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 …
