A series of post’s looking at how Government Policy is made in the UK and other countries. It looks at the difference between Ethic’s based policy vs Evidence Based policy. How effective increasing regimes of punishment are on implementing different types of policy. Provides a deeper look at the UK’s illegal drugs policy since the late 60’s, did it work, etc?
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Why Virtue Works Best with Evidence
By this point in the series, one thing should be fairly clear.
Free speech doesn’t disappear because someone wakes up one morning and decides to ban it. It erodes because systems slowly stop rewarding tolerance, disagreement, and long-term thinking — and start rewarding caution, control, and…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Humans Have a Habit of Being Unpredictable.
We often reach for new laws when something feels wrong — but rarely stop to ask what happens next. This post explores why people don’t respond to policy the way we expect, how concern turns into moral panic, and why evidence helps virtue work better, not…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Why Punishment Doesn’t Seem to Work.
Punishment feels like a decisive response when behaviour worries us — but it often doesn’t work the way we expect. This post explores why punishment adapts behaviour rather than eliminating it, how incentives shape enforcement, and why costs quietly grow elsewhere when policy relies too heavily…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Drugs
Drug policy is often framed as a battle to eliminate demand — but decades of evidence suggest something else happens instead. This post explores how prohibition reshapes markets, increases risk, concentrates harm, and quietly shifts costs elsewhere when punishment becomes the primary response.
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Sex Work
Sex work policy is often driven by moral discomfort rather than evidence. This post explores what actually happens when sex work is criminalised, how vulnerability increases when activity is pushed out of sight, and why punishment often concentrates harm instead of reducing it.
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Migration and Trafficking
Migration and trafficking are often treated as moral or enforcement failures, but evidence suggests they are shaped by incentives and policy design. This post explores how restrictive migration systems create shadow markets, increase exploitation, and shift costs elsewhere rather than reducing movement or harm.
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Spotting the Patterns.
Before policies become expensive and hard to unwind, there are usually warning signs. This post explores how to spot them early — not by arguing, but by paying attention to what actually happens once policy meets real life.
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: what Happened Elsewhere?
Ok — so before we go any further, it’s probably worth asking a fair question.
Is this just how things work everywhere? Or is there something particularly British — or English — about the way we’ve handled it?
Up to now, we’ve mostly been looking at…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – Who’s Been Getting Rich.
Let’s Rethink Policy-Making: The Filthy Lucre. What happens when the public cost of managing illegal drugs is larger than the market itself? Looking at England & Wales data, we explore why drug use persists, how costs accumulate across health, crime and social services, and why pretending…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – A cheaper alternative.
Let’s Rethink Policy-Making: Filthy Lucre What happens if we stop pretending the illegal drugs market will disappear? Using conservative figures for England & Wales, this post explores how costs, criminal profits, regulation, and incentives interact — and why redesigning where money flows may matter more than…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – Cost of Losing the War.
Has the War on Drugs delivered what it promised? Looking at fifty years of UK policy, this post explores drug use, harm, and public cost — not to win an argument, but to ask whether “being tough” turned out to be an especially expensive way of…
Keep readingLets Rethink Policy-Making: What All of This Was Really About
This post brings together the themes explored across the series — punishment, incentives, unintended consequences, and cost — to reflect on what policy does once it becomes a system. It asks how evidence can sit alongside values to design laws that work better in the real…
Keep readingThere are also Podcasts available –
https://rss.com/podcasts/hysnaps-political-investigations/
And some Youtube videos
https://youtu.be/a2yVkQ7LUUs?si=Gwhpk17NpfC2wP81
You Can Access the InfoGraphics from my Facebook site
