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EDF cannot afford to build Hinkley Point and we cannot afford its electricity My Times column on Britain’s delayed and every more expensive EPR nuclear power station Last week the British and French governments announced that they remained confident that the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset will be built. But EDF, the […]

Americans would never dream of joining a project like the EU is today My Spectator article on what it would be like for the United States to join the American Union: o the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, thinks his country has a ‘profound interest… in a very strong United Kingdom staying in a […]

Harmonisation, EU style, is bad for innovation My Times column on why the EU is bad for innovation: For me, in the end, it’s all about innovation. The European Union is bad at doing it, good at discouraging it, repeatedly sides with those who have vested interests in resisting it, and holds Britain back from […]

Giving people the lesser of two evils — for drugs, HIV and smoking My Times column on harm reduction The UN General Assembly is holding a special meeting on drug policy in April, its first since 1998. The mood of member states, as well as many international agencies, is now much less focused on law […]

The shale revolution has changed the world My Times column on the causes and consequences of low oil prices: The continuing plunge in the price of oil from $115 a barrel in mid-2014 to $30 today is really, really good news. I know just about every economic commentator says otherwise, predicting bankruptcies, stock market crashes, […]

Desecrated a century ago a subantarctic island is now restored My recent essay in the Wall Street Journal on South Georgia: When you tell people that you’re going to South Georgia, some will ask if you’re changing planes in Atlanta. In fact, the name belongs to an island near Antarctica. It’s about the size of […]

40 years, on Richard Dawkins’s bold book has stood the test of time My Retrospective article on Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, published in Nature magazine:   Books about science tend to fall into two categories: those that explain it to lay people in the hope of cultivating a wide readership, and those that try […]

The renegotiation of Britain’s membership has achieved little My column in The Times on Britain’s EU membership referendum: Public opinion about the European Union is divided, like Gaul, into three parts: one third are already firmly in the “leave” camp, one third would remain in whatever happens, and the tussle is over who gets the […]

The success of a bold bid to rid a subantarctic island of rats and deer My column in The Times on how South Georgia’s environment has been repaired: In claiming the Falklands, the Argentinian government also claims South Georgia, even though it is 700 miles further away from its coast, was unambiguously claimed by Captain Cook when […]

It’s about slowing water in the uplands and speeding it in the lowlands My Times column on the winter floods in Britain:   My invitation to serve on the government’s flood defence review seems to have got stuck in the Christmas post. So here’s a memo, based on Northumberland gossip as well as published papers, for how […]