The money behind climate denialThe views of the climate change denial lobby have always seemed to me to fly in the face of the overwhelming strength of the scientific evidence so far presented. But the persistence of their arguments has sometimes led...

On that at least, Ukip’s leader Nigel Farage, is right. This wasn’t a speech to open up the great debate but to close it down. How could it be otherwise? There is no debate about Europe in Britain at the moment.Tory backbenchers hate it and that is s...

The best gloss that can be placed on the figures – a 0.3 per cent contraction of the economy between October and December – is, first, that the extent of the contraction is less than might have been feared; second, that it followed a quarter of high...

The most obvious contrast is between the employment figures and GDP. We don’t have final figures yet for the whole year, but on the most recent data, the economy added a net half a million jobs over the year. Some are part-time to be sure but there w...

But the constitution is a bit like a coarsely woven jumper. Pull one yarn and the whole thing could unravel. So it’s a bit depressing that in the debate it was abundantly clear that the ministers had not really thought through a third element they ha...

On the one hand are politicians, struggling to make public finances add up at a time of austerity and riding a tide of righteous anger from activists and taxpayers. On the other are corporate titans determined to keep their profits rolling in as they...

Obviously in the US or UK such a move would be resisted by old school Stegosaurs in the what are known as the “teeth arms” or combat units and they will point to women being a distraction and affecting cohesiveness. The fact is if men struggle to wor...

Though we lived in a house in Manchester big enough for us all to enjoy a degree of privacy, we congregated in the living room. Whoever needed to make use of the bathroom or the lavatory would slip away without making reference to it, though his abse...

There is no denying that this looks odd. Until very recently, the object of the verb “award” was the thing awarded, not the person who received it. The gong would be awarded to the civil servant. The civil servant would be honoured, not awarded. But ...

A road tunnel in Norway has been closed - by a lorry-load of burning cheese. BBCGot to do what you got to doSpanish schoolboy fakes kidnap to avoid teacher parents' evening. The police officer's 11-year-old son, who claimed he was being driven away i...

First off, Murray said, he's learned to play smart and win games he previously wouldn't have. ""Sometimes in the past when I've been playing well I would win a lot of matches and then when I wasn't playing well I would get down on myself and not figu...

But the scale of that come down is much worse than expected. Let’s be clear here, the ONS’s report of a 0.3 per cent contraction in the fourth quarter is only an early “sighter”. That figure is due to be revised twice and may not look quite so bad wh...

This strikes many of us as particularly impressive because Cameron worked so hard to woo him. In a blog post today, typically packed full of graphs, Fraser both reacts to this morning's figures and reflects on some of its puzzles: "But the puzzle in ...

What's going on?The make-up of America's combat forces will change dramatically in coming years as US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday lifted a ban on women serving on the front lines, a move that could open thousands of fighting jobs to fema...