Coppola Comment

I have a confession to make. I have been reading the Daily Mail. No, I haven't gone over to the dark side. Rather, I have been true to myself. I have always tried to keep an open mind. And sometimes that means doing something of which my critical self does not approve. Like reading tabloid newspapers. Reading is an important part of my life. I've always needed time to myself, to read and think. Without that space, my mind fogs and I become irritable. I suppose I am a bit introverted, really.  But shutting people out, even temporarily, can be difficult. Frances has her head in a book again? Just shout to get her attention. Works every time. And now that I have become my father's part-time carer, time for reading and thinking is hard to come by. The fog is slowly descending on my mind. I discovered long ago that the easiest way of creating time to read and think is just to disappear for a while. So, over the years, I have collected some favourite boltholes. One of t

In this post, Tom issues a timely reminder that there are much worse threats to our freedom than terrorists. Like Tom, I remember as a child disappearing with my friends all day long, only coming home for lunch and tea - a freedom my own children never had. We seem much more fearful of loss (of all kinds) than our forebears. Perhaps that is because we are much less used to it. - Frances Guest post by Tom Streithorst. For the past four days, the city of Brussels has been on lockdown. The metro is closed, schools are shut, the authorities are telling citizens of the European and Belgian capital to stay home. They fear that “Eight to ten men”, armed and dangerous, might be planning a Paris style attack. This is not the first time an entire city has been shut down because of a terrorist threat. After the bombing of the Marathon in 2013, Boston was under curfew as police searched for one man. This is nuts. Charles Glass, after the 7/7 bombings in London went walking through Soh

I've been writing a lot about fear recently, because it seems to me that much of what is happening in the world at the moment is driven by fear. There is nothing new about this. Fear has been a primary driver of human activity for a very, very long time. In fact I would say that humans are innately a fear-driven species. I know this seems odd, because we think of ourselves as successful, the dominant species on Planet Earth with no natural predators left. And indeed we are - now. But we have not always been so. We think of ourselves as predators. And indeed, humans in groups are the most dangerous predators ever to walk the face of the earth. But at an individual level, humans are not particularly good predators: we are small, weak, slow and poorly armed. Nor do individual humans need to be large-scale predators. We are omnivores, not true carnivores: we are capable of gaining sustenance from an extraordinarily large range of foods, including - but most definitely not limited

On Monday, I attended a fascinating debate on the Economics of Deficit Reduction at the House of Commons (audio link in this post ). Essentially the debate was about the pros and cons of fiscal austerity versus stimulus. On the "stimulus" side were Prof. Paul Krugman and Jonathan Portes of NIESR: on the "austerity" side were Bridget Rosewell of Volterra Consulting and Stephen King, Chief Economist of HSBC. The definitions of both "austerity" and "stimulus" were somewhat unclear. As far as I could tell none of the four were remotely in favour of the severe austerity measures being imposed on some members of the European Union. Furthermore, none of the four were in favour of extensive cuts to capital investment such as the current Coalition government and its Labour predecessor have already undertaken (and more are planned). In fact Rosewell, supposedly anti-stimulus, actually said she was in favour of increased government borrowing for capital i