Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has written a new book about world poverty which looks set to grab wide attention. In “The Life You Can Save,” he writes, “On a planet full of so much obvious and widespread suffering… there is something deeply askew with our widely accepted views about what it is to live a good life.” I would suggest that...

It is still fashionable to blame the free market for our troubles with the economy but look again. Should we not first look at the laws under which the market functions? This letter by John Read in the Financial Times explores goes straight to the point.

Polly Toynbee wrote an article in the Guardian today, criticising David Cameron’s proposals for tax cuts. My comments were deleted by the moderator as being off-topic. Somebody must have complained. I asked for an explanation and the comment was reinstated, but they must obviously have got under someone’s skin. Whose, I wonder? Here is the allegedly off-topic comment: All mainstream...

A few months ago a neighbour’s son told me that he was thinking of studying Economics for A-level. I suggested that there were more useful subjects, like chemistry, or woodwork or cookery. If he studied economics he would learn things as they were not, in other words it was worse then useless, and that if he wanted to learn about economics, he should take a Saturday job in a street market,...