Rory Sutherland

Back in the 1970s, a less politically correct age, there was a standby formula for television advertising known as 2Cs in a K, which would feature two women by a washing machine engaged in unlikely conversation about some wondrous new detergent. Since The Spectator is a family publication, I shall pretend that 2Cs in a K stood for two ‘consumers’ in a kitchen, although it did not. If you are still trying to puzzle this out, the male equivalent is two dicks near a fence, a routine in which one man implausibly explains to his neighbour the many virtues of a particular woodstain, say, or one of those natty electric pressure washers which allow you to jetwash your patio while pretending you are wielding a flamethrower during the Tet Offensive.

A Dominican and a Jesuit were chain smokers. Both were eager to be allowed to smoke while performing their devotions, but needed to gain permission from a higher authority. ‘I tried asking the Prior, but he was dead against it,’ said the Dominican. ‘What did you ask, precisely?’ enquired the Jesuit. ‘Well, I asked him whether it was acceptable to smoke while I was praying.’ ‘Wrong question,’ replied the Jesuit. ‘I asked my Abbot whether I could pray while I was smoking. Permission granted.’ To economists, price is a number. To everyone else, price is a feeling This is called a framing effect and is one of the best attested findings in the psychological sciences.

Imagine you are choosing between two proposed road-improvement plans, but have the budget for only one. Both of the roads mooted for improvement are 20 miles long, and your sole aim is to reduce average journey time by as much as possible. Which would you choose? Someone travelling slowly to begin with has more time on the road to profit from any gain in speed 1) Improving Road A, which increases the average speed from 20 to 25mph (i.e. 25 per cent faster). or 2) Improving Road B, which increases the average speed from 40 to 65mph (62.5 per cent faster). The majority of people, including many experts, instinctively plump for B. Unfortunately they are wrong.

Among devotees of the full English breakfast, few things polarise more than the inclusion of baked beans. Some people are unrepentant berfs (beans exclusionary radical foodies) whereas others consider beans a coda to close the symphony. My own view is conciliatory: provided the beans are in a separate pot, I’m happy. ‘Hash brown technologies’ seem like useful additions, but end up destroying time-tested alternatives What worries me more is the arrival of the hash brown. This is a transatlantic invader: the grey squirrel of the breakfast world. Not particularly objectionable in itself, it risks eradicating the more attractive indigenous option, which is fried bread. Before you know it, you have nowhere to squish your tomato and the harmony of the plate is destroyed.

My own debanking story concerns a card rather than a bank account. Not the same degree of inconvenience as Nigel Farage, but a similarly telling insight into modern administrative culture. I feel awkward writing this, because in the 30 years I have used American Express, including an enjoyable decade when I also worked for the brand as a copywriter, few companies have impressed me more. They are unfailingly courteous and responsive. On many occasions, such as when arriving at an airport to discover I had to pay £4,000 for an unratified airline ticket, my card has been invaluable; I willingly follow their advice not to leave home without it. But one evening last year Amex didn’t do nicely. There’s a special feeling to having a Platinum card declined.

I have two suggestions for HS2. Either stop it or make it stop. The spiralling cost and delays are reason enough to rethink the project, never mind the changes to patterns of rail use since 2021. Any economic case based on pre--pandemic projections needs to be revisited. So one option would be to stop the project completely. But what if the project goes ahead in a reduced form to save face? Well, in this case, the need for speed is questionable. The value of speed to passengers is far from linear. For instance, cutting a journey time from four hours to two, as the TGV did between Paris and Lyon, is a game-changer. Reducing a journey from 80 minutes to 40, on the other hand, isn’t that big a deal.

I have a hunch why people in late middle age are abandoning the workforce: their jobs, as they once knew them, no longer exist. I don’t mean that there is no longer pay for what they do; it’s simply that corporate bureaucracy has eliminated many of the perks which made work enjoyable in the first place. Doctors hired for their expertise must defer to people with no medical knowledge at all A legal-financial-HR-procurement-managerial commissariat, by ratcheting itself ever deeper into organisations, has eliminated the patronage, autonomy and exercise of knowledge which once came hand-in-hand with professional ability.

I sometimes feel my entire life in advertising has been wasted, and not for the reason you may assume. No, my problem is that I am increasingly becoming a bit of a Georgist. It makes no sense to me that we are taxing people more for working than for living off rent or unearned capital gains. But, additionally, I increasingly wonder what the point is of making goods cheaper and better for consumers if any savings are mopped up by rises in property prices. It’s rather like that half-joking observation that any economic gains in India will simply be spent on ever more expensive weddings. In Britain it’s worse. At least in India the guests get to enjoy a wedding. In Britain, expenditure on property is entirely rivalrous – a negative-sum game.

Suella Braverman was completely wrong to ask her civil servants to investigate the possibility of arranging a one-on-one speed awareness course. This is not because this was in breach of the ministerial code. That aspect of the affair was one of the worst examples of contrived, sanctimonious outrage I have ever seen; it pains me to think anyone thought it remotely newsworthy. No, the main reason Suella was wrong to request a one-on-one course is far simpler. Attending a speed awareness course in the company of a random selection of other people is a total blast, and too great an entertainment opportunity to miss. It’s like Twelve Angry Men with motoring advice.

There was a reason 18th-century rulers were eager for their subjects to grow and eat potatoes: the miraculous tuber offered an alternative source of nutrition to grain, hence reducing bread prices. In the event of a catastrophic harvest, people could survive. To the rulers themselves, however, the biggest benefit was probably what happened when the grain harvest was merely disappointing. With grain no longer critical to survival, the price of bread would be far less volatile. And high bread prices might be more likely to lead to civil unrest than no bread at all. Humans evolved to be foraging omnivores, but agriculture made us over-reliant on whatever crop could best be grown nearby. The potato rebalanced that. Being a monovore is never a good plan in the long term.