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The policy’s father, Song Jian, got the idea directly from Malthusians My Times column on the western origin of the one-child policy:   The abolition of China’s one-child policy brings to an end one of the most futile and inhumane experiments in top-down social engineering the world has seen. I say futile because it did […]

It’s incremental and evolutionary, and it’s often the mother of science The Wall Street Journal carried an extract from my new book The Evolution of Everything. The article caused a lot of interest, and was criticised by some as being anti-science. Nothing could be further from the truth and most of those making this case are not quoting […]

As I predicted after the election, the opposition is using the unelected Lords to block legislation My Times column on the constitutional confrontation between the Lords and the Commons:   ‘How can you have a constitutional crisis without a constitution?” asked a Dutch friend coming to a meeting in the House of Lords last week. […]

Global greening may save more lives and forests than warming costs My Times Column on the surprisingly large benefits of carbon dioxide emissions:   France’s leading television weather forecaster, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air last week for writing that there are “positive consequences” of climate change. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of mathematical physics and […]

The diesel scandal is the latest own goal for dirigisme This is a longer version of an article I published in the Mail on Sunday:   The Volkswagen testing scandal exposes rotten corruption at the core of regulation. Far from ushering in a brave new world of cleaner air, the technologies adopted by European car […]

The EU’s tobacco product directive hits vaping harder than smoking My Times column on the EU’s idiotic attack on vaping: When regulation goes wrong, people call for more regulation. Sometimes, though, regulation is the cause of the original problem. It is steadily becoming clear that the way the European Union does regulation is especially pernicious. […]

Telomerase activation just might lead to cures for ageing itself My Times column on the possibility that old age might itself be cured now we understand telomeres:   Squeezed between falling birth rates and better healthcare, the world population is getting rapidly older. Learning how to deal with that is one of the great challenges […]

Both sides now agree that the renegotiation will make little difference My Times column on Britain’s renegotiation with the European Union:   So the battle lines are drawn. “Vote Leave, Take Control” (of which I am a vice-president) is the campaign to leave the European Union if the renegotiation is inadequate. It launched last week […]

Wheat yields hit new records thanks to precision farming My Times column on farm yields and the prospects for feeding the world in future:   This week’s autumn equinox is traditionally the time for the harvest festival. I have just taken a ride on the combine harvester cutting wheat on my farm. It is such […]

A new play gets most things right, but not all My Times column on Nicole Kidman’s performance as Rosalind Franklin in Photograph 51: It’s not been a good fortnight for actresses and scientific accuracy. Last week Emma Thompson told the BBC that the world will warm by 4C by 2030 — about 3.5C too high, […]