In May last year, David Cameron arranged a summit against corruption, inviting leaders from more than 30 countries. Perhaps the most memorable moment was when the then prime minister was caught on TV telling the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury that two of the invited countries, Nigeria and Afghanistan, were “fantastically corrupt”. This generated an […]
Northern Ireland witnessed the seemingly unthinkable in 2007. The Protestant fundamentalist and hardline DUP leader, Ian Paisley, sat down alongside alleged former IRA chief Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin, to announce that their parties had agreed to share power. Though this unlikely alliance has now survived for 10 years, it remains inherently unstable. Sinn […]
Artificial intelligence already plays a major role in human economies and societies, and it will play an even bigger role in the coming years. To ponder the future of AI is thus to acknowledge that the future is AI. This will be partly owing to advances in “deep learning”, which uses multi-layer neural networks that […]
In almost every sector of society, technology has delivered revolutionary improvements in efficiency over our lifetimes – even just over the past decade. Yet there is one glaring technophobic outlier. Education. For all the hype around online courses, or computers in the classrooms, the basic model is the same as it ever was: children sit […]
Few American presidential elections have drawn as much international interest and concern as the one in 2016. Certainly, who is elected and sits in the White House in Washington, D. C. matters to many people everywhere since America remains a political, economic and military colossus influencing major and minor events around the globe. Yet, the […]
The Government has committed to leaving the Single Market, but a rearguard action continues from Remain. Siren voices in the City, not without support in the Cabinet, are calling for a “transitional period” – a reasonable-sounding compromise which somehow always involves staying for a while in the European Economic Area, still subject to EU rules […]
History demonstrates that in terms of ensuring opportunity and prosperity, the forces of individual freedom, limited government, and free enterprise will always trump statist policies that perpetuate favouritism in economics and politics. Since 1995, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom has documented these principles in operation around the globe and highlights why economic freedom matters. […]
Yes, we get it. Marine Le Pen is a divider, a xenophobe, a dangerous nativist who’s willing to disregard individual rights of every kind to achieve her goal of Making France Great Again. She’s racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic. And you’ll delete us off social media if we even think about voting for her. For many […]
It’s perhaps not the catchiest name, but it is one worth remembering: CRISPR-Cas9. Only discovered in 2012, this powerful genome editing technique has rapidly become a widespread and indispensable tool for research, and today is used in labs across the world to study human development, fertility and disease. The technology is progressing at such speed, […]
Market economies depend very heavily upon trust. As I sit here in this café, I am drinking tea someone made me. I trust that the person that made the tea has not sought to poison me, has not made the water so scalding I will be injured, has used cow’s milk instead of soya. I […]
After slow-drip revelations last month that several members of the Philippine National Police Anti-Illegal Drugs Group had kidnapped and killed a South Korean businessman in October 2016, a reluctant Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called off his “war on drugs” at the end of January. It was particularly embarrassing for the government that these criminal cops […]
Major historical moments are rarely caused by a single event. No single explanation for the result of the Brexit referendum tells the whole truth. Like the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, Brexit was a very personal epiphany. Your reasons for voting Leave – or, indeed, Remain – were not necessarily the same as your neighbour’s. […]
Walls have a strong political connotation in post-war Europe. The most tragically famous was the Berlin wall built in 1961 to prevent citizens of the DDR (otherwise known as East Germany) from seeking refuge in the West. The fall of that wall in 1989 signalled the reunification not only of Germany but of the entire […]
China’s One Belt, One Road programme has reached Britain in all its majestic glory. First there was the train which made it from China’s east coast to London last month, and now Theresa May has been invited to attend a global summit on China’s vast industrial project later this year. One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is China’s President Xi Jinping’s […]
Donald Trump is to suspend Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act by executive order. This is excellent news and should be welcomed by all who wish to see the economy well regulated. For the actual effect of 1502 has been to squander $4 billion to no great effect – other than to reduce the incomes of […]
The student speech bullies have won at Yale. Erika Christakis, Assistant Master of Yale’s Silliman College, who had the temerity to suggest that college students should choose their own Halloween costumes, has resigned from teaching. Her husband, sociology professor Nicholas Christakis, Master of Silliman College, will take a sabbatical next semester. One of the bullies’ […]
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