Why I’m still not excited about Tidal Power

THE TIDAL POWER company Atlantis has announced that the four 1.5MW turbines they installed in the Pentland Firth have generated 1GWh of electricity. When the company started installation of the first turbine last September I ...

Brexit is a chance to rebalance our economy

THE LEFT has long insisted that Margaret Thatcher destroyed our manufacturing base and created an economy almost wholly reliant on services, in particular the inherent vice of economic production: finance.

Like most ...

Crown cash king again - Let's have a one thousand pound note

PLAY IT COOL Rodney, play it cool, know what I mean? That scene where David Jason as Del Boy falls through the bar is a British classic. Comedy gold, and so very 1980s. The carnations, ...

Driverless cars and the future

WHEN I was a teenager, I made sure I had a driver’s license as soon as I was old enough. It gave me freedom. It got me to school easily. It got me a part-time ...

Do industrial strategies work?

THE ESSENTIALLY COMMUNIST NOTION of centrally planned innovation appears to have taken firm root in our body politic.  Britain appears once again to have “an industrial strategy”.  We should all be cautious.

The UK paradox – never have so many worked for so little wage growth…

ECONOMISTS of a certain age may well remember when the Phillips Curve was all the rage. Some believed back then there was a crude trade-off between inflation and unemployment.  Indeed the current Governor of the ...

Why electrification should mean going nuclear

ELECTRIFICATION is the future if the world’s energy use is to be radically ‘decarbonised’ – as the IPCC says is necessary. The somewhat contentious Paris accord is the latest stab at a concerted approach to this, ...

Clearance for Super Pumas to fly announced

THE NORTH SEA'S “workhorse” helicopter can fly again. After an accident off Norway in April last year, the Super Puma H225 and AS332 L2 helicopters were grounded by the UK and Norwegian authorities. They have now ...

The independence bus may be parked but the engine is still running

DESPITE AVOIDING a recession the recent warning from the Fraser of Allander Institute that Scotland faces a "lost decade" of low growth despite sends yet another signal that Scotland is trapped in a Catch-22 situation of ...

Technology is the solution to environmental challenges – not the problem

IT IS TWO YEARS now since an Ecomodernist manifesto was published by eighteen prominent greens. Its eighty-four statements were a radical departure from traditional environmentalism that it rejected.  It remains a document well worth considering ...

Speed cameras play an important safety role

I was asked recently to comment on figures sourced by the Scottish Conservatives, that showed that almost a third of speeding fines in Scotland come from Fife, Tayside and Central Scotland. In this area, approximately ...

Urgent decision needed over Super Puma airworthiness

IT IS NOW over a year since the Norwegian and UK civil aviation authorities grounded the Super Puma 225 and its close variant the 332 following a fatal crash in Norway. Safety of crews and ...