This is where I discuss the way we live in the UK and the many ways in which that is constantly changing
10:20 UK time, Monday, 17 October 2011
Ministers like statistics which show the other lot in a bad light and themselves basking in glory.
But often the numbers have an irritating habit of not adding up that way.
13:58 UK time, Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Is anyone surprised by today's Institute for Fiscal Studies report forecasting that, as Britain gets poorer, more people will be poor?
At first sight it seems self-evident that falling incomes, rising prices and a squeeze on welfare will mean larger numbers find themselves below the breadline.
10:30 UK time, Monday, 10 October 2011
"There is just incredible incivility in this country… people are rude to each other… public discourse is so bad mannered… we have come to assume and resign ourselves to the fact that civility is on a permanent and inevitable downward slide."
So said David Cameron in 2007, echoing a widespread public view that Britain's behaviour was indicative of a country careering headlong for hell in a handcart.
07:30 UK time, Thursday, 6 October 2011
Looking at some new figures on ethnic minorities in Britain the other day, I glanced at a footnote and suddenly sat bolt upright in my chair.
The implications of it were clear: Britain's mixed-race community must be at least double the size we previously thought.
14:48 UK time, Tuesday, 4 October 2011
For a politician who wants Britain to abandon its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, Theresa May devoted a surprising chunk of her conference speech today to quoting directly from it.
Her particular concern is that "misinterpretation of Article 8 of the ECHR - the right to a family life" has prevented the government deporting people who shouldn't be here. She undoubtedly touches a public nerve when she lists examples of foreign undesirables avoiding the plane back home because of the Human Rights Act.
15:55 UK time, Thursday, 22 September 2011
The life experience of British people born between the years 1925 and 1934 has long had demographers and insurance companies scratching their heads.
For reasons which remain unclear, individuals within this slice of the UK population have been living longer and healthier lives than groups both older and younger.
10:46 UK time, Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Here's my report from Dale Farm, the largest illegal travellers' site in the UK, which has won a last minute legal reprieve against the eviction of its residents.
22:25 UK time, Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Why are British children so unhappy? Four years after Unicef sparked national soul-searching with analysis showing child well-being in the UK at the bottom of a league of developed nations, the organisation has attempted to explain our problem.
The answer, it seems, is that we put too little store on family time and too much on material goods. Unicef paints a picture of a country that has got its priorities wrong - trading quality time with our children for "cupboards full of expensive toys that aren't used".
18:52 UK time, Monday, 12 September 2011
What does the phrase "community sentence" mean to you?
Journalists sometimes characterise a court's use of such a measure as the offender "escaping prison" - the suggestion being that only depriving the criminal of his or her liberty amounts to a suitably rigorous punishment.
15:16 UK time, Friday, 9 September 2011
A smile may have crossed the lips of ministers and officials at the Home Office today when they read the conclusion of an important piece of academic research into "targeted policing".
Those (like the Home Secretary) who claim that chief constables should be able to do "more with less" base their optimism in part on the theory that if officers focus on crime hot-spots rather than general patrolling they can cut budgets and criminality at the same time.
17:36 UK time, Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Kenneth Clarke's analysis of last month's riots in England amounts to a neat justification of coalition social policy in general and the Ministry of Justice's "rehabilitation revolution" in particular.
In focusing on the previous criminality of the majority of adults charged in connection with the unrest he is able to conclude that we have "a broken penal system - one whose record in preventing reoffending has been straightforwardly dreadful".
09:52 UK time, Thursday, 1 September 2011
Here's my report on the largest unauthorised traveller site in England, which has failed in a last ditch bid at the High Court to prevent the eviction of families.
Basildon Borough Council has now been given the go ahead to evict families from Dale Farm in Essex.
14:17 UK time, Friday, 26 August 2011
Here's my report on the school in Peckham, South London, which overturns the stereotype of the area, badly affected by the riots earlier this month.
Around 80% of pupils at Sacred Hearts school achieved good passes in five subjects at GCSE level.
15:31 UK time, Monday, 15 August 2011
As David Cameron promises to confront what he calls the "slow-motion moral collapse" of parts of British society, he also suggests that "we haven't talked the language of zero tolerance enough" and rails against the "twisting and misrepresenting of human rights that has undermined personal responsibility".
These are phrases which will undoubtedly go down well in communities reeling from the lawlessness of the looters and arsonists, but is the prime minister hinting at something more radical - a move from a traditionally British to a US style of policing and justice?
11:59 UK time, Thursday, 11 August 2011
The Tory party's social policy guru Iain Duncan Smith believes Britain has witnessed the growth of a "more menacing underclass".
Listening to the voices on some of England's toughest estates trying to justify the rioting, looting and arson, it would be easy to concur with his theory of a "new generation of disturbed and aggressive young people doomed to repeat and amplify the social breakdown disfiguring their lives and others round them".
14:09 UK time, Thursday, 21 July 2011
There is a neat irony in my long-time colleague Paul Lambert - aka "Gobby" - having his parliamentary pass withdrawn and swiftly returned after breaking Palace of Westminster rules.
The episode is a metaphor for the bigger question that bubbles away behind the phone-hacking scandal: is it ever legitimate for journalists to break the law in pursuit of a story?
08:38 UK time, Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Here's my report on the relationship between Scotland Yard and News International, revealed as MPs quizzed two senior Metropolitan police officers and the force's head of PR over the phone-hacking scandal.
08:34 UK time, Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Here's my report on the "worst crisis" the Met Police has faced in 40 years, brought about by the resignation of its two of its most senior officers over the phone hacking scandal.
15:02 UK time, Thursday, 14 July 2011
Padlock your doors! Bar your windows! Burglar Bill is back in town! Or is he?
It's that time of year again when journalists scour the crime figures for England and Wales for reasons to send us whimpering to the locksmith.
18:55 UK time, Monday, 11 July 2011
I suspect every modern prime minister secretly wants to have their own "ism".
High honour indeed to have your name ism-ised, evidence that your ideas are radical and coherent enough to be classified as a distinct philosophy or school of thought.
Mark joined his local paper after leaving school, inspired to become a journalist by playing Waddington’s ‘Scoop’ aged 13.
He has won numerous awards for his reporting. Most recently, his writing won a Royal Statistical Society award for excellence and was a finalist in the online journalism awards in San Francisco.
His ambition is to try to chronicle the story of changing Britain and for Arsenal to win some silverware.
Before being appointed BBC News home editor in 2004, Mark was home and social affairs editor at Channel Four News and political editor at Five News.
He is married with four children.
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