In my last post I underestimated the speed with which the UK government would U-turn and plunge England into a second lockdown.  After all, just a fortnight ago Chancellor Rishi Sunak told MPs that even a two-week “circuit-breaker” would be enormously damaging to the UK economy.  Only after modelling (from …

The British Government is about to commit economic Seppuku.  It doesn’t know it yet; and its spokespeople are determined to put off the day of reckoning.  Nevertheless, with SARS-CoV-2 infections spiralling out of control despite official attempts to curb the spread through local lockdowns, it cannot be long before the …

The one thing that green campaigners share with economists is (with a few notable exceptions) complete blindness to energy.  This may seem an odd claim, given that most green campaigners spend their waking hours arguing for a shift from one source of energy – fossil fuels – to another – …

Fifty four years ago today the sleepy South Wales village of Aberfan entered the history books for all the wrong reasons.  Early that morning – Friday 21 October 1966 – following weeks of heavy rain, workmen on number seven tip on the mountain above the village reported subsidence.  Nothing was …

Congratulations!!  You just failed the Marshmallow Test… and your failure was entirely predictable. The Marshmallow Test is a psychological experiment devised in the 1970s by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University, to measure deferred gratification in children.  The test was simple enough.  A child would be sat at …

Critics of the UK government were quick to point out that the promised £160m to kick start Britain’s transition to 100% renewable electricity was woefully inadequate.  For example: “Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green Party, said: ‘For decades, Greens have been arguing that the UK is ideally placed to become …

I am reliably informed that there are some districts in the USA where mentioning the term “the new normal” will get you hauled out of your car and beaten unconscious by some “mostly peaceful” kid with a skateboard.  It wasn’t always this way.  Back in the early days of the …

How do you hide mass unemployment at little cost to the state?  One way is to create a giant higher education system to keep millions of young people out of the jobs market; and fund it using student debt. While this may not have been the intention of the architects …

One of the less mentioned by-products of the printing press was the spread of what today would be called fake news.  In particular, a previously uninformed population began learning about the supposed satanic misdeeds of the elites; and that witches dwelt among us.  This was especially true in the areas …

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”  Something similar could be said of the Citizen’s Assemblies that Extinction Rebellion propose as the ideal form of government to shepherd us to the bright green promised land. Although …