This is the introduction to Tim Watkins’ latest book: Why Don’t Lions Chase Mice? No, it is not a trick question. Indeed, the answer you gave is probably the correct one. A lion is a very large and powerful animal whereas a mouse is a very small but surprisingly nimble creature. …

    The arithmetic is simple enough.  Fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – make up 84.5 percent of our energy consumption. Hydroelectricity accounts for 7 percent; nuclear 4.5 percent.  Wind and solar – the supposed salvation of human civilisation – provide 3 percent; with other renewables adding one …

Prior to 19 March 2020, the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was quietly doing pretty much what it had been doing for the previous 75 years.  Its antimalarial properties had been known for much longer.  Originally derived from the bark of the Cinchona Tree and sometimes referred to as “the Jesuit powder,” …

“Levelling-up” is the latest unrealisable dream to enter the lexicon of the establishment media.  The idea – which merges the Covid-19 recession with the anticipated shock of a no-deal Brexit at the end of December – is that to remain in government beyond 2024 Boris Johnson’s Tories will need to …

Imagine that you had to fight a pandemic without a theory of germs (some readers, no doubt, will point out that we don’t need to imagine, we just need to look at the cack-handed government response).  Anyway, you might get a few things right, albeit for the wrong reasons.  You …

The UK is on track to record the largest decline in annual GDP for 300 years, with output falling by more than 10 per cent in 2020.  Those are not my words, they are the conclusion of the latest Fiscal sustainability report (FSR) from the UK government’s Office for Budget …

Facemasks are back in the news this morning as the UK government attempts to spin its messaging through 360 degrees.  Back in the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, you will remember, the government was keen to explain that facemasks made absolutely no difference to anything.  This was puzzling to …

Economist John Maynard Keynes argued that it was better to pay an unemployed person to dig a hole and then fill it in again than it was to leave them idle and needing public and charitable support.  On the one hand, the “work” – albeit unnecessary to the wider economy …

In an age when the main function of politicians seems to be no more than making noises to fill the 24 hour news cycle, we should not be surprised by the mediocre hodgepodge of microwaved spending commitments Prime Minister Johnson dressed up as a “New Deal” today.  Most of the …

In the early 2000s an organisation I worked with, conducted a survey among Britain’s doctors.  “With the internet growing as a source of information,” they asked, “how important will it be to your practice?”  The subtlety was that they asked the first group of doctors about its value in providing …