Energy crisis plan, imperial measures survey,...

What does it mean if you say that something is an epidemic? In the case of a virus, it usually means that it is spreading rapidly and that more and more people are getting infected. When a disease isn’t on the rise but is there in a population at a reasonably steady level, we ten ...  Show more

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. On the programme:Last week, Annunziata Rees-Mogg took to X to post a claim about the proportion of sex offences in Dorset that are committed by asylum seekers, writing that “asylum seekers make up 0.8% of Dorset’s populati ...  Show more

How will soaring energy costs affect UK corporations? Prices are spiking, not least because of the war in Ukraine. Energy is essential for everything from heating offices to transportation to manufacturing, so what happens when it just becomes too expensive? Evan Davis and guests ...  Show more

A “staggering failure” is how one senior MP has described a government scheme designed to help nearly a million households with their energy bills last winter. Former SNP and now independent MP Angus MacNeil, who's Chair of Parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero committee, ...

The Office for National Statistics has published the first of a new quarterly set of figures designed to reflect how inflation is experienced by households. They are called the Household Costs Indices and include things like mortgage costs, interest and insurance. It showed that ...  Show more

The rising cost of living really brought home how those big, global economic shocks can mean some pretty bad bumps for our individual finances. Probably the most obvious, immediate and, painful way that global economic events hit our household budgets is through the price of ener ...  Show more