Yesterday’s budget statement by Chancellor Hammond was followed by the usual tired old pantomime media appearances this morning. “I’m ending austerity,” Hammond proclaims. “Oh no you’re not,” says Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell. “Oh yes I am,” Hammond retorts. There is, however, a fundamental point of agreement shared by both politicians.  …

The image of some dignitary cutting a ribbon stands as an icon for the fruits of public spending.  The charity sector has its equivalent in the ubiquitous images of supersized cheques being handed over.  The image is supposed to reassure us that “something is being done,” and that we should …

There is still considerable disagreement among those who see a relatively near-term collapse of western civilisation as to exactly how that collapse will occur.  At one end of the debate are those who imagine an almost vertical descent into a new dark age.  In this vision an economic collapse far …

There is an irony to Cuadrilla restarting its fracking activities in the UK in the same week that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its dire warning that we have just 12 years to transition to a zero-carbon economy if we are to stay below the 1.5oC above pre-industrial …

If there is one thing that Theresa May cannot be accused of it is being decisive.  Her entire – hopefully short-lived – premiership will be defined by indecision and prevarication:  The ill-fated general election that she vowed more than twenty times would never be called; the horrific Universal Credit rollout …

The degree to which supposedly intelligent people can persuade themselves to believe techno-bullshit never ceases to amaze.  From hyperloops and colonies on Mars to solar roadways and devices that pull moisture from arid desert air, we – collectively – have spent billions on technologies that even a reasonably well-educated school …

Among the biggest “green” myths of recent times was the wildly outlandish claim that we had reached “peak oil demand.”  The economists promised us that as increasing numbers switched to renewable energy, electric cars and digital working, so an ever larger part of the world’s remaining oil would be left …

Every now and then a government will do the right thing for an entirely wrong reason.  A case in point is the UK government’s decision to cut the grants on electric car sales.  Environmental groups jumped on the cuts (quite correctly) as further evidence that the UK government is increasingly …

French Connection – famous for its “FCUK Fashion” advertising campaign – is the latest UK retailer to run into trouble as the retail apocalypse unfolds:  “Shares in struggling fashion chain French Connection have risen 25% to 55p after it said it may be up for sale. “Following speculation at the …

Management guru Anthony Stafford Beer famously argued that “the purpose of a system is what it does.”  While this sounds like a tautology, what he meant was that we should judge organisations by the results of their behaviour rather than the purpose stated in their PR materials: “There is after …