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This is where I discuss the way we live in the UK and the many ways in which that is constantly changing
08:56 UK time, Tuesday, 31 July 2012
If there were medals for hamburger joints, then one of the four (count them) McDonald's in the Olympic Park in London would take gold in the super-size division.
It is vast, a symbol of the global corporatism that feeds these Games - quite literally, in the case of the hundreds I joined in a queue for branded beef and buns.
10:37 UK time, Saturday, 28 July 2012
The job was to welcome the world to London for the Olympics, to show our guests around our gaff and introduce ourselves.
So the question now is less about how Britain felt about it all, but what the visitors in the spare room will say.
09:16 UK time, Friday, 27 July 2012
Only rarely do countries get the opportunity to describe themselves to a watching world. Today's Olympic opening ceremony is a defining moment for this country - literally.
But trying to pin down national identity is always a difficult and dangerous occupation - even more so if your chosen medium involves marshalling 1,000 people, nine geese and 70 sheep on a sports field.
14:00 UK time, Wednesday, 25 July 2012
As much of Britain basks in longed-for sunshine one senses that, despite all the economic gloom, our national spirits have been lifted. We instinctively believe that warm weather makes us happier. But is it true?
Yesterday's well-being statistics suggested the opposite. The happiest region of the whole UK is the most northerly - Shetland, Orkney and the Outer Hebrides. Some islands see only around 1,000 hours of sunshine a year compared to a UK average of 1,340 hours.
15:50 UK time, Tuesday, 24 July 2012
Mark added analysis to:
There is a risk of jumping to conclusions with today's well-being figures. We know that people in rented accommodation report significantly lower levels of life satisfaction than home-owners. But that doesn't mean renting is bad for your happiness.
All we can say is that there may be something about the kind of people who rent their homes that makes it more likely they will have lower levels of well-being. Home-owners are generally financially better off than people who rent and they are more likely to be in a stable relationship - both factors that are also associated with higher levels of life satisfaction.
15:28 UK time, Tuesday, 24 July 2012
I need more time to digest the new statistics on national well-being, but one finding got me sitting bolt upright in my chair today.
Among the four questions asked as part of the survey is "Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?" Respondents must pick a score between 0 and 10 with any score below three being regarded as indicative of a pretty chilled-out individual.
12:44 UK time, Thursday, 19 July 2012
Homicide down. Violence down. Anti-social behaviour down. It really does begin to look as though the country is behaving better.
In Scotland recorded crime is at its lowest level for 37 years.
15:43 UK time, Wednesday, 18 July 2012
How can employment appear to be going up and unemployment down when the economy is so flat?
Always one to revel in a statistical mystery, I have dived into today's employment data to see if I can solve the riddle.
13:31 UK time, Monday, 16 July 2012
We learn today that there are almost half a million more people living in England and Wales than official estimates had suggested. We are pretty good at counting babies and corpses, so we must have been under-counting net migration during the past decade.
It is not a wild underestimate - less than 1% of the total population. But the 480,000 individuals of whom the authorities were unaware will fuel arguments about immigration and how we best deal with an ageing population.
13:15 UK time, Monday, 16 July 2012
Mark added analysis to:
There are almost half a million more people living in England and Wales than official estimates suggested. The most likely reason for that under-counting is inaccurate migration data.
It is notable that the number of people in their 20s has risen from 6.6m to 7.6m - the additional one million people are most likely to be migrant workers.
11:58 UK time, Friday, 13 July 2012
Sometimes you ask one question and discover a surprising answer to another. I wondered how many of England's youth clubs had closed down after council cuts. But what became clear as I researched the issue was how, all over the country, volunteers and communities were managing to keep services open.
You can try it yourself. Do a simple internet search on "youth club closures" and read the local online newspaper stories.
10:35 UK time, Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Discussion about poverty in Britain quickly gets snagged on the question of whether you can be poor if you have a plasma TV.
But if, instead of thinking about the breadline, we consider what level of income is needed for an acceptable standard of living, the debate changes.
13:31 UK time, Thursday, 5 July 2012
It is boom time for the mobility scooter industry.
The new millennium dawned to the electrical hum of around 70,000 powered wheelchair and scooter users in Britain. Today there are five times as many, with warnings of "mo-sco" gridlock in some of our more populous retirement villages.
10:56 UK time, Thursday, 28 June 2012
What proportion of Britain do you reckon is built on? By that I mean covered by buildings, roads, car parks, railways, paths and so on - what people might call "concreted over". Go on - have a guess.
I was prompted to find out the answer to this question after reading this week how woodland is now calculated to cover 12.7% of the UK, the highest proportion since 1924 when records began.
10:14 UK time, Monday, 25 June 2012
To William Beveridge it was about eradicating evil - the "giant evils" of squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. To David Cameron it is about encouraging citizens to do the right thing - to work, to save, to take personal responsibility.
The prime minister urges us today to go back to first principles in thinking about what the welfare state is for.
17:04 UK time, Thursday, 21 June 2012
There may be some European leaders who resent being lectured by the British, but how do British leaders like it when Europe starts picking apart their policies?
The UK government is poring over its report card from the EU Council, and a number of ministers won't be happy.
07:15 UK time, Tuesday, 19 June 2012
It was promised last autumn. Then it was the spring. Publication slipped until June and now we are told there will be nothing on government proposals to reform the funding of adult social care in England until at least July.
I have been given an exclusive insight into why the Treasury is dithering on Dilnot.
11:27 UK time, Thursday, 14 June 2012
The government's determination to redefine the word poverty is likely to re-ignite the once red-hot political debate as to whether poverty actually exists in Britain.
There will be many people reading this now who instinctively believe that you cannot have a breadline if everyone can afford bread. It is obvious that the UK does not suffer from the levels of squalor and starvation associated with poverty in previous centuries or less developed countries.
17:45 UK time, Tuesday, 12 June 2012
The desperate shortage of affordable homes in England appears to be worsening, following Tuesday's publication of national housing statistics.
The Homes and Communities Agency has announced that the number of "affordable housing starts" for 2011-2012 was just 15,698 - a 68% fall on the previous year.
16:19 UK time, Friday, 8 June 2012
Until now, the person charged with inspecting the police in England and Wales has always been an ex-copper.
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) is supposed to be independent of government and the police - its boss technically an appointment of the Crown. But the reality has always been that the home secretary chooses the Chief Inspector of Constabulary and that individual is drawn from the senior ranks of the police service.
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 becoming 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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