A scandal wrapped in a fraud and shrouded in a puzzle

Inflation in the United Kingdom is running at 5%. This is good news for some borrowers whose mortgage rate is fixed below 5.2% but bad news for savers and most others. If you have savings (and most of us do directly in the bank or indirectly through pension funds or life insurance policies, you will [...]

Greek Debt: the morality argument

The world has a short memory and a selective one. Things are never as straightforward as they seem. Today Greece is treated as an economic pariah that cannot control its borrowing and to whom no sane person would lend money. Germany is treated as paragon of economic virtue in which we should repose our confidence.

Make it Easy for People to use Off Peak Electricity

With all the news about energy costs and all the measures that the government is urging upon people in the United Kingdom to reduce their energy costs by switching suppliers, it seems to me that the government is missing a fairly simple way to reduce energy consumption and save money which will benefit the consumer [...]

Mr Cameron does not fly to Rio

So David Cameron is not going to the Rio Summit next year. The Rio Summit will celebrate or mourn (depending on your point of view) the summit held at Rio twenty years ago next June. He has been criticised for this decision because he committed his government to be the greenest ever, and people are [...]

The Warming surface of our Planet

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change having read and deliberated over the findings and analyses of a vast body of scientific opinion reached the conclusion that since 180 the surface of this planet has warmed by two degrees Celsius. I could put the figures differently and take a starting point of 1800, when the planet [...]

Flooding in Bangkok

Once again unprecedented flooding is affecting another part of the world. The Prime Minister of Thailand, Ms Yingluck Shinawatra, has warned that the capital city, Bangkok, could be soon covered with water one and a half deep. October is at the very end of the rainy season in Bangkok, which has a tropical wet and [...]

Climate Change Deniers – why am I wrong?

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,Newtontold us. With climate change writingNewton’s law does not invariably apply. I know that sometimes when I post some ideas about climate change, someone else posts on this blog some ideas which are opposite, but not necessarily equal. That is the fine thing about climate change [...]

The changing shape of Lakes in the West of The United States

We live in a small world but we do compartmentalise our world and tend to only think of what surrounds us. Things change all the time and the familiar things change so slowly that we only recognise the extent of the change when, eschewing out faulty memories, we look at holiday snaps to show the way things were. Our [...]

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Mr Gaddafi, who was Tony Blair new best friend a few years ago, has perished. Those who were oppressed by him and his regime and those whose families were tortured and killed by his government of Libya are celebrating. I feel the death of a human is not a cause for celebration, although I speak without [...]

Carbon will not be Captured at Longannet

I have always been realistic about carbon capture and storage. The UK government has always been(in public at least) ecstatic about its potential. Whatever your views it must be wrth trying to see if that is a realistic and cost effective way to prevent emissions from reaching the atmosphere from power stations.