We spend ~£20bn a year dealing with the consequences of illegal drugs in England & Wales — while ~ £10bn flows to criminal markets.
What happens if we stop pretending the market will disappear?
🧵 Filthy Lucre
#UKPolitics #LetsRethink #PolicyMaking #SystemsThinking #EvidenceNotPanic
#LetsRethink
We spend roughly £20bn a year dealing with the consequences of illegal drugs in England & Wales — while the market itself is worth around £10bn.
This isn’t a moral argument. It’s an accounting one.
🧵 The Filthy Lucre
#UKPolitics #LetsRethink #PolicyMaking #EvidenceNotPanic #SystemsThink
@BBCNews any comment?
Really pleased to see the petition for by elections when an mp changes party has got over 100k signatures, and looking at the map they have come from all over the UK. I am now looking forward to the debate in parliament and which parties try to whip against the proposal and what arguments are used.
Is this really inevitable — or just how we chose to design it?
Comparing UK policy with international approaches to drugs, sex work, and migration, and what different assumptions produce in practice.
Before policies become expensive and hard to unwind, there are usually warning signs. Ever get the feeling a policy conversation has quietly shifted — but no one’s quite saying it out loud?
This post is about noticing those moments before things get expensive.
When legal routes close, movement doesn’t stop — it adapts.
This post looks at how restrictive migration policy creates shadow systems, empowers traffickers, and increases exploitation instead of reducing it.
When sex work is criminalised, it doesn’t disappear — it moves.
This post looks at how punishment increases vulnerability, shifts harm out of sight, and quietly raises costs elsewhere when policy focuses on morality rather than safety.
If banning drugs harder worked, it would have worked by now.
This post explores why markets adapt, why harm concentrates, and why punishment often removes control rather than restoring it.
When punishment doesn’t reduce behaviour, the usual response is… more punishment.
This post explores why that cycle forms, who pays the price, and why asking “what actually happens when we try?” matters.
People don’t behave like policy models assume they will.
When visibility gets mistaken for growth, concern turns into panic — and costs follow. This is about why virtue governs better with evidence, and why asking “what happens next?” matters.
We’ve been thinking a lot about policy-making lately.
Not party politics — but the quieter bit underneath it.
How decision-makers decide what to make laws about.
How they decide how to shape them.
And what assumptions get baked in along the way.
If culture wars explained falling birth rates, the numbers would line up.
They don’t.
Housing costs, insecurity, and delayed stability explain far more than identity ever could.
Let’s rethink the blame.
We argue about migration like it caused population change.
But UK population growth actually stopped first.
Longer lives, later inheritance, weaker pensions, expensive housing — families didn’t opt out. They were priced out.
#PopulationGrowth #Housing #UkPolitics #LetsRethink #SystemsThinking
Introduction to my Audio Video offerings to support my political posts.
A quick 6 min video summarising my blog series on the UK's 300 year Debt war.
#ukpolitics #hysnapmmh #GovernmentDebt #PoliticalHistory #LetsRethink http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ua7i9AVmn5k&feature=youtu.be https://hysnapsmusicandmentalhealth.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/uk-government-debt-a-visual-guide/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social
Forget abstract tax charts. In this post I look at six real personae – from low-paid renters to top 1% earners – and ask: what does funding private-level education for every child actually cost you?
We talk a lot about “church schools” in Britain — but almost never about who actually pays for them.
I started digging into the data expecting a small technical footnote.
What I found instead was a much bigger mismatch.
“Spending 7% of GDP on education is madness!”
Except that’s roughly what high-performing countries already do. Time to check our numbers against the Nordics and asks: is Britain willing to be normal?
#LetsRethink #UkPolitics #Education
What does a fully funded, modern school system really cost once the dust settles? Time to add up the staffing, estate and maintenance and lands somewhere very specific – and less scary than you might think.
There’s a strange thing about British education policy: we talk endlessly about structures, governance, logos, and accountability frameworks…
…but almost never about the people who actually make the whole thing work.
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