About

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

John Maynard Keynes was expressing an important truth: ideas matter, and have an unfortunate tendency to outlive their usefulness. They are products of their time; any idea made sense once. But the dead hand of intellectual influence exercises its pull long after the expiry of the conditions under which the idea was created.

Britain’s enervated economy, society and governance owes much to bad ideas. This Substack gives some better ones.

About me – I’m a law student based in London, studying to be a barrister (the branch of the English legal profession that specialises in arguing cases in court).

I write mainly (but not exclusively) about how we can help end Britain’s economic stagnation by building and operating railway infrastructure better.