Nottingham Business School
The economics lesson hiding in your fruit bowl. If I were setting an introductory microeconomics exam, I might begin with a deceptively simple question. Which should cost more in a British supermarket? An apple grown in Kent and picked a few miles away, or a banana grown in Ecuador, harvested by hand, refrigerated, loaded onto [ ]
Why Britain s Most Hated Tax May Be Andy Burnham s Greatest Opportunity There is a number that should embarrass every Chancellor who has ever flinched at inheritance tax, and it is this: roughly one estate in twenty pays it. Not one in three, not one in five. One in twenty. Yet ask the British public which [ ]
Who Sinned That He Was Born Blind? There is a moment in the New Testament so quiet, so apparently incidental, that most readers pass straight through it on their way to the miracle that follows. It is not a sermon. It is not a confrontation with religious authorities. It is simply a question and an [ ]
How We Fixed It: And How You Can Too! Golf Has a Problem Golf has a problem. It is one of the most enjoyable social games ever invented, but its scoring systems have a habit of making casual players feel like they are failing a test they never signed up for. If you have ever [ ]
Might Dawkins be right? Richard Dawkins, the zoologist and professional atheist, has recently published an essay describing his unsettling suspicion that Anthropic’s AI system Claude may be conscious. After engaging with what he calls “Claudia”, he asks a question that at least deserves to be taken seriously: if Claude is not conscious, what exactly would [ ]
Why Your Conscience Might be Killing People. There is a question that cuts to the heart of moral philosophy: when we decide what is right and wrong, are we ultimately answerable to outcomes, to how things actually turn out for real people, or to unbreakable principles that hold no matter the consequences? The view that principles [ ]
The Strange Authority of Damaged Things The Damaged Original Suppose you had a choice. On one side: a blurry, faded photograph of your great-grandparents. The image is damaged. The details are indistinct. Their faces dissolve into grain and shadow. You cannot quite make out the precise shape of the eyes or the exact contours of [ ]
The Logic of Uncertainty There s a quiet disagreement sitting at the heart of modern science, and it has been there for over a century. We use probability everywhere, to build quantum computers, to price insurance policies, to model pandemics, to guide decisions under uncertainty. It is the invisible mathematics of almost everything we do. And [ ]
The Creed That Reframes the Resurrection Debate If you spend any time online engaging with sceptics about the origins of Christianity, you will almost certainly encounter what might be called the “Telephone Game” theory. The Telephone Game idea is simple and initially persuasive. Jesus of Nazareth, so it goes, was a charismatic teacher who was [ ]
Because a child knows too much. Listen to a three-year-old for long enough and you will notice something that should, on reflection, unsettle you. The child has been alive for perhaps thirty-six months, and has heard a limited and often imperfect sample of spoken English. Nobody has explained syntax to them. Nobody has walked them [ ]