. There were 5 parties within 10 points of each other with the predicted seat counts below.

The First Past the Post system just isn’t built for this level of mixed voting; certainly the Westminster system as it currently exists isn’t. The above predicted seat count would result in either a 5-party coalition required for the left - made up of Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Greens, and Plaid Cymru (depending on independents) or a bizarre Reform, Conservative, and Lib Dem coalition. Both of which seem highly improbable and extremely unstable.

The ungovernable nature of the UK is evident in the 13 major U-turns the Labour Government has performed only 18 months into office. From WASPI compensation to Income Tax, Welfare, and Farmers, to just today, Digital ID, the Government has been forced to step back on its policies.

The Labour backbenches are already exerting power as if it were the dying days of a government. They know how unpopular the party is with the electorate and they know how unpopular the Prime Minister is. Keir is currently polling at a –66% net satisfied rating - The lowest since Thatcher.

Politics has become far more about instant satisfaction and change - see the response to the Labour defeat in Caerphilly where Labour MPs reacted reflexively to change their Prime Minister.

No one, Labour or Tory, has come up with a credible plan to restrain public spending or to persuade the voters to accept the reality that taxes will have to rise. And no one knows how to stop the boats.

This is also true of Nigel Farage, who has finally done away with some of his more ridiculous tax and spending policies but has still failed to produce a substantive manifesto. This is obviously because it will fracture his supporters - many of whom are already disillusioned by decisions to admit former Tories such as Nadhim Zahawi or Ben Bradley.

Some would argue this is because of the quality of MPs. “We have useless MPs” - mostly true. Or they would blame the lazy civil servants - not true in my opinion. But frankly, I think the fault is because too few politicians are treating the electorate like real adults.

The economy is dire, public services are crumbling, and productivity and GDP haven’t really increased in 15 years. There are obviously going to have to be serious spending cuts alongside tax changes. But no politician wants to bite the bullet.

Because to suggest reforming the NHS to a social insurance system following nearly every other European country, or benefits, or removing the triple lock, would almost guarantee the loss of a political career.

Frankly, the problem is that the voters expect the impossible of their politicians. In essence, they want American taxes and Nordic welfare.

If Starmer does go, how long will the next Prime Minister last before we are in the same situation?

It’s a generation that is falling behind as far too many fall victim to doomscrolling or sports betting - developing no life or interests beyond consumption. Yet when offered a way out of it, the response is often “oh that’s too hard” or “what about my mental health?”.

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A perfect representation of this is the online trend “Bean Soup Theory”. Bean Soup Theory was coined after a TikTok video went viral about a vegan bean soup recipe made for women with anaemia. A user responded that she doesn’t like beans and asked if she could make a substitute - defeating the purpose of a bean soup. Lacking so much agency to look up an alternative on their own, they instead respond almost like a bot.

There is a theory that algorithms have essentially altered users’ perspectives on the internet to the point that it makes them self-centred, i.e. this video was shown to me and it was only for me. But frankly, I think that is wrong; I think it reflects a trend of pure laziness amongst Gen Z, with vast swathes of users using social media in place of Google or third-party sources. Take for example the endless hordes of Twitter users using the platform’s AI ‘Grok’ to perform all the thinking for them.

This is learned behaviour. Many in Gen Z have lived mollycoddled lives, with a generation that is drinking significantly less, socialising significantly less, and having significantly less sex than any other. It has resulted in a risk-averse generation that is more likely to look towards other people to make decisions for them.

In some sense, I am being particularly harsh on my fellow generation. The graduate job market is one of the worst in 30 years, there is essentially no prospect of home ownership for vast chunks of the generation, and an atomised social scene that tilts majority-online for many. Yet many in the generation are unwilling to accept the realities of life, with outrageous pay demands, little respect for those older than them, and my personal pet peeve: a bizarre attitude to aging.

I probably don’t have to tell you but Gen Z — there are exceptions — don’t save. Whilst of course there is an element of not having enough, I don’t entirely believe that. When pressed on this, the overwhelming response from Gen Z falls into two camps.

Either “why would I want a million dollars at 60? I am basically dead” or “Climate change is going to kill me in 10 years, why should I save?”. Both of which make my skin itch with irritation. The first is obvious to anyone over the age of 35: you will be 60 one day — far sooner than you expect — and when you are, you would probably like to retire. The second is even more frustrating; it’s a form of political fatalism where they’ve outsourced all individual agency to the state, effectively deciding that if the government hasn't 'solved' the planet, there is no point in them making any effort at all.

Climate change no doubt will be bad. There will, at this point, be a couple of degrees of warming. The results will be catastrophic for some: scorching temperatures, extreme weather events, and parts of the planet unlivable.

Yet the people that say climate change will kill them are usually rich Westerners that will experience the least of climate change’s effects.

But they are have outsourced so much of their agency that they are incapable of reading a single report to discover this. They think that climate change is like some video game character that is just going to kill millions of them out of nowhere once we pass 2°C of warming - that everywhere in 2050 will be like barren desert of Saudi Arabia.

