We’re in the midst of a self sabotaging moral panic over vaping. Let me explain 🧵 An imperfect analogy: imagine we’d found a way to get people to switch from booze, which kills around 10,000 a year - to another substance: still addictive, still not risk free, but altogether pretty harmless

Coffee, say.

Millions switch; a public health miracle is hailed

.@TheWeekUK kindly featured my last two columns which reminds me I hadn’t properly posted them with threads etc.

So here’s the first: it’s on intra-generational inequality, which I think is frequently overlooked because we are so obsessed with inter-generational inequality Here goes:

When did we start thinking of society primarily as a collection of age cohorts?

Why are there low birth rates? Liberals say it’s because states don’t support parents enough. Conservatives say that in gender equal countries women are pickier. Sorry liberals, the data is with the conservatives: this is mainly driven by pickier women But what to do about it? Sorry conservatives: you can’t just tell women ‘not to be picky’. They have after all freely decided they’d rather be single than marry Mr Wrong. Sorry liberals: you can’t just tell men to shape up (or lower their own standards). Maybe they don’t want to

Birthrates are falling in the rich world and elsewhere. Women and men in these places on average want 2 children but have far fewer. Why? I think we’ve been missing something 🧵 We tend to blame this (in the UK) on problems like lack of housing, income, and childcare

A friendly challenge to @RichardvReeves and co who say that it is Western strides in equality - leaving ‘lost boys’ and men with few role models and diminished prospects - which are ultimately behind the rise of Andrew Tate. This narrative feels right. Is it true? 🧵 Well one way to test the theory would be to look at international comparison points. What are young men doing in countries where equality HAS NOT made many strides? Places where men are still very much on top?

Did the Basic Instinct story originate with Rayner? A brief timeline… The Amanda Platell piece below was out on 7th Jan. The Matt Forde podcast, where Basic Instinct memes were mentioned, was out on 26th Jan

Hello, so I am recovering from coronavirus and thought I’d tweet a day by day list of my symptoms as I found similar threads very helpful. (For context have no underlying health conditions) DAY 1: starts off barely perceptible. Feel like am getting a temperature but by the time get home to test it is only slightly elevated