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Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

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Matt Ridley is the author of provocative books on evolution, genetics and society. His books have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and have won several awards.

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Matt Ridley's latest book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with scientist Alina Chan from Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, is now available in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

    Archive for date: February, 2018

  • Labour is now for the few, not the many

    Published on: Wednesday, 28 February, 2018

    Staying the Customs Union would be the worst of all worlds

    My Times column on the liberal case against the protectionism in the EU customs union:

     

    If reports are accurate, there is at least one thing in Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today with which I will agree: “The EU is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems. Likewise the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom for our country. Brexit is what we make of it together.” Yet this makes his overall conclusion, that we should stay in “a” customs union with the European Union, all the more baffling. That would be the worst of all worlds. It would be, in an inversion of the Labour Party’s phrase, “for the few, not the many”.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • The Russian role in the nuclear winter theory

    Published on: Sunday, 25 February, 2018

    A defector says the KGB boasts about starting the now-debunked scare

    My Times column on the Russian encouragement and perhaps origin of the now discredited theory of "nuclear winter":

     

    So, Russia does appear to interfere in western politics. The FBI has charged 13 Russians with trying to influence the last American presidential election, including the whimsical detail that one of them was to build a cage to hold an actor in prison clothes pretending to be Hillary Clinton.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Shale is the real energy revolution

    Published on: Sunday, 18 February, 2018

    Shale gas and oil have banished peak oil, revived industry and changed geopolitics

    My Times thunderer column on shale gas and shale oil and Britain's opportunity:

     

    Gas will start flowing from Cuadrilla’s two shale exploration wells in Lancashire this year. Preliminary analysis of the site is “very encouraging”, bearing out the British Geological Survey’s analysis that the Bowland Shale beneath northern England holds one of the richest gas resources known: a huge store of energy at a cost well below that of renewables and nuclear.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Censorious millennials are the new Victorians

    Published on: Tuesday, 13 February, 2018

    A tendency towards intolerance and denunciation is all the more baffling because it harks back to an illiberal past

    My Times column on how the censorious and prudish young are a bit like Victorians:

     

    I am sure I am not alone in finding the cultural revolution that we are going through difficult to understand. Like a free-living Regency rationalist who has survived to see Victorian prudery, like a moderate critic of Charles I trying to make sense of the Cromwellian dogma, like a once revolutionary Chinese democrat hoping not to be denounced and sent for re-education under Chairman Mao (or John McDonnell), I am an easygoing Seventies libertarian baffled by the aggressive puritanism and intolerance that seems to be everywhere on the march.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Civil servants have views too

    Published on: Wednesday, 07 February, 2018

    The row over Treasury forecasts — and the FBI v Trump saga — show how often unelected officials overstep the mark

    My Times column on the impartiality of public servants:

    Last week saw political eruptions on either side of the Atlantic about a similar issue: whether government officials are neutral. The row over the leaked forecasts for Brexit, and whether civil servants were being partisan in preparing and perhaps leaking them, paralleled the row in America about the declassified Congressional memo on the FBI and Donald Trump. “Trump’s unparalleled war on a pillar of society: law enforcement”, said TheNew York Times. “Brexit attacks on civil service ‘are worthy of 1930s Germany’ ” said The Observer.

    To summarise, in London a government forecast that even a soft Brexit would be slightly worse for the economy than non-Brexit was conveniently leaked. This happened just as some politicians and commentators were trying to shift the country towards accepting a form of customs union with the European Union — that is to say, not really leaving at all.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Future divergence is the point of leaving the European Union

    Published on: Saturday, 03 February, 2018

    Repealing bad regulation is not easy; avoiding them is crucial

    My Times column on Britain's opportunity to diverge from the EU:

     

    At the risk of infuriating both sides in the parliamentary civil war over Brexit, I humbly suggest a compromise. The central issue is divergence: how much should Britain aim to veer away from the Continent in how it regulates products and services, and how much would the 27 countries and the European Commission allow us to diverge before denying us a trade deal at all?

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
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