In Brief

Windfall hot air Even now, the political class is treating rising energy prices as temporary – just like they thought inflation was temporary this time last year.  They would like you to believe that Russia – which has continued to supply oil and gas (which were expressly excluded from sanctions) …

Mid-term blues This was meant to be the moment when Boris Johnson shuffled off the political stage.  Having discredited himself in the public eye with his lockdown parties and his backing of MPs’ corruption, Johnson went on to lose the supposedly safe North Shropshire seat last autumn.  His own backbenchers …

Economic freefall Just how bad is Britain’s current economic collapse?  One indicator can be found in the monthly registration of new vehicles, which are generally higher in September and March when new registration plates are introduced.  Nevertheless, total registrations were down 14.3 percent on this time last year – when …

Cui bono? At face value, Rishi Sunak’s £350 handout to help with rising energy bills is a lot better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  The devil, of course, is in the detail.  Only £150 is coming in April, when the average energy bill will increase …

Double distraction The important – but unmentioned – fact about UK Prime Minister Johnson’s current woes is that they are apolitical.  Johnson’s – and the Tories – collapse in the polls is solely the result of a breech of trust which might just as easily have been the result of …

When the greenwash peels Among the biggest confidence tricks used by the Green New Great Reset crowd was the sale of “renewable electricity” to the virtue signalling middle classes.  The con ought to have been easy enough to debunk.  After all, there is only the one wire which connects your …

OVO error of judgement Energy company OVO has come in for criticism after advising people to cuddle up to their pets to keep warm this winter.  One of the reasons people began to keep animals indoors in the first place was precisely because they could be used in the same …

The year 2022 is the setting for the dystopian movie Soylent Green – in which an over-populated, climate ravaged population is only sustained by consuming the nutrients from rendered and processed human corpses.  Two years ago, we might have shaken our heads at just how wrong the film’s director Richard …

Fracking back Anti-fracking campaigners like to flatter themselves by claiming that it was their protests which finally brought UK fracking to an end.  The reality though, is that the price at which UK shale gas might be recovered was far higher than the prevailing price of gas from the North …

Supply crisis illustrated When you have spent three decades creating hyper-efficient, just-in-time supply chains, you mess with them at your peril.  This is because they are also hyper-fragile, so that when backlogs occur, the result is a systemic failure rather than a single short-term blockage.  Not only do you have …