Lack of agency is a feature in every generation, there are countless people who have little to no agency over their lives. But to me Gen Z embodies the mantra of living life as though it is happening to them instead of it happening for them.

They asked me: “How would you fix it?”

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I thought of my experience in Finland. A country that just seemed to work; transport that was efficient, fast, and correctly sized — quaintly, a rush hour in Helsinki is everyone not getting a seat. This is an unfair comparison because Finland is a country of 5 million, about 10 times smaller than the UK. Of course their Government works; the population they have to provide services for is far smaller.

The British State is unimaginably large; the scale of modern Western democracies is so large that it is inconceivable. The median salary in the UK is £39,039. The British Government spends £40,000 a second. Every second, the median salary is spent by the state.

The British national debt, whilst not as large as the Americans’, is £3 trillion. When you begin talking in trillions, the scale is so large that one person cannot conceive it. For some perspective:

• 1 second is 1 second.

• 1 million seconds is 12 days (a holiday).

• 1 billion seconds is 30 years (a career).

• 1 trillion seconds is 30,000 years (longer than human civilisation).

• 3 trillion seconds is 90,000 years ago (the Sahara was a fertile plain).

The NHS directly employs 2 million people and over 6 million work in the public sector (including the NHS). The scale of Government operations is vast. Of the roughly £1.3 trillion spent every year, the NHS makes up £250 billion.

The scale of that number alone is unimaginable. There is often an outcry in the media about spending on what are considered frivolous projects in the millions. Some examples are below (including some fun additions):

Off the bat, the Burj Khalifa — the tallest building in the world — cost 6 days of NHS spending. The lavish state visit by President Trump in 2025: 40 minutes of NHS spend. The Sites Reservoir, a proposed reservoir in the US that would supply 1.8 million acre-feet of water — enough for 10% of the population of the UK: 6 days of NHS spending. The famed £100 million bat tunnel for HS2 was intended to protect 300 bats at a cost of £300,000 per bat. It seems DEFRA has calculated that one bat is worth 49 seconds of NHS spending. You get the idea.

It is so ridiculous you laugh rather than cry, but the state as it exists is convoluted, inefficient, and downright incompetent. The most painful part of it all is that all this waste is occurring not whilst the state is delivering spectacular services, but rather dreadful services. With homeless veterans on the street, crumbling schools, awful council housing, and a military incapable of fighting a war if one arose.

The state has to change; it has to reform.

All of this is disregarding the impending timebomb of demographics that will lay waste to every level of Government funding whilst taxes are at their highest since WW2.

There is no room for the state to be this inefficient. Yet how do you reform it? The system is gargantuan, to say the least. It is far too large for one person to take on and at every step there will be resistance to reform — because reform will mean that people will lose their jobs.

The British State and its organisations are more likely to chug along until something revolutionary happens. Whether that is someone on the left of politics taking power and ripping it all down, or someone on the right ironically doing the same, who knows?

But frankly, I think pigs will fly before that happens.

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The threat is only getting worse. Because of the geography, the Russians are constantly using the Gulf of Finland (pictured below) to export their oil through the baltic sea.

There exists a narrow band of international water in the Gulf of Finland that allows the Russian shadow fleet to sneak past the coasts of Finland and Estonia. This was of key concern for the Finns during my visit.

Whilst post-sanctions Russian oil was supposedly curbed in production, the reality is that they are operating at 95% of their pre-war capacity. The export of oil is, however, no longer done by Russian ships, but rather vessels flying under the flags of countries such as Liberia or the Marshall Islands.

This is providing serious funding for the Russian war effort and has been a key target for the Ukrainian secret service, as seen by their drone attack in September 2025 on the Primorsk oil port.

The threat for the Finnish is the lack of insurance and unclear ownership regarding the ships. This could result in financial burdens for the coastal states, as it would be difficult for claimants to recover costs for damage, oil spills, and rescue operations if it is unclear whom to turn to. The condition of the ships is poor, with many being old, lacking regular repairs, and as a result uninsurable.

Additionally, there are allegations of the shadow fleet being used to carry out nefarious activities — known as hybrid warfare — for example, the tanker Eagle S (below), which in 2024 dragged its anchor along the seafloor for 100km’s causing damage to the underwater power cables between Estonia and Finland. The Finnish authorities charged 3 of the crew for damaging the cables but the case was dropped because the courts didn’t have jurisdiction over the case.

This is because under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the criminal jurisdiction lies with the vessel’s flag state, in this case, the Cook Islands, or the crew’s home countries - Georgia and India.

This same incident just happened at the end of 2025 when the cargo vessel Fitburg, sailing from St Petersburg to the port of Haifa in Israel under the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines, dragged its anchor across the sea floor for at least 10 km’s damaging a Finnish telecoms cable. All 14 of the crew were detained and two are charged under “aggravated disruption of telecommunications” and “aggravated sabotage and attempted aggravated sabotage”.

This is a serious effort by the Russians using hybrid warfare to foster instability amongst Western countries. Russian aggression is only increasing against the Baltic Sea countries. But there is concern amongst the Baltic countries that any attempt to shut down the channel would result in reciprocal measures against their shipping companies — particularly amongst the Danes, where Maersk is based.

