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In a time of widespread violence and disease, good news is no news The Times carried my article arguing that things are still going well for the world as a whole even in a month of war, terror and disease. I have illustrated it with two superb charts from ourworldindata.org, a website being developed by […]

Grouse moors have five times the wading bird life of other moors My column in the Times on 11th August: Tomorrow sees the start of the red grouse shooting season, a sport under attack as never before, with a petition to ban it, and campaigns to get supermarkets to stop selling grouse meat. As somebody […]

This epidemic is not under control My Times column on Ebola:   As you may know by now, I am a serial debunker of alarm and it usually serves me in good stead. On the threat posed by diseases, I’ve been resolutely sceptical of exaggerated scares about bird flu and I once won a bet […]

Was an English Enlightenment delayed by the Hanoverian succession? I have a piece in the latest Spectator on the tercentenary of King George I:   The centenary of the start of the first world war is getting much more attention than the tricentenary of the accession of George I, which also falls this week. As […]

Choosing what to put in place of the Millennium Development Goals My recent essay in the Wall Street Journal discusses how to prioritise development aid:   In September next year, the United Nations plans to choose a list of development goals for the world to meet by the year 2030. What aspirations should it set […]

Too much cost, not enough output or too little emissions reduction My Times Column explores why renewable energy has been so disappointing. On Saturday my train was diverted by engineering works near Doncaster. We trundled past some shiny new freight wagons decorated with a slogan: “Drax — powering tomorrow: carrying sustainable biomass for cost-effective renewable […]

Segregating schoolchildren by faith is a bad idea My Times column is on religion in schools: We now know from Peter Clarke’s report, published today but leaked last week, that there was indeed “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos into some schools” in Birmingham. Whistleblowers first approached the […]

Arguments against reproductive technologies appeal to a false analogy My Times column tackles the misleading metaphor of the slippery slope:   Who first thought up the metaphor of the slippery slope? It’s a persistent meme, invoked in many a debate about ethics, not least over the assisted dying bill for which I expect to vote […]

The broadcaster bowing to pressure from green activists My Times column on the BBC’s unbalanced environmental coverage: The BBC’s behaviour grows ever more bizarre. Committed by charter to balanced reporting, it has now decided formally that it was wrong to allow balance in a debate between rival guesses about the future. In rebuking itself for […]

Fighting pests with genes is better than fighting them with sprays My Times column on GM crops: The news that Britain could soon grow genetically modified crops commercially is a victory for common sense over irrational opportunism, and also for the environment over pollution. Under pressure from the European Union’s health and consumer commissioner, Tonio […]