There is more data on the global social crises than at any point in history. More reports, more statistics, and yet most people are busy, exhausted, justifiably distracted, whilst having no idea what is actually happening to the country they live in.

That is the problem The Brief exists to solve.

This is not a neutral publication. Neutrality, in the face of families working full-time and still unable to feed their children properly, is a moral choice, but far from an honest one. The Brief takes sides. The side it takes is the one backed by evidence, reported with distress, and told through the lives of real people inside systems that are failing them.

It takes the social effects side.

Every story here starts with research. That is the foundation. But numbers alone do not move people. So what you will find here is something different. Journalism that reads like it matters, because it does.

The format is deliberately tight. Each piece runs to around 600 words. Not because the issues are simple, far from it, but because these stories deserve to be read, not skimmed and forgotten about.

The issues covered are the ones that do not make the front page until they become a crisis. The worlds most insidious problems are not hidden. They are just buried under the noise and underneath the calculated normalisation of things that should never have been allowed to become normal.

The Brief answers to the research and to the reader, and to nothing else.

If you have found this page, you probably already sense that something is badly wrong. This publication will show you exactly what, and exactly why, each post at a time.