Data Editor and columnist, @thetimes š¬š§ How is Britain doing? š thetimes.com/data
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A Friday reminder for Brits who enjoy monitoring the situation: we have a dashboard for you!
š¬š§ thetimes.com/data
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š§µAm struck by how quickly the thermostatic flip in public opinion on tax and spending seems to have happened this Parliament. In 2024, Britons prioritised investing in public services over cutting tax (54% - 30%). Now, thatās flipped: 49% choose tax cuts, 36% public services
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Tom Calver retweeted
Crime in the AI era is increasingly about exploiting the elderly. Tech developers and law enforcement should tackle this head-on, not just with feeble public-info campaigns for older citizens but with heightened in-device anti-crime security and interfaces that account for the changes in cognition and the decreases in tech familiarity that correlate to age
But the second, more important trend is that 55% of crime is now fraud or computer misuse. Violence and theft, which used to dominate the crime survey, were much more common among young adults.
But fraud carries a very different risk profile: its victims skew older and richer.
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We should all celebrate that Britain is less violent than it was 20 years ago.
But the overall crime stats hide an interesting trend: much of the drop in crime has been among the young. For older age groups, crime rates have not fallen much at all
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This has two consequences.
One: older adults are now *more* likely to be victims of crime than younger ones.
Two: while crime rates have collapsed among the young, they have not changed all that much for older adults (even when we add estimated fraud rates in the 2000s)
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While we should all celebrate a less violent society, the benefits of falling crime rates have not been felt evenly. As AI makes fraud ever-more convincing, crime is no longer something you can move away from
More in my column:
thetimes.com/article/9f4e43eā¦
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Tom Calver retweeted
Will the 'Boriswave' become a Burnham wave?
Boris-era arrivals now starting to apply for permanent residency - entitled to full welfare.
Shabana Mahmood says it'll cost Ā£10bn unless rules change. She wants to stop it.
My column on her losing battle:-
times-comment.com/bwave
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Have online āe-consultā forms made it any easier to see your @rcgp GP?
@NHSEngland may have made it easier to contact your doctorās practice, but do you now have a better chance of getting an appointment? via @TomHCalver
thetimes.com/comment/columniā¦
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Tom Calver retweeted
āHave online āe-consultā forms made it any easier to see your GP?ā asks @TomHCalver
My answer to this question would be a resounding ānoā. This was entirely predictable.
Will an Amazon prime mentality ever be sustainable in healthcare? š¤·āāļø
I wrote about this years agoā¦ (1/2)
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This week's column is about the latest revolution in primary care: the e-consult
A good idea in principle, but in many GP practices, badly executed, and another example of the British state automating the front door without fixing the rest
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Why haven't appointments risen? Primary care right now is in a difficult spot
* Funding hasn't risen as much as in hospitals
* And while training posts have soared, lots of licensed GPs don't actually end up working in NHS general practice
* Finally, although headcounts have risen, each GP is doing fewer hours than they used to. Average working hours fell from 41.8 to 34.9 between 2017 and 2024.
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E-consults, if implemented correctly, should be a sensible way to triage requests. But right now, in some practices, they appear to be a barrier to access.
Ministers are right to look at ways AI can help modernise the state, but a faster front door is no use if there is not enough resource put behind it
thetimes.com/article/b37dbc8ā¦
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