October 16, 2017
Alice X is a philosopher and historian of ideas with a global reputation. She holds a chair at a leading university in the UK, has visiting professorships in Paris, New York and Boston, and has received honorary doctorates at more than twenty universities. She specialises in contemporary European, especially French, thought and is regarded as… » read more
Posted by pbye
September 5, 2017
I was recently looking around for a word to describe government by the incompetent, rather as, for example, kleptocracy is government by thieves. I googled ‘government by the incompetent’ and was rewarded with the magnificent word in the title of this piece. Kakistocracy means government by the worst[1], from the Greek kakistos meaning worst and… » read more
Posted by pbye
July 19, 2017
It’s now more than one year since the UK referendum on EU membership, and the vote to leave. The Prime Minister, Theresa May, invoked Article 50 of the Treaty of Rome at the end of March this year and then, out of the blue, called a general election. Her intention was to get a bigger… » read more
Posted by pbye
May 16, 2017
In my working life in IT, I have encountered a number of organisations that wanted to move from a working IT system to a different one, in the belief that it would be better and cheaper. I’ll be describing a recent example in this piece. Although there is not on the surface any obvious connection… » read more
Posted by pbye
April 3, 2017
I was thinking of calling this piece ‘In defence of internationalism’ but I decided that praise is the best form of defence. And we need to speak up in favour of internationalism. After decades of increasing openness, nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise in the West. We hear politicians coming out with statements such… » read more
Posted by pbye
February 17, 2017
The title of this piece is a quotation from the great physicist Richard Feynman. Late in his life, he was asked to join the commission investigating the causes of the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 28th January, 1986: the shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds after lift-off. There were no survivors in the crew, which included a… » read more
Posted by pbye
January 16, 2017
In my previous piece, posted on 22nd November 2016, I argued that direct democracy, where the electorate is asked to decide or approve policy, is dangerous. I suggested that representative democracy is a better alternative. One of the reasons I advanced is that a majority of people in an electorate are remarkably ill-informed, making rational… » read more
Posted by pbye
November 22, 2016
In the ‘Any Questions’ programme on BBC Radio 4, on Friday 18th November[1], the panel discussed the recent UK High Court judgement that Parliament should have to approve the decision to invoke Article 50 to begin the process of leaving the EU[2]. The government had been planning to use the royal prerogative without recourse to… » read more
Posted by pbye
October 19, 2016
Some years ago the late Victoria Wood, a British comedienne, appeared in one of her excellent radio sketches as a sheep, frequently heard running across a field along with another. At the sound of each movement, one bleated ‘where are we going?’ to which the reply was ‘I don’t know’. They could have been describing… » read more
Posted by pbye
August 22, 2016
As readers will have noticed, the theme of my blog is respect for facts, which is essential for evidence-based policy. In this piece, I’d like to look at a related topic: the need to use plain language – saying it clearly, in other words. After all, if we cannot understand what is being said or… » read more
Posted by pbye
