At least the Florida legislature has bucked the NRA and introduced some safety improvements for guns. But have they banned AR-15 military-style, rapid fire assault guns? No! According to local police, the perpetrator, Cruz, was armed with such an AR-15 rifle. These weapons fire bullets that can penetrate a steel helmet from a distance of …
To The Times Your report on “smart” motorways beaming advice to drivers reminded me that French motorways have had “smart” messages for some time. Driving north of Bordeaux, I noticed that all the traffic around me had suddenly slowed, so I looked up at the approaching gantry. Instead of the usual “bouchon 10km” it was …
Continue reading ‘Why did we leave the French to have such a good idea?’ »
Climate change will bring good news and really bad news for New York City. The good news is that hurricanes might be more likely to miss the city over the next three centuries. This means the future risk of big storm surges, relative to local sea level, could be lower than today. However, the really …
Music was one of my favourite subjects at school. It gave me an opportunity to express my more creative side. I would often spend my lunchtimes in the music computer rooms, working on my compositions. I was very blessed to have some excellent music teachers, a well-funded music department, a school culture where music was …
“Only in economics is endless expansion seen as a virtue. In biology it is called cancer.” (From David Pilling’s book “The Growth Delusion”). Pilling’s core contention is that gross domestic product – the measurement upon which so much economic analysis is based – is an arbitrary, oversimplified construct that we “slavishly follow” for no good …
A fatuous piece of propaganda has been doing the rounds in America. It’s an image of two young women cycling through a field with semi-automatic rifles on their backs, with the text: “Switzerland: 1 in 2 citizens has guns, lowest crime rate in the world”. The idea that this somehow discredits calls for US gun …
Continue reading ‘Guns again: The Swiss have good reasons to have them’ »
Amid the aftermath of the Florida high school shooting, the usual suspects, anxious to safeguard the huge gun income, are pushing the idea of posting armed guards at schools. This idea is naive and extremely dangerous, reflecting badly on the country as a whole. It would result in even more deaths. Let me tell you …
Continue reading ‘The uselessness of armed guards at schools’ »
Filthy air caused half a million early deaths in Europe in 2014. “Air pollution is the single largest environmental health risk in Europe,” says the European Environment Agency (EEA). By far the biggest killer was PM2.5 pollution: tiny particles measuring 2.5 micrometres across or less. These caused 428,000 early deaths across the 41 European countries tracked in …
Continue reading ‘Air pollution: the result of biomass use, or just too many vehicles ? ( No.2)’ »
On the face of it, Europe is a leader in tackling climate change, on course to get 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. But the biggest source of renewable energy in the European Union isn’t one of the ones everyone talks about – wind, solar or even hydro. Actually, the …
In 2013, a report showed that people in the US were in worse health and dying younger than those in other rich nations. Despite the alarm generated, five years later things look worse. The report, subtitled Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, documented a large and growing US “health disadvantage”. Evidence showed that compared with people in …
Politicians have long focused on “being tough on crime” – to ensure that those who are jailed are not just unable to escape their confinement, but also “feel” the punishment. Yet if we want prisoners to rehabilitate, the evidence says this strategy does not work. Such punishment usually fails to deter reoffending. On the contrary, …
I first became interested in politics through reading books by libertarians. I read books by Richard Maybury, who amongst other things, believed that America should never have got involved with WW1 and WW2, that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, and that heroin should be legal. However wacky his ideas may seem in retrospect, his …
Why does everyone assume these days that integration is such a good thing, asks Giles Fraser in The Guardian. Louise Casey’s “community report”, published last week, simply took it for granted that it’s inherently unhealthy for communities to keep themselves to themselves. But why shouldn’t they preserve their distinct character? It’s precisely that which makes …
Continue reading ‘Is integration really such a good thing?’ »
Questions are swirling about the British government’s apparently lax oversight of its major outsourcing contractor Carillion before it collapsed last week, leaving thousands of British private-sector workers unpaid. Up to 30,000 small firms are thought to be owed money by the sprawling company. It has emerged that in the three months leading up to its …
Continue reading ‘The latest UK privatisation rip-off and disaster’ »
We’ve long been concerned with the loneliness crisis here on the Epicurus Blog. Loneliness is becoming more of a problem, and not just amongst the elderly. Despite the rise of social media (or perhaps because of it), we have fewer friends, and we aren’t as close to them. Ties between neighbours aren’t as strong as …
