Headline inflation has cooled sharply, yet most households feel no richer. The reason lies in the difference between a slower rate of increase and an actual fall in prices.
Waiting lists have become the single number by which the NHS is judged. The constraints that actually determine them are more specific, and less political, than the debate suggests.
Britain argues about immigration numbers while the underlying constraint sits in the domestic training pipeline. The two questions are connected more tightly than the political debate admits.
Leaking pipes and sewage discharges are the visible symptoms. The cause sits in three decades of financial engineering, regulatory price caps and deferred capital spending.