RDN’s media outings.

On a brief outing this morning, I was asked what I thought about unions, especially in the wake of Unite's Grangemouth climb-down. I love them, I said, but let's not imagine the Germanic socialised (or a socialist) approach is going to work in the Anglosphere... Read more...

I have been wondering what I would say if asked to contribute to the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Show mini-series on what it is to be human. I suppose I would begin by assuming that one is trying to see the difference between humans and animals. One angle, then, would be to say that we are moral: a large can of worms, that. But what else? Read more...

On 11 May 2010, the FT printed a letter of mine (reprinted below) on the 20 April 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico spill. Arguably, it was far too early for intelligent opinion to have formed. But - contrariwise - I precisely wanted to suggest that it was too early to come to judgement: that historically oil spills had seldom turned out as journalism had predicted in the excitement immediately following the event. But was I right? Read more...

It was fun to be interviewed by Stuart Blackman for his piece, "You Can Trust Me, I'm a scientist..." in the Agenda/Analysis pages of the August edition of the BBC's Wildlife magazine. Mr Blackman did good work dissecting a horribly intransigent issue, but I'd just add this... Read more...

During an outing on the Daily Politics Andrew (BBC TV, 20 September 2012) Neil asked me about right-wing heroes. I think we agreed that they were thin on the ground. I mentioned Keith Richards on account of his "the buck stops here" attitude to drug abuse. (And forgetting his claim to anti-Establishment dissidence, cited in Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind.) I collected myself sufficiently to add Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph. Below, are some more. Read more...

Ahead of George Osborne's opposing or accepting (there are mixed signals as to his intentions at this moment) the European Parliament's desire to curb the relationship between pay and bonuses for bankers, I was asked to discuss the idea with Ann Pettifor. (I was batting for the Institute of Economic Affairs and she for the New Economics Forum, so it was a nearly perfect face-off.) I breezily said that it didn't matter whether bankers earned their money as wages or bonuses. After all, what matters is what signals their contracts send them (go for quick returns or build the long-term health of their banks are obvious alternative possibilities). Read more...

SML had me make a little movie on the value of greedy and especially greedy bankers (my script is below) and then debate the issue with Diane Abbott and Rosie Millard. Luckily, Ruth Porter of my beloved IEA and Jamie Whyte, the free market philosopher, Skyped in to say some of the things which I ought to have done. Here's what I wanted to say and nearly did (these things never go quite to plan)... Read more...

I had a brief but fairly decent outing on BBC Radio 5 (0930hrs, yesterday Sunday, 4 March 2012), discussing protest with Billy Bragg. The essence of our disagreement seemed to be that he thought that most protest was valuable and I said surprisingly little was. Read more...

I've been invited to the Greenbelt religious festival (27/08/11) to debate " The Poor are Poor because the Rich are Rich?" It is arranged round a Methodist document, Of Equal Value: Poverty and Inequality in the United Kingdom. Read more...