The WEF, the World Economic Forum, has recently published its global competitiveness index. The overall rankings are pretty approximate - du...

There must be a temptation amongst MPs closeted in the plush and rarefied atmosphere of Westminster to imagine themselves inviolable from th...

Each country has somewhere in its traditions, unless utterly repressed by a totalitarian state and its secret police, versions of letting of...

You may have accidentally encountered recently one the many saccharine encomia gushingly worshipping at the feet of Norman Foster's new ...

Herr Barnier has been at it again. This time his shrill demands for money are accompanied by threats to 'shake the tree' to force b...

One of the joys of ISPs here is that they provide high-speed unlimited volume 3G / 4G net access for around €1 a day. One of the miseries is...

There's a wonderful piece in the sad old Grauniad with some lovely maps on how the world would look with a rise in sea levels. For thos...

You can bet that Michael Fallon didn't jump because he touched Julia Hartley-Brewer's knees some years ago. Oh No. There had to be s...

I don't need to lay out the disastrous economic, environmental and industrial consequences of the idiot official moves, urged by 'ex...

There can be little I can write about Catalonia that has not already been said by every quality paper, every informed columnist and every in...

TO ALL STUDENTS Please see the important communication below sent today by the Vice-Chancellor from an important academic conference i...

I could tell from the way my after-work drinking chum necked his first beer that he'd had a tough day. He'd spent another hour being...

I remember the 1970s very well. I was taking my 'O' levels and impatient for an end to the war in Vietnam; cheap air travel was just...

Publication of the German study* into catastrophic insect decline doesn't surprise me. In protected nature reserves surrounded by intens...

If nothing else is certain, it seems now that both sides in the Brexit negotiations recognise that December is the crunch month. The decisio...

Emmanuel Macron's reign as the EU's wunderkind did not last long. He's been usurped by a man not only younger than he is, but o...

A couple of weeks ago the Burqa ban came into effect in Austria, banning all clothing that covered the face. The first (and so far only) fin...

I'm going to spread my reaction to the Austrian election over two or three posts. It really is all far more complex and nuanced that UK ...

The further I get from all the corporate crap, only some of which I pretended to understand in the wind-down year before I took the early ba...

Friends of mine here in Austria have recently made a couple of trips back to the UK by road, distributing stuff between their two homes. Bot...