John Kay

Confronted with the specifics, rather than the principle, of constitutional change, many voters revert to the status quo.

Should there be markets for sperm, surrogate motherhood or transplant organs?

The salient fact is that London could never have become a great business and financial capital if its residents felt an urge to vomit every time they went outdoors.

There are many similarities between this response to the press crisis of 2011 and the reactions to the financial crisis of 2008. In both cases the demand for better processes and new rules largely missed the point.

Physicists studying sport have established that many fieldsmen are very good at catching balls, but bad at answering the question: “Where in the park will the ball land?” Good players don’t forecast the future, but adapt to it.

Anyone who thinks the quest for scale economies is the primary explanation of the human desire for family life is strangely deficient in observational capacity, as well as common sense.

The hypothetical world which the arm’s length principle envisages is one which could not generate the profits which the principle attempts to tax.

Social policy would, in the long run, owe far more to Eleanor Roosevelt’s claim that “everyone has the right to a standard of living” than to Beveridge’s assertion that “management of one’s income is an essential element of a citizen’s freedom”.

Ireland accounts for a share of global profit disproportionate to the size of the Irish economy. Not because business in Ireland is particularly successful but because reporting profits in Ireland is particularly attractive.

The activities of Shah Jahan epitomise rent-seeking – the accumulation of a fortune not by creating wealth through serving customers better but by the appropriation of such wealth after it has already been created by other people.