Month: September 2010

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - How welfare works

Tim Harford and the More or Less team examine more numbers in the news. This week: Claiming benefits has been described by the Chancellor as - for some - a "lifestyle choice". What does the evidence tell us about how incentives work in the welfare system?; The numbers of some of Britain's best-loved birds are declining. Fast. Many think cats are to blame. Are they right?; Why the Prime Minister's salary has become a convenient unit of measurement; And we bring you the results of our mathematical attempt to level the playing field at this year's Great North Run half marathon.

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Start the Week - 20/09/2010

In the first programme of a new series of Start the Week the former MP Lord Hattersley charts the life and politics of David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister responsible for the creation of the welfare state, and a working class man who came to understand the pitfalls of a coalition government. Andrew Marr looks back to the 1980s with the writer Andy McSmith who argues this was the conflict decade, defined by strikes, war and riots. And the philosopher Mary Midgley also criticises the individualism of the time, maintaining that Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' was never a creed in which to live one's life. The Irish-American community in New York is the setting for Richard Bean's new play, in which he uncovers the plots and deals that lead to the American funding of the IRA.

Posted on

Start the Week - 20/09/2010

In the first programme of a new series of Start the Week the former MP Lord Hattersley charts the life and politics of David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister responsible for the creation of the welfare state, and a working class man who came to understand the pitfalls of a coalition government. Andrew Marr looks back to the 1980s with the writer Andy McSmith who argues this was the conflict decade, defined by strikes, war and riots. And the philosopher Mary Midgley also criticises the individualism of the time, maintaining that Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' was never a creed in which to live one's life. The Irish-American community in New York is the setting for Richard Bean's new play, in which he uncovers the plots and deals that lead to the American funding of the IRA.