One of humanity’s greatest failings is our constant search for “miracles” as a substitute for rolling up our sleeves and getting on with the hard work of problem solving.  In the face of a looming energy crunch, for example, we have invested heavily in nuclear fusion – a technology that …

MEPs from the European United Left/Nordic Green Left European Parliamentary Group have criticised the first annual report of the Banking Union for failing to deal with the structural problems plaguing European banks.  GUE/NGL Co-Shadow Rapporteur on the report, Rina Ronja Kari, explained: “When the big banks were saved during the …

It is hard to argue with the sentiment behind the Welsh Government energy policy set out in A Smarter Energy Future for Wales.  But in practice it has all the urgency of an elderly couple out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. Launching the policy, Alun Ffred Jones AM, Chair of …

Updated modelling by researchers at University of Queensland and Griffith University show that the world will reach the widely feared 2 degrees of warming (above the 19th century temperature) by 2030; about twenty years earlier than had been previously thought. Despite some governments regarding two degrees of warming as a …

We all know the old puzzle about which came first, the chicken or the egg.  Well, this could be a real conundrum if you were thinking about poultry-related food production.  Would you get some eggs in order to produce chickens? Or would you get chickens in order to produce eggs? …

Over the weekend Npower announced that it was shedding 2,500 jobs in the UK after posting a £48 million loss for the first nine months of last year.  Yesterday E.On posted a 7 million euro loss.  And there are signs that the other four big energy suppliers – EDF, SSE, …

“Why would someone lend money to a borrower with the certainty of getting less money back at a future date?” That’s the question posed by Bill Gross from Janus Capital group in his March newsletter to investors.  Comparing the contemporary state of the banking industry to the state of the …

For most of us, petrol and diesel at less than £1.00 per litre can only be a good thing.  Not only are we spending less on our personal travel, but the transportation cost of the goods that we buy has been falling too.  But economists and politicians have breathed a …

A new study has uncovered a rise in US methane levels of more than 30 percent over the last decade.  And while the authors stop short of blaming the increase on the US shale gas (fracking) industry, which grew by 900 percent in the same period, it is difficult to …

The end of last week saw a flurry of stories about how banks were conning the public into thinking that “free banking” was really free.  Andrew Tyrie MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee noted that there is no such thing as free banking, “it is not just misleading; it …