A line chart showing productivity, defined as gross domestic product (GDP) per hour of work, for a selection of 10 countries from 1950 to 2023. The data is adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. At the top of the chart is Denmark, with a productivity of 88.7 $ per hour. At the bottom is Ethiopia, at 4.5 $ per hour. The data source is the Penn World Table (2025). The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

📊 Data update: The Penn World Table is an extensive database that helps us understand long-run, global trends in economic growth, working hours, productivity, and living standards.

We’ve updated 17 of our charts using the latest release.

At the heart of the UK's geographic divides are 'exporting' industries like software or manufacturing. Their performance drives local wages + the national economy. The industrial strategy needs to focus on helping exporting industries grow locally so they can succeed internationally.

The price level for UK housing was 44% above OECD average in 2022

We mutter a lot about housing in the UK. BUT IT'S 44% MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE OECD AVERAGE.
www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

The housing crisis - Centre for Cities The UK doesn’t have a national housing crisis, but there is a housing crisis in our most unaffordable cities. How can homes be built where they are needed?

NEW REPORTS | Restarting housebuilding🏘️

These new reports focus on private and public housebuilding, using local-level data from the last 80 years to analyse the reforms needed to meet the government's 1.5m housebuilding target.

Read the full reports👇
www.centreforcities.org/housing/

La fameuse fenêtre d’Overton

Street full of parked cars in Bordeaux France, Google photo from 2008.

Same location in Bordeaux photo taken by me in 2023.

Before & After: I don’t think people realize the extent to which parked cars degrade public space.

According to The Times the government will publish a White Paper on English devolution in the coming weeks which will set out plans for the “biggest overhaul of local government in more than 50 years”.

1/3 #LocalGov 🧵

Redcliffe-Maud: The greatest local government reorganisation we never had Oh don’t tell me you aren’t interested.

"Now Harold Wilson’s Labour government had a taste for reorganisation. In June 1966, it appointed John Redcliffe-Maud – civil servant, academic, baron – to rethink things from the bottom up, and to come up with a system that didn't rely on country boundaries first set in the age of King Alfred."

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