The Blog

Last Thursday I stepped off the train in Brussels are was greeted by bright sunshine; it felt like the middle of summer. I decided not to take the metro, but stay above ground and wander through the city.   Never having visited before I had no idea whether I was walking through areas that those in the know would say one should avoid and, with the sunshine elevating my mood, I was probably less cautious than I might have been. Within a few hundred yards of the station the character of the streets shifted. Elegant office buildings gave way to older, smaller buildings, many of which were derelict. I passed very people, but those I encountered weren’t the business travellers I’d left behind at the station, and who had all streamed down the steps to the metro or strolled directly to the taxi rank.   I went from being one […]

As the father of two children I see it as my job to give them some appreciation of money. Also, given my work, I show them how they’re influenced by shops and manufacturers to buy particular products and, once they’ve bought them, encouraged to spend more. Something must be getting through because, just yesterday, my six year old daughter talked about her conscious and unconscious minds (she was describing her unease about performing at a large theatre with her ballet class, and being conscious of the people watching her). I remember learning about the concept of ‘opportunity cost’ when I was studying economics. Until that point I had never consciously considered spending money in terms of what I wouldn’t be able to buy if I bought a particular product at a particular cost. I don’t think that I was unusual in not thinking in economists terms naturally: if behavioural economics […]

A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house sitting chatting in his kitchen, when his 11 year old son came in and poured himself a glass of milk. In the process of pouring it from the container some splashed out of the glass and onto the worktop.  Without hesitating he flicked his hand down by his side, this caused his slightly baggy school sweatshirt to drop down to cover half his hand.  In a deft move, he grabbed the cuff so that it now covered his palm as he extended his hand back up, and he mopped the small puddle of milk with his improvised, ever-ready cloth. My immediate reaction was of slight disgust.  That cuff was going to smell pretty ghastly within a few hours.  Whilst I hoped his was a calculated act, the last use of a sweatshirt destined for the wash, I suspected by the […]

Let me say straight away that I’m not talking about wriggly things in the garden that are doing good things for soil quality. I’m referring to the measure of voter approval that is sometimes displayed during election debates. In the last UK general election we had a television debate amongst the three main party leaders for the first time. As has happened elsewhere, the broadcasters added three lines on the screen, one for each candidate, and plotted a ‘sample’ of voters satisfaction with the points being made by the politicians in real time. You might think that in something as significant as the leadership of one’s country people would be keen to make their own informed opinion. But as has been shown in numerous other studies, we can’t help but be influenced by the knowledge of what others are doing or what we believe they’re thinking. This was demonstrated in […]