As a young child I remember being gripped by the unfolding drama of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.  Coming in the wake of two successful moon landings, the Apollo 13 mission appeared routine.  It was all too easy to forget just how dangerous space flight was – and still is.  …

Unsurprisingly it is the arguments underpinning today’s UK Budget which prove more informative than the Budget speech itself.  Indeed, there were no surprises in the Budget – most of the individual policy changes having been leaked in advance.  And with the exception of the rise in corporation tax from 19 …

In the 1860s, some British economists began to wonder if the economy was about to enter a steady-state.  With so much of its economic activity automated with coal-powered steam technologies, surely Britain could rest on its laurels.  Instead of having to dig ever deeper to extract ever more coal – …

Once again, the moral and intellectual degeneracy of the failing US Empire has resulted in science being subordinated to politics.  This time it is the freak freezing weather and its aftermath in Texas which has provided the pretext for division.  First came the knuckle-dragging wing of climate change denial; asking …

In my last post I outlined the growing disintegration[1] of London as an example of a failing global city.  Global, in the sense that it is part of a network of megacities around the planet, around which the fabric of the global economy is woven.  As the historic money launderer …

The approved version of Britain’s recent history is that, after a period of economic dislocation and political extremism in the 1970s, the Thatcher government reinvigorated the economy; ushering in a period of rising prosperity which only petered out in 2008.  As Thatcher pointed out in 2002, her greatest achievement was …

People who have spent time in jail claim that the hardest part of a sentence is the couple of months just prior to release.  So long as the release date had been long in the future, you just hunkered down and did the time.  But the pain of confinement grew …

For the first time, the UK generated more electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels in 2020.  The obvious fly in that otherwise green ointment is that it depends on a definition of “renewables” that includes decimating North American forests and shipping the wood across the Atlantic to be burned …

In his 1987 book, Our Own Worst Enemy, psychologist Norman F. Dixon introduces the concept of “trading safety for peace of mind.” It describes a phenomenon at the very core of human nature; our tendency to avoid bad news.  It refers to that person who chooses to believe that there …

On a shelf in the office of Britain’s Cabinet Secretary is a folder labelled “infrastructure projects.”  It contains summaries of all of the projects for which public funding can be provided in the event of a recession.  At one end of the spectrum are various road and rail improvements – …