Before you can fleece or slaughter sheep, you must first corral them.  Whether by accident or design, the stock market is the financial corral into which investors have been herded.  The measures used to bail out the global banking system after the 2008 crash – quantitative easing and ultra-low interest …

Thirty years ago today, Britain experienced a severe storm not dissimilar to the ones that have swept across us in the last fortnight.  The North Wales coast was particularly badly hit, with a combination of a high spring tide, a north westerly wind and a strong storm surge driving the …

Waking this morning to the sound of a storm that seems to have been raging for a fortnight, my duvet is too warm to want to get up to see what time it is.  Instead, I tentatively extend an arm into the cold morning air and reach for the radio …

US President Franklyn D. Roosevelt coined the idea that the first 100 days of a government provided the best opportunity to introduce the greatest reforms.  In the years since, it has become a truism; one that Johnson’s Tories will be fully aware of.  It is instructive then that with the …

US President John F. Kennedy began the political fad of setting targets for the future when, on 25 May 1961, he persuaded the Congress to agree to the goal of landing men on the moon by the end of the decade.  On 12 September 1962 he made his more famous …

One reason why nationalist populists like Trump are able to get away with calling mainstream media “enemies of the people” is that those outlets all too often fabricate stories.  This has more to do with falling advertising revenues and increased competition for people’s attention than with grand conspiracy (although that, …

Outside the USA there is a broad consensus that climate change is real and is a consequence of successive generations of humans burning fossil fuels.  There is far less unity, though, when it comes to doing something about it.  As Larry Elliott at the Guardian explains: “For those perched at …

With the world’s great and good flying off to Davos to lecture the rest of us on lowering our carbon footprints, everyone from tech companies to hedge funds is suddenly keen to go “carbon neutral.”  Could it be that hard-headed billionaires have had their hearts melted by Greta Thunberg’s pleas? …

It’s the 20th January and southern Britain is experiencing its first full week of winter weather.  Other than a brief cold snap at the beginning of December, the winter has been unusually warm and wet – a consequence of living in the path of the Gulf Stream in a changing …

On balmy summer days in medieval times, the miller could often be seen lounging in the shade while the villagers toiled in the fields.  The miller, it seemed, had a cushy deal.  Not only did he get to relax on hot summer days, but he took a percentage of all …