ThinkBusiness

Bob Lyddon

Boris was wrong – EU costs us £980M per week, not £350M

NEW RESEARCH by myself and fellow city finance expert Gordon Kerr, published by Global Britain [The Brexit Papers #8; The true cost of EU Membership], puts the weekly cost of continued EU membership close to a ...

Martin Livermore

When Green ‘unstoppable momentum’ meets brick wall of reality

IT’S THAT TIME of year again. The latest climate change summit – COP23 – has opened in Bonn, this time with a surprisingly low profile. This annual event is opportunity to highlight the key issues ...

Stuart Crawford

Remembrance Sunday 2017

NINETY-NINE YEARS and a day since the end of the Great War. For a short moment the UK pauses to remember its fallen in that conflict and the others since. It’s a permanent fixture in ...

Martin Livermore

What has science ever done for us?

WITH APOLOGIES to Monty Python, this seems like as good a title as any for what I have to say this week, prompted by an essay on the BBC website by Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, current ...

Murdo Fraser

The SNP needs lessons from Adam Smith on tax

THE SNP’S latest pitch to raid the pockets of hardworking Scots was launched this week, using the gambit of overhauling the Scottish income tax system. “The Role of Income Tax in Scotland’s Budget” was the ...

Stuart Crawford

Free bus passes for all can make financial sense

THERE HAS BEEN an awful lot about transport in the news recently, what with the opening of the Queensferry Crossing across the Forth, the Edinburgh trams inquiry, the Scottish Government’s plan to banish petrol and ...

Martin Livermore

Seeking the truth must come before moral domination

LAST WEEK, I wrote about the apparent lack of balance in the present EU review of the ubiquitous weedkiller, glyphosate (Double standards in safety assessments). On one hand, MEPs showed themselves only too ...

Miles Saltiel

Strong winds blowing up nervous gales over Brexit

OCTOBER famously brings strong winds, so it’s no surprise that the weather between here and Europe should turn stormy. This was always on the cards, given the European Commission’s diary-date to hear Barnier’s progress, and ...

Martin Livermore

Conflicts of interest cause embarrassment in cancer risk assessments

TWO YEARS AGO, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an advisory body to the World Health Organisation (WHO), published an apparently damning report on glyphosate, one of the most widely-used herbicides around the ...

Martin Livermore

Understanding toxicity is the key to dealing with pollution

AS MOST READERS of my regular columns will already be very well aware, toxicity is a relative term. But for the general public, this simple but important concept is all too often misunderstood. For many people, ...

Miles Saltiel

Brexit: Time for an Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove?

WE KNOW THE DRILL – we should learn from our mistakes (just saying, Theresa, Boris, Philip…) At the beginning of the year, I listed a dozen challenges facing the EU. It has withstood several, in ...

Martin Livermore

$Can England save the future of fracking in Europe?$

Can England save the future of fracking in Europe?

LAST YEAR, the UK government gave a cautious go-ahead to fracking, after years of a moratorium following concerns about minor earth tremors near the Caudrilla exploration site in Lancashire. The company has since restarted test ...