Monthly Archives: September 2015

One of the common elementary errors in scientific analysis is to confuse correlation with causation.  If two phenomena, A and B, are strongly correlated, it is very likely that there is a causal link.  But it doesn’t prove that A … Continue reading →

  Recently the good Professor posed a question to me on Twitter. I’m afraid I didn’t identify him at once, but he’s come back and posed it again. He writes: 1. Sadly, you seem to have got the wrong end … Continue reading →

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The 140 character restriction on Twitter is inimical to serious intellectual debate, but too many people – and especially climate alarmists – seem to regard it as a licence for restricting themselves to abuse and sarcasm, while avoiding substantive issues. … Continue reading →

Yesterday I attended a lunch debate to discuss the crisis in the steel industry – just days after the news broke of the problems in Redcar.   This morning, a breakfast meeting on the problems of the fertiliser industry, facing revisions to … Continue reading →

In “Alice in Wonderland”, the White Queen recounted how as a child she had been required to believe six impossible things before breakfast.  This would be good training for European legislators – though they seem to be quite good at … Continue reading →

You remember Hermann van Rompuy?  He’s the one that some people (including myself) referred to rather discourteously as Rumpy Pumpy (incongruous, that), and of whom our leader Nigel Farage once had some choice words to say.  I myself once compared him … Continue reading →

Sometimes your opponent can make your case better than you can. Earlier today I attended a lunch debate in Brussels on Britain’s position in the EU, in the context of Cameron’s renegotiation attempt – or to put it more succinctly, … Continue reading →

US Congressman Lamar Smith has written a piece on climate that should be compulsory reading. But for those without the time even to read his piece, let me summarise the bullet points: 1      For 18 years, while atmospheric CO2 levels … Continue reading →

The recent debate, and Commons vote, on assisted suicide, has been fascinating, not least because we seem to see a dichotomy between the views of the public – who broadly favour relaxing the law – and the MPs, who do … Continue reading →

Caveat: I occasionally include a non-political post on my blog, and I am then castigated by those whose only interest is politics.  If that’s your position — please look away now! A couple of weeks ago I was invited to … Continue reading →

I enjoy rational debate – but sometimes I despair of the critics we find on social media.  One of their favourite tricks is to assert their own prejudiced ideas of what they think we in UKIP might think – and … Continue reading →

Not Jeremy Corbyn, of course.  In this case it’s Jeremy Warner, economic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Now I have a huge respect for Jeremy Warner, because generally speaking he makes a great deal of sense, and I’ve learned a … Continue reading →

“If you want us to help you control immigration, the first thing you have to do is to accept more immigrants”.  Amongst all the Alice-in-Wonderland contradictions of the European project, surely few are delineated in such stark relief as the … Continue reading →