I’ve just received and read The Happiness Experiment, a new book by my friend Carl B Barney. And a very interesting read it is. 

Trump is upending European security and global trade, also spooking public and private sector players with conduct seen at best as short-sighted, at worst as arbitrary and unpredictable.

Apparently we’ve one of those economic crimes calling out to the very heavens for rectification.

The old order has been swept away. Let us try something new.

The essential premise of the economic proposals of Professor Mariana Mazzucato is that if we get all those really clever people in government to really think hard and do stuff to us then we’ll be better off.

There are no permanent victories in the battle for liberty and the economic prosperity that it engenders.

We know that Guardian readers are being told this - look, it’s right there in the newspaper - but whether they’ll make that mental leap to know it is unknown.

We have all encountered the practice of shrinkflation, where producers reduce the size or weight of their product to avoid having to increase its price.

One of the proofs that we are not a party political organisation is that we welcome good policy wherever it stems from.

Ministers tell us that everything is ‘on the table’. And many people believe, even expect, that the UK should retaliate against Donald Trump’s new trade tariffs with tariffs of our own.

While the UK’s Department of Health campaigns against people becoming fat and urges them to slim down, there is a strong case for slimming down the Department itself.

Last week we pointed out that to solve the Birmingham binmen strike it is necessary to pay teaching assistants more.