A letter to the Editor of the Times which was published on 30th December 2011.
With economic forecasting having rather less predictive power than tips for the 3.30 at Newmarket, one must admire the confidence with which the Centre for Economics and Business Research makes its selections for the league table of major economies in 2020, eight years away (report, Dec. 26th). Russia and India are advanced to 4th and 5th places in the world, which would require an average annual rate of growth of almost 12 per cent, a figure not achieved even by China during a period – now ending – when the West has displayed an almost inexhaustible appetite for its goods.
Brazil is shown as overtaking Britain for 2011 although the GDP figures for Britain are not in, and official figures for Brazil are usually two to three years in arrears, even if one could rely on their being collected on the same basis to three significant figures as displayed in the Centre’s league table.
Perhaps the CEBR should try horse racing.
IChemE Medal Winning Paper published in The Chemical Engineer, October 2011
About the value and efficiency of Renewable Energy
S F Bush with D MacDonald
If you would like to see a copy of the text as it was before publication, please click on the link: UKEnergy8
A letter to the Sunday Times, the first paragraph of which was published on 1st May 2011.
Rather than barring Catholics specifically from the throne, the 1701 Act of Settlement stipulates British sovereigns be “heirs of the body of the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, being Protestant” (“Race is on to change law of succession”, News, April 17). The act thus excludes all those who are not of the Protestant faith, not just Catholics. This is consistent with the requirement that the sovereign is also the supreme governor of the Church of England.
It is also not the case as stated in the article that “endorsement” is required from the Commonwealth of any changes in the succession law. It is entirely a matter for the 16 realms which retain the British monarch as their Head of State to decide individually. This is because Headship of the Commonwealth itself is a quite separate matter: there is no formal provision for that post to be filled by the British monarch after the present Queen.
A letter to the Times which was published on 12th April 2011.
Professor G S Solt (letter, April 9th) draws a parallel between the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in Austria, which he experienced in the 1930s, and British government policy in Kenya towards the Africans in the 1940s and 1950s.
When Allied troops entered Austria as liberators in May 1945 there were estimated to be barely 10,000 Jews left of the 200,000 at the time of the Anschluss with Germany in 1938.
British policy towards Kenya was set out in the White Paper of 1923. This stated that “where the interests of the African conflict with those of the European settlers” those of the Africans were “paramount”. This and similar declarations caused consternation among the settlers, resulting in several protest marches on Government House in Nairobi.
As custodians of the African interests as well as the Asian and European settlers, it was also Britain’s responsibility to maintain law and order. The Mau Mau insurrection, overwhelmingly recruited from the Kikuyu tribe, was a serious disruption to life and limb causing Europeans to go in fear of their lives over several years and costing the lives of many thousands of those other tribes as well as Kikuyu themselves.
Successive Kenyan governments have shown little disposition to rake over the coals of the Mau Mau emergency, but to move on to build a viable future for all their nearly 40 million people. Britain and its courts should do the same.
The full name of this paper is “Averting Energy Catastrophe: Ensuring the Security and Affordability of Britain’s Energy Supplies 2011-2050”.
Prof Stephen Bush and David MacDonald presented this paper to a Conference entitled “Climate Change: Who is Paying, and for What?” on 19 March 2011. It was later revised and published by Prosyma Research Ltd.
To read the text please click on the link “Averting Energy Catastrophe” which will take you to the paper on the Britain Watch website.
