Teams in China are racing to discover which wild animal at a Wuhan food market was the source of the corona virus: snakes, pangolins or bats? We don’t know yet. What is clear is how seriously China is now clamping down on the trade in wildlife. Recently, the country’s highest authorities enacted a permanent ban. …
Across America, people have been told to take refuge at home and to venture out only to get things they really need, like groceries, prescription drugs and petrol. But should weapons also be on that list? Gun rights advocates think they should. They’ve now achieved a federal shutdown-order exemption for gun shops( guns and ammo) …
Continued from yesterday: The core promise of the American dream has always been that you can do better than your parents. But we have to deal with the fact that our values have been hi-jacked. We decided that we needed more democracy in our politics. What better way to do that than to allow people to …
Over the past 50 years, lots of things have changed in the United States. Here are a few examples. 1) A child’s chance of earning more than his or her parents has plummeted from 90 to 50 percent. 2) Earnings by the top 1 percent of Americans nearly tripled, while middle-class wages have been basically …
Continue reading ‘An autopsy of the American dream, part 1’ »
MPs in Britain have rejected an attempt to force the Government to seek continued membership of the Erasmus+ programme, which funds the studies of 16,000 British students in Europe a year. The vote on a Lib Dem-backed amendment to the withdrawal agreement bill was lost by 254 to 344 votes. However, the Government says it …
The following are just a few of the reversals of environmental protection laws in the last three or so years. 1. Pulling out of the Paris climate accord. 2. Easing of the regulation of methane emissions. 3. Scale-back of requirements for storing and releasing waste from coal-fired power plants 4. Increase in allowable levels of …
Continue reading ‘Fifty years of environmental regulations scrapped’ »
Recently, the World Economic Forum launched 1t.org, a plan to plant a trillion trees. Even Donald Trump, who has withdrawn the US from the Paris agreement, has backed the initiative. But can trees store enough carbon to buy us time to act on climate change? A recent paper said 0.9 billion hectares could lock up …
The EU is turning a blind eye to a giant “scam” in eastern Europe, says The New York Times. Hungary’s nationalist PM, Viktor Orbán, was the first to spot the opportunity: his government sold huge tracts of state-owned land to oligarchs and political allies, ensuring their support by enabling them to claim vast sums in …
You’d never have guessed it from the recent election campaigns, but Britain has a major problem with its pensions. It’s this: as the U.K. population ages, the state pensions of ever more retirees are having to be financed by ever fewer people in work. Hence the sensible plans to raise the pensionable age for …
Continue reading ‘Failing to face the reality of an ageing society’ »
The outlook for wildlife would be grim even if the world wasn’t warming. According to a major report last year, 1 million species could soon be wiped out – a sixth mass extinction. The main cause at present is the loss of habitat, but over this century the changing climate is expected to push ever …
The recent death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash wasn’t just a tragedy for his family and for basketball fans. It was also “a sign of the times”: that even the rich and famous now can’t avoid “the traffic hellscape that American cities have created for their residents”. Like everyone else in southern California, …
In the words of Lucretius: “..we are all born from the same celestial seed; all of us have the same father, from which the earth, the mother who feeds us, receives clear drops of rain, producing from them bright wheat and lush trees, and the human race, and the species of beasts, offering up the foods with which all …
“The brakes may at last be coming off the “micromobility” revolution. This month, UK ministers are due to begin a consultation on legalising the use of electronic scooters on British roads. Not before time. There’s no justification for the current ban on these devices. A fast, heavy bike poses much more of a threat to …
Continue reading ‘Electric scooters: the opinion of The Guardian’ »
The educational under-performance of Britain’s white working-class males is “desperate”. Less then 10% of white boys from deprived backgrounds go to university, the lowest share of any demographic group. Boys lag behind girls at all stages of schooling – in few other areas, says the Higher Education Policy Institute, is there “such a big gender …
Continue reading ‘White, working class boys are performing badly academically’ »
The year 2019 saw the continuation of “the world’s most bizarre financial experiment ever”, said Merryn Somerset Webb on MoneyWeek.com – “negative interest rates”. The European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank were among those charging investors for the privilege of holding their bonds. There are now $16trn-worth of negative-yielding government bonds in the …
To The Economist: “So, three-and-a-half years after the Brexit referendum, Britain is leaving the European Union on 31 January. For millions of people, particularly in eastern Europe, the country we tend to call “Anglia” has been a benchmark of nobility, of spirit and excellence. Britain is deeply embedded in our cultural make-up. During the War, …
Continue reading ‘As the U.K. shuffles out of the EU, a revealing letter’ »
In late December 2018, when James “Mad Dog” Mattis resigned as secretary of defense after President Trump announced that he was going to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, it was a big story . The former general was pundited to heaven and back as the last “adult in the room”, praised in Congress and …
“Like a giant company which fails to draw any lessons from the loss of a major customer, the EU has learnt nothing from the fact that one of its largest members has voted to leave it. Trapped in the sterility of the status quo, its leaders are like members of the Ancien Régime, oblivious to …
History shows that violence generally climbs in election years, and given the media-fueled polarization of Americans just now, 2020 bodes to be especially combustible in the United States (it has been such in the UK). Unlike 2001, when hate crimes peaked in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 assaults, this time the threat of violence is …
Dictatorships are un-Epicurean. Period. Thus, standing up to China, which already by some measures is economically ahead to the US (dear, oh, dear) is to be applauded. While I agree that politics should not be discussed on this forum, resisting dictators and would-be dictators intent on world domination seems to be a no-brainer. It appears …
The six big US tech firms. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft are accused of avoiding tax by shifting revenue and profits through tax havens or low-tax countries, like Ireland. They are also accused of deliberately delaying payment of what tax they do end up paying. Fair Tax Mark accuses Amazon of being the …
To The Sunday Times In 1960s Oxford I would see Cecil Rhodes’s statue, think how wrong he was and walk on. That is life in an open, tolerant country: bits of our history are sticking up everywhere, and we are free to admire, condemn or laugh at them. I prefer that to a country in …
Rights campaigners in Britain have described as “utterly chilling” a secret database compiled by counter-terrorism police containing personal information about thousands of people referred to the government’s controversial anti-radicalisation Prevent programme. The Prevent Case Management (PCM) database is accessible to all police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the Home Office is …
People add their genetic data to genealogy DNA databanks in the hope of tracing long-lost relatives, biological parents and so on. They don’t expect their genomes to be accessed by the police. Yet officials in the US have used “investigative genetic genealogy” in more than 100 cases. One genetic testing company, Family Tree DNA, has …
To The Sunday Times In 1960s Oxford I would see Cecil Rhodes’s statue, think how wrong he was and walk on. That is life in an open, tolerant country: bits of our history are sticking up everywhere, and we are free to admire, condemn or laugh at them. I prefer that to a country in …
