I'm back! With a filthy cold, but newly cleansed ears, having had a doctor with a little machine suck out great gobbets of Beijing ear-shit yesterday. The world is a surprisingly noisy place. Should any of you have missed me...

One of my hobbies is to browse the pages of the (London) Times from a hundred years ago. As I intend (though I promise nothing) to write the odd post around articles from the time I thought it might be a good idea to describe (as best I can) the world in 1912. Or, at least, the world as seen through the pages of the Times which is a potentially dangerous thing to do. Imagine,...

The fall of the Berlin Wall is crucial to any understanding of the present world, argues Janet Daley.

An interesting take on vigilante films, such as Death Wish and for that matter, Dirty Harry: "But film critics are such inveterate moralists, directing their principled scorn on every deviation from strict correctness and crossing with the light, right? Not in any world we’ve seen. Something in the vigilante film seems to foment a strident exception to typically (and reasonably) agnostic...

Congratulations to this weeks winner, Joshuapundit! The Watcher's Council nominations for the week of January 30th were presented, the votes were cast, and the winners will now be announced! For those of you who who may be reading about the Watcher's Council for the first time, it is a group consisting of some of the top conservative minded bloggers from around the world. A group that Th...

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard says global development challenges cannot be met if the world's economic powers do not rethink their growth model. In an exclusive interview with EurActiv, she also addresses controversial policies on emission charges for airlines and rejects calls for a price floor to sustain Europe's depressed carbon market. More »

Deutshe Boerse and NYSE's proposal to create the world's largest exchange operator was rejected by European anti-trust authorities yesterday (1 February), for fear that it would create "a near-monopoly" on derivatives trading. More »

What are the odds, huh? In all the diverse workforce employed by the World's Greatest Broadcaster, there apparently wasn't a single person to point out that these guys may not the best choice as victims of the dreaded Toricutz.

What a bloody mess !!   Until Gordon Brown (Badly Knitted Man) came along, our banks worked mostly very well for themselves and for our nation, with the Bank of England being the world's most revered financial institution.   Gordon Brown took away the safety regulations and then encouraged banks, especially RBS, to take enormous risks with their investments and stock sharing, whilst...

While Scottish Liberal Democrats are playing a full part in the debates about the country’s constitutional future, they should not forget problems facing other less fortunate small lands.  The plight of Somaliland is a case in point and is exercising the Scottish branch of Liberal International. The first problem Somaliland confronts on the world stage