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Britain’s tax code is among the most complex in the world My recent Times column on tax simplification:   Can we try tax simplification, please? Though I applaud the motive, I am not sure I fully understand George Osborne’s plan to cut inheritance tax. I gather that if you hand your family home to your […]

Policy-based evidence making is all too frequent in climate science In June I published a lengthy essay in Quadrant magazine on the effect that the global warming debate is having on science itself:   For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories […]

In research, aid and regulation, the UK can lead the 21st century’s biggest industry My Times column on Britain’s opportunity to be the world’s doctor:   If the 19th century saw extraordinary changes in transport, and the 20th saw amazing changes in communication, my money is on health as the transformative industry of the current […]

Some religious people seem to think that shopping leads to violence My Times Thunderer article on the pope’s encyclical: Why are people so down on technological progress? Pope Francis complains in his new encyclical about “a blind confidence in technical solutions”, of “irrational confidence in progress” and the drawbacks of the “technocratic paradigm”. He is […]

Of 217 mammals and birds that have died out, nearly all were on islands My Times column on the causes of extinction: Human beings have been causing other species to go extinct at an unnatural rate over the past five centuries, a new study has confirmed. Whether this constitutes a “sixth mass extinction” comparable to […]

It was always about quitting smoking My Spectator article on meeting the man who invented vaping, Hon Lik.   Few people have heard of Hon Lik, which is a pity because he’s probably saved more lives already than anybody else I have met. Twelve years ago, he invented vaping — the idea of getting nicotine […]

Courage and commerce — which did more to enrich humanity My Times column on the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo:   In Waterloo week, I confess I am a sucker for tales of military glory. I cannot get enough of the closing of the doors of Hougoumont, the charge of the Scots Greys, Wellington’s […]

Decoupling society from nature through innovation is good for nature My Times column on eco-modernism:   In the unlikely event that the G7 heads of state are reading The Times at breakfast in Schloss Elmau in Bavaria, may I make a humble suggestion? On their agenda, alongside Ukraine, Greece, ebola and Fifa, is Angela Merkel’s insistence […]

On climate policy, coal, charity and ducks My recent Spectator diary: Martin Williams, former head of the government’s air quality science unit, has declared that the reason we have a problem with air pollution now is that ‘policy has been focused on climate change, and reducing CO2 emissions, to the exclusion of much else, for most […]

There’s very little to check the chairmen of International bodies My Times column on unaccountable chairmen of international agencies:   The Fifa fiasco is not just about football. It is also emblematic of a chronic problem with international bureaucracies of all kinds. The tendency of supranational quangos to become the personal fiefdoms of their presidents […]