In a remarkable act last week, The Economist gave space to an article of unparalleled ignorance about ‘broken Britain’.

You can read this piece online, and marvel at the stupidity of the bright. Articles like this leave me bereft. How on earth are we ever going to get Britain’s Uberbau to travel beyond Covent Garden and learned magazines in search of real life?

One observation above all struck me as bizarre: the ‘fact’ that ‘the rate of teenage pregnancies was higher in grandmother’s time’ than it is today. A few factors the writer didn’t take into account:
1. Until 1955, the illegitimacy rate was 4%. It is now 47%.
2. Grandma didn’t have the Pill.
3. The age of marriage for a girl was 18-22 in 1925. Today it is 26-35.
4. Until 1960, the divorce rate was 8%. It is now 44%.

The Lord save me from bright people who always think they deserve to skip Page One.