As the COP28 is underway in Dubai, the threats of climate change and its remedies are (or should) be on our minds and in this context I read an interesting article in The Economist in late summer, telling me that about 12% of the EU’s greenhouse-gas emissions emanate from residential heating. This is well below […]
Businessman, statesman or simply madman?
Elon Musk is a billionaire, that’s for sure, but besides being a no doubt shrewd business man, he also seems to be turning into a politician, expressing his opinions about global issues publicly and some of them being rather controversial. The his comments at a summit in Los Angeles in mid-September, that Taiwan was an […]
Free Speech
Not that I am watching GB News, never have and quite honestly most likely never will (I need to have my head checked the day I do watch them!), but the comments made with regard to political commentator Ava Edwards one evening on September on his talk show on a British TV channel you honestly […]
MP’s Earnings
In the middle of July we learned through the media what our MPs were earning outside their parliamentary roles: They earn on average £233 an hour, which is 17 times the national average wage and 22 times higher than the minimum hourly wage. The highest paid sitting MP was Liz Truss, remember, she’s the Prime […]
The Problem With Freedom of Speech
This is a conundrum that could well define what the British press are going to report in the future and how: A well known television presenter was accused by Britain’s leading tabloid newspaper of having paid a rather substantial amount of money to a young person for sexually explicit photos. The story was obviously immediately […]
AI is all the rage – what does AI make of AI?
Aritificial intelligence or AI is all the rage these days, so I decided to have a bit of a ‘conversation’ with AI about, well, itself really…. Can you help me write my blog? Of course! I’d be happy to help you with your blog. What’s your blog about, and what kind of help are you […]
A question of national identity?
We are born British, American, Swiss, or whatever, and as a result we hold the passport of our country of origin. And we don’t get to choose which passport that is. Well, most of the time. Some of us have been lucky enough, mostly through marriage or because we haven been living in a foreign […]
Wasting time
I am sure you know the feeling: you have been toiling away all day long, yet, come nighttime you feel there aren‘t enough hours in a day to get everything done. And it’s in particular the household chores like cooking and cleaning that seem to consume a disproportionate part of our lives. A recent study […]
Unhealthy Gaming
Christmas and birthdays are always the perfect time to offer the latest computer game (or games!!) to your offspring – and they certainly cost you less than the $520 million Epic Games, the creator of the popular online video game ‘Fortnite’ has to pay to the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle allegations that […]
Clean air – 70 years on from the Great Smog of London
5 December 2022 marked the 70th anniversary of the Great Smog of London when a period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal-fired heating—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 […]
The grumpy older man 