Extending the natural environment

Keith Hudson

Very gradually over the last 50 years or so we have been weaning ourselves away from many metal-based products towards carbon-based ones, such as plastics and carbon composites — as used for making modern . . .

The rescue plan for Greece is probably a dead duck already

Keith Hudson

Is the end in sight for the Eurozone?  A few hours ago, the IMF threw a huge spanner in the works by saying that the Greek debt burden is now unsustainably heavy.  Greece must have massive debt relief.  This morning, . . .

My reply to Victoria

Keith Hudson

To another blogger, Victoria Monroe, writing on  another blogsite (Adam Smith Institute) who wrote an excellent account of the lamentable failure of Western development aid to poor countries, I wrote the following:

A road too far for the Chinese

Keith Hudson

The proposed new Silk Road running from China across Asia and into Europe is probably a road too far.  The Chinese have already perceived that the world export market for their standard household goods (though they haven’t yet seriously started on car exports)  . . .

What Liz Kendall ought to be saying

Keith Hudson

The next Prime Minister of England might well be the Labour Party leader that the said party is trying to choose from a pretty poor batch of four from which not a single clear strategic idea has emerged — so far.  This comprises . . .

Greece will turn to the drachma at the next (inevitable) crisis

Keith Hudson

Those young people who were seen collapsed over their keyboards after their all-night EU-Greek negotiations in Brussels yesterday didn’t look like European leaders to me.  They would be the civil servants who were actually writing . . .

The revolution at Buckingham Palace

Keith Hudson

A lot of publicity has been given to Prince William’s new role as an ambulance helicopter pilot in the east of the country — and moderately far away from London.  He wants an ordinary job and ordinary family life and to put his . . .

America and China will be in a breeding war soon enough

Keith Hudson

In any realistic world, the In-group/Out-group instinct in man must be considered to be very strong — the product of six million years of living in small groups on the African savannah and sometimes having to defend one’s . . .

Medieval Wimbledon

Keith Hudson

From the time the English were the ‘Angiloi’, as described by the invading Roman Army, when one couldn’t wear a toga, through to the Sumptuary Laws of Medieval England (to prevent passing-off) when it was literally . . .

The desperate European Union

Keith Hudson

The desperation of the EU to hold itself together is eloquently demonstrated by 28 European Leaders meeting with all 6 leaders of the Greek political parties since yesterday afternoon, working on the 4th, 5th and 6th draft. . . .

They’re making Jaguar E-types again!

Keith Hudson

The E-type Jaguar is — was — a beautiful car.  Living not far from the Brown’s Lane’s factory where it was made in the 1960s and with neighbours on either side who built the car, I was proud to be born in Coventry where such . . .

The EU has only itself to blame

Keith Hudson

The EU has only itself to blame for the brutal methods it will soon have to be taking in preventing potentially scores of millions of Africans migrating into Europe to share in its consumer goodies in the coming decades.  Tariffs . . .

The North of the World begins to split from the South

Keith Hudson

There can never have been a greater breakdown of political trust in the last one hundred years than what is now happening within the Eurozone.  Even now, as I’m writing this on Sunday morning, when the Finance Ministers . . .

The small group syndrome everywhere — perhaps?

Keith Hudson

Continuing to read Benn’s Diaries, now reaching Wilson’s government in 1970, it is very obvious just how captious, nasty and sometimes downright vicious the relationships were between the Cabinet Ministers. I think . . .

The immensely powerful pressures of secularisation and migration — and the necessary brutality?

Keith Hudson

Before Bush and Blair invaded Iraq, the country was among the most advanced in the Middle East.  True, there was still the age-old tension between Sunnis and Shias . . .

Competition even in a flat world economy

Keith Hudson

China is now reducing its dependence on exporting consumer goods to the rest of the world.  Except for mobile phones — which are being exported to every country — the bulk of the high-value consumer goods that China exports . . .

Competition

Keith Hudson

The four main branches of life-forms on earth — viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals (V,B,P,A). They’re all in competition with one another and with each other in pairs —  ten different permutations for starters. . . .

A Correctional Budget to follow?

Keith Hudson

George Osborne’s Budget was not only a ‘pretense’ Budget (that we are sailing into a period of high wages for everyone) but several expert bodies which have gone into the small print of it are saying that, in fact, the poor . . .

The hysteria about man-made global warming can be laid to rest

Keith Hudson

There is now some quite strong additional evidence that the warm period of the last few decades is one of those natural fluctuations that have occurred in the temperature of the earth ever since the end of the last major Ice Age of some 12,000 . . .

When will we have pilotless aircraft?

Keith Hudson

Wedgewood Benn’s Diaries reminds me once again that we have had automatic landings and take-off for a long time.  How long ago has surprised me/  It goes back almost half a century — his diary entry for 3 June 1967. . . .

Too late for real social mobility of the talented?

Keith Hudson

An article in my excellent-ghastly daily newspaper by Linda Kelsey about a subject that many would consider trivial — hardly ever experienced and then only briefly — is, actually, significant because of its full implications.

Tsipras’s ‘non-plan’ of today

Keith Hudson

So . . . if Tsipras couldn’t present any sort of plan to the European Finance Ministers on Monday (because he couldn’t think of one that would have one-quarter satisfied the Athenian mobs — though it was a mistake not to have tried), how is he able to produce one today?

Osborne’s pretense Budget and the ignorance of the majority

Keith Hudson

Well, in this country, we’ve had our long-awaited Budget for the new purely-Tory administration.  Our newspapers have spent pages and pages in analysing it this morning — how it affects every consumer (sorry, voting) . . .

