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The Fire in Your Garden

  We have grown accustomed to seeing the world burn on our screens. This summer of 2025, the images have been particularly lurid. The orange skies over the Aude region in France, the terrified columns of evacuees fleeing the flames in Spain and Portugal, the endless, smoke-choked horizon in Canada – a nation that appears to be in a permanent state of combustion. We watch, we tut, we perhaps share a post with a sad emoji. Then we move on. But what the screen fails to convey is the reality on the ground. This isn't just scenery burning; it is the wholesale slaughter of the living world. The creatures that cannot outrun the fire front – the tortoises, the slow-worms, the fledglings in their nests – are simply vaporised. Those that can flee, a terrified menagerie of deer, boar, and fox, spill out onto roads into the path of cars, or into barren agricultural lands where they will starve. The air, thick with the ghosts of a million incinerated lives, becomes unbreathable for those that...

Green Ambitions, Stalling Reality: Can the Market Deliver Clean Energy?

  Soaring renewable energy installations masked a harsh truth in 2023: the clean energy transition is faltering. Fossil fuel use continues to climb, with China shouldering most of the renewables burden. China's secret? State-owned companies prioritise national goals over profit, driving massive clean energy projects. The West, reliant on profit-driven private enterprise, struggles. Renewable energy offers modest returns, a stark contrast to traditional energy sources. Intense competition further squeezes profits. Subsidies keep the West's renewables afloat, but don't guarantee strong profits. As the Earth heats inexorably, Governments face a stark choice: accept the failure of the free market for clean energy, or embrace climate catastrophe

Homing in on the public sector

  Published in The Guardian, 8th February 1995

The Threat to Rural Housing