So the good people at Timetric.com have given it to us straight – charting the precipitous fall in the quality of blow bought on Britain’s streets over the past seven years. We’ve since worked out, using science learnt from writing our Technology Issue, that this decline in quality is why mainstream dance music has resolutely failed to rock our party since forever.

While seizures at customs have remained as pure as ever, what the rozzers confiscate on the streets has fallen away sharply. As evidenced here. The causes are obvious: in the economic boom years, a succession of ad men, hedge fund assholes, and IT speculators used their expanding bank balances to hoover more and more powder out of a static supply. Dealers have reacted by serving them the same-size meal but diluted ever more drastically. But the real question for social scientists in recent times has been what effects this policy has had on the quality of dance music produced over the past decade. The results, illustrated above, paint the full damning picture of how this low blow-supply has effectively nobbled club culture. Click through to see the key. Read more »