Keep to your job, Stephen Hawking

Keith Hudson

One of our least-distinguished ex-Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson, will only be remembered for a phrase he once used at a timely moment: “If you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen”.  The same applies to even . . .

. . . and while you are at it, Tsipras, what about a bit of Plato?

Keith Hudson

And now, Prime Minister, having hopefully encouraged you in my last blog with a little poetry from one of England’s poets, here’s a tip from one of your philosophers of the past.  In his Critias in 360BC, Plato wrote about the bare mountains around Athens. . . .

If —

Keith Hudson

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
. . . . ”
[Rudyard Kipling, If — ]

Obama’s useless intervention

Keith Hudson

President Obama — or his advisers — felt he had to intervene in the Greece-Eurozone crisis and rang both leading protagonists yesterday.  We know exactly what he would have said.  To Angela Merkel: “Are there no more concessions . . .

Ominous news this morning

Keith Hudson

Chinese shares slid down another 4% yesterday (and probably today).  Excellent!  Despite government attempts to wedge them at previous too high prices where day-traders could do tbeir knitting in front of monitors and make . . .

More peaceful but always competitive

Keith Hudson

Today we remember the 7 July massacre 10 years ago when 52 commuters were bombed in the Underground and on a London bus by young British Muslim suiciders.  It’s also the 20th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 . . .

World economy on a plateau–followed by gentle falls into ecological valleys

Keith Hudson

Heavyweight support for my post of 4 July (“The new trading limits to world-wide economic growth”) comes with the publication of Trade and Growth — the End of an Era?  Under editor, Bernard Hoekman (of the European . . .

Nonsensical British values

Keith Hudson

I defy any of those politicians who prattle on about “British values” to define exactly what they mean.  Anything less than 200 to 500 words by way of a description would be no different from English values or Scottish values or . . .

New Drachmas by Friday

Keith Hudson

There are thousands of first class graphic artists on the Internet and many scores of them will no doubt be designing new Greek drachmas already.  A few may already be sending designs to influential people . . .

The Mongolian world of madness

Keith Hudson

Genghis Khan was the most successful conqueror in world history,  whether measured by the total number of people defeated, the sum of the countries annexed, or by the total area occupied, and he redrew the boundaries of the world.

Sex and the Queen and erroneous views

Keith Hudson

The title of this blog is chosen by way of an experiment because I’ve discovered accidentally that the mention of either sex or the Queen sends my viewing figures skywards.  My apologies are due therefore if you are annoyed . . .

Oh to be a fly on the wall!

Keith Hudson

What is now happening to Greece, and what will happen to Greece in the future ought to be a warning to manipulative governments and bureaucracies everywhere.  This applies as much to Chinese-type governments . . .

No 61%, Yes 39% — the opinion polls were wrong!

Keith Hudson

Thus Greeks have voted quite decisively against further years of austerity.  And are also now plunged into the deepest complexity.  If the Greek government has been profligate over the last few years, the Eurozone authorities have been .  . .

Competition in the new era

Keith Hudson

Because populations all round the world — with the notable exception of Africa just at present — are now within sight of topping out, due to the death of superstition-embedded agricultural cultures, the old model of Capitalism is now dying out.

Naked, with knickers

Keith Hudson

The title of tbis blog is taken from a parenthetical sentence written by Claire Lowdon in an article, “When my life was laid bare” in my Sunday colour supplement today.  She writes of the time she was a life model for artists’ . . .

Our cynical young people

Keith Hudson

What did young people feel about politics 60 years ago?  I would have guessed that they were much less sceptical than they are now.  I would have been wrong.  Reading Anthony Wedgewood Benn’s Diaries, I came across . . .

The new trading limits to world-wide economic growth

Keith Hudson

As a companion-piece to “The basic fallacy of growth economists” of two days ago, we have to note that even China is now beginning to find it difficult to expand its export market.  Even the other ‘growth’ countries of . . .

The Eurozone’s 20 years from beginning to end

Keith Hudson

It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether the Greeks vote Yes or No in tomorrow’s referendum.  The majority of voters on both sides still want to remain in the Eurozone and so the present government or a new one will still . . .

The basic fallacy of growth economists

Keith Hudson

To answer James Knight’s interesting long Comment to my blog of yesterday (“Why the rest of the world will never catch up for 200-300 years at least”) in another Comment would make it difficult to compare them point . . .

Why are both China and America supporting the Eurozone?

Keith Hudson

The Eurozone is now rapidly heading towards disaster — the end of the bureaucratic dream of a gloriously successful United Europe that could vie for economic supremacy against the other two behemoths, America and . . .

Our poor old Queen

Keith Hudson

Is our 83 year-old Queen to be given no rest?  Within the past week she’s been shuffled off to Germany to help Prime Minister Cameron deal with the far stronger (and brighter) Angela Merkel who threatens (and will . . .

Why the rest of the world will never catch up for 200-300 years at least

Keith Hudson

Most of the countries of the world will never reach the standard of living of the six or seven most advanced countries of the world — at least not for 200 or 300 years at the earliest.

Germany will survive but very little else in the Eurozone

Keith Hudson

As far as I’m aware there are no opinion polls taking place in Greece, so we don’t have much idea of what the vote is likely to be in the referendum on 5 July.  Judging by the crowds that meet on alternate days outside the . . .  

What about those heterophobics?

Keith Hudson

Last night the audience at the Royal Opera House took offence at a prolonged gang rape scene of a naked actress on stage and began booing and heckling.  It was described by some as “sensationalist” and “tasteless” and . . .