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When state-owned monopoly businesses were privatised in the 1980s and 90s, I welcomed most of them as I thought that it might free up the investment needed to modernise the enterprises and make them more responsive to customers.  After all,...

I alternate between being irate and apprehensive about the rising cost of electricity.  Irate at the hopeless communications we've been faced with where no-one bothers to explain the "price cap" clearly.  Apprehensive at my own personal coming liabilities and those...

According to the Times Higher, Kemi Badenoch MP, the Tory leadership contender who recently said that “some universities spend more time indoctrinating social attitudes than teaching lifelong skills or how to solve problems” is set to be education secretary in...

Suppose you were in the market for 20 widgets.  You might put out a call for makers to submit prices.  So far so good. Now suppose one maker offered you 19 at 2p per widget, but that was all they...

As part of the BBC's celebration of the birth of Philip Larkin, 100 years ago, there was a series of programmes where poems were "road-tested" by Simon Armitage who travelled the country trying out poems on various audiences. He took...

Last Saturday the power station on my roof (Semington A) generated 22.3 kWh of electrical power.  It would have been larger had the temperature been a bit lower, say 21 rather than 35 degrees, and the sun a bit higher...

I got an email the other day with this written at the bottom: "Please don’t take offence if I don’t reply to say ‘thank you’. If every UK adult sent one less courtesy email a day, we’d save over 16,400...

Kemi Badenoch MP wrote in the Sunday Times recently of her experiences with civil servants when she was a minister.  It turned out that these well-meaning, expensively-educated, dedicated servants of the people would rather she had thought little and then...

I see that recent remarks by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has caused the shares in the Drax Group to plunge.  All he said was that it made no sense to him to transport wood chips across the Atlantic to burn in...

Philip Larkin was born 100 years ago this week.  It's said that he had a difficult childhood (who didn't).  But, as Alan Bennett once remarked, poets should be grateful for tricky beginnings as it gave them something to write about....