In just about all of the Roadrunner cartoons, the Wile E. Coyote character ends up running off the edge of a cliff and plummeting to earth.  Unlike real life, however, Wile E. Coyote is able to keep going until he looks down.  It is for this reason that observers down …

Throughout history it has fallen to poets and artists rather than scientists and economists – still less politicians and journalists – to present the true nature of the human condition.  With this in mind, I wondered if there might have been a popular song that sums up our current human …

Among many other essential reforms, if the UK is to meet its 2050 climate targets it needs to install 4,000 electric vehicle charging points every day.  That’s according to Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power.  Anderson also called for an equally fantastic effort to replace domestic gas central heating systems …

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a former British MI6 agent named Ted Allbeury became a moderate-selling spy fiction writer.  Although never ascending to the heights reached by other British ex-spies such as Ian Fleming and John le Carré; Allbeury churned out a series of books with titles such …

In many ways, this month’s Extinction Rebellion protests – which have brought city centres around the world to a standstill – are to be welcomed and supported; not least because they have made a huge contribution to raising public awareness of what they call the “climate emergency” (or what I …

As the latest feeble attempt at (not) reaching a deal with the EU27 comes to its inevitable conclusion, Prime Minister Johnson will seek to blame everyone but himself for the failure.  First among those upon whose head he will cast blame will be the shady “Brussels bureaucrats” who have supposedly …

The theory of “peak oil demand” was a techno-utopian response to the supposed debunking of the peak oil theory first set out by M. King Hubbert in the 1950s.  Hubbert’s simple observation was that oil fields tend to reach peak production roughly 40 years after they are discovered.  Since most …

Officially, Britain’s worse power outage in a decade is being recorded as an unusual event that nobody could have reasonable anticipated.  Dig a little deeper into the National Grid report on the 9 August 2019 blackout, however, and we discover an electricity system that has been allowed to become increasingly …

Last week my local BBC new channel posed the question, could lower speed limits end air pollution?  According to the article: “Speed cameras to enforce 50mph limits designed at improving air quality on the M4 and other roads have been activated… “The Welsh Government said the cameras would help deliver …

A rise in petty crime has always been an indicator of hard times.  Statistically, the poorer people get, the more property-related crime increases.  Car thefts are just one of many property crimes that are on the increase just now.  As Will Dron at the Sunday Times Driving reported earlier this …