I began last week’s column by declaring that life is full of difficult decisions. Many of us, faced with such dilemmas, resort to a list of pros and cons. Perhaps the most famous such list is that composed by Charles Darwin in July 1838, as he contemplated proposing...
What’s kept you going during the pandemic? For some people, it’s been an exercise kick. For others, the day’s first glass of wine. For me, it’s been a game of “let’s pretend” with a conclave of imaginary wizards. It takes all sorts, but my survival mechanism has been...
Readers with long memories may recall the brief, inglorious UK fuel shortage of a few weeks ago, which was mostly caused by the rush to refuel for fear the pumps would run dry. Some petrol stations imposed a limit on how much you could buy — say, £25 of fuel and no...
It’s probably not a good sign when a nation’s leader is deflected from hosting a vast global summit to deny that his country is corrupt. But it underlined how far Boris Johnson’s efforts to shield his disgraced ally Owen Paterson have backfired. Paterson has been...
“We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity, all of it enabled and assisted by uncontrolled immigration.” — Boris Johnson, October 6 “British meat producers have begun sending carcasses to the EU for...
In these polarised times, one truth can be relied upon to unite the British commentariat: Christmas letters are ghastly. Writing in Country Life magazine, Kit Hesketh-Harvey advised being “alert enough to shake the card out directly over the recycling bin”. The late...
A friend recently wrote to me agonising over an ethical question. He was pondering a long-haul trip to see his family but was all too aware that the flight would have a huge carbon footprint. Could the journey possibly be justified? I suggested that my friend find out...
Even a spreadsheet can become a victim of its own success. Just ask the World Bank’s Doing Business report. While many worthy publications from the World Bank are never downloaded, Doing Business has been a smash hit for years. No longer. Amid an ugly scandal about...
Christmas is coming early this year! Christmas shopping is anyway — or such is my plan. I’ve seen too many queues and empty shelves over the past couple of years to leave things to chance. (Supply chains, people!) I’ve been making a list, I’ve been checking it twice,...