The response against this Russian aggression has come in the form of NATO and EU cooperation. In January 2025, NATO launched Baltic Sentry, which is a mission specifically focused on surveilling ships in the Baltic Sea, but it isn’t focused on stopping the Russian shadow fleet.

However, Russia with little pushback by the Europeans have only grown more bold in their hybrid activities and failure by the West to shutdown its shipping activities is only sustaining a vital revenue stream for the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

There is a chronic lack of capacity for the British state to build anything.

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The root issue of this is the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The Act was passed by the Clement Attlee Labour government following a long evolution of legislation regulating the built environment. The Act sought to implement strategic planning post-World War Two, in line with the wider construction of the welfare state.

The Act sought to construct a long-term land management system that balanced social, environmental, and economic objectives. The Act nationalised the development rights of land, allowing existing structures to remain but requiring planning permission for new uses.

The TPA1947 introduced what is known as a ‘discretionary planning system’. It is the subjective, uncertain, discretionary element of the process that acts as a key hurdle to building.

Rather than having a zone-based system with a presumption of approval as long as certain requirements are followed and conform to regulations or local plans. Every application is instead judged on its merits, which invites everyone to participate in the planning process. The problem is that every level has a veto. This invites the ‘Not In My Backyard’ (NIMBY) element of the process.

Even if developments are perfectly in line with published local plans, they can still be blocked by campaigners.

There have been attempts to standardise planning with a National Planning Policy Framework in 2012, significantly consolidating guidance to provide ‘local plans’ for developers to follow. Yet, because of the discretionary, case-by-case element, even if you follow the local plans, you can still be denied planning.

When the TPA1947 was first introduced, it didn’t have as strong an effect on house completions.

However, the picture in 2026 is quite damning. The number of house completions in 2024 was 217,000; this is against the backdrop of 400,000 net migration in 2024 and 600,000 in 2023. All this sits alongside a Government target of 300,000 new homes a year.

We don’t have the full numbers yet for 2025, but the projections on completions are significantly down and the picture doesn’t look to be improving.

Housing is the root of almost everything in society, from education to health to pensions to investment to the number of children — housing has a measurable, significant effect on all of them.

Say you are in your 30s and you finally want to have a family. However, you can’t afford a house in London.

So you have to move out of London. You are now in a small three-bed house probably 90 minutes outside London. You have now doubled your commute; you walk significantly less, so your health is worse; those random moments of meeting people or having a drink are significantly fewer, leading you to be lonelier; you likely don’t live near family. So once you have children, the help offered by your friends and family is significantly less. You have essentially isolated yourself from your entire social network.

Yes, this is the correct decision for an individual, but is this really the economic calculation we want society to make?

Move away from everything and everyone you know so you can have a family and just “suck it up” because we had to do it too — no wonder the replacement rate is significantly down.

The numbers on housing are tragic at best. The average floor space per person in the UK is 38sqm, which is smaller than comparable Western European countries such as France (43sqm) and Germany (46sqm). The number drops to 33sqm for London, which is lower than New York and Tokyo.

The planning system is so restrictive that private developers tend to produce poorer quality houses to recoup costs lost in planning. But because the quantity of new housing is so low, consumers are forced to accept worse housing.

In a more ideal system, the customer could choose developers who produce higher quality housing versus the current cookie-cutter homes. There is demand for higher quality housing; one has only to look at the Poundbury development.

Poundbury is a project started in the 90s by the now King Charles III, with a vision of building beautiful, traditional-looking homes instead of sprawling modern estates, while focusing on creating community and a walkable estate.

The costs were higher and construction took longer, yet the demand for homes on the estate is consistently high, with a premium above market rate. There is demand for better housing; there is just so little supply of it because of artificial constraints built into the planning system.

Now, some would argue that the solution to this is the Government building significant quantities of affordable housing to provide homes to those who really need them. The problem is that the building of those council homes still gets stuck in the same traps as private development: local opposition because of traffic or green space, environmental reviews because of obscure species of newts, and complex legal negotiations between developers and councils. The list just goes on and on.

Another key problem facing councils is the actual lack of developers. Due to planning being a complicated process, it forces consolidation as only large developers can survive the multi-year process of planning. This is because of both the cost of planning and the legal resources required; the effect is significant. In 1988, 40% of the housing market was small-to-medium; in 2020, this number had fallen to 10%. There has been some effort to help smaller developers, but the fundamental issue remains the complexity of planning.

Even disregarding the disruptive effects of the current planning system on housing completion as well as infrastructure — a whole other kettle of fish — is it entirely fair that so many people can object to a person building on their own land?

Of course, there should be some level of oversight and regulation for them to follow, but should every loft conversion, every extension, or every change of windows in a historic building require planning permission? Is that fair?

Thankfully, some in Government do agree, as there have been changes to the law to allow permitted development on some loft extensions, but this highly restrictive system still exists.

In my opinion, the key to the UK unlocking significant gains in productivity, wealth, health, and happiness is root-and-branch reform of planning.

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