By Brian Monteith – 5 minute read As if we needed more pressure on the cost of living, Indonesia, the world's biggest producer of palm oil, announced last week it would halt exports of palm oil in a bid to stabilise soaring prices at home which it blamed on the war in Ukraine and the Covid [...]
By Brian Monteith – 5 minute read VIRTUE SIGNALLING is actually an art. It might look easy but it can quickly become a hole that you can't stop digging for yourself, as this little story demonstrates. Imagine you run a well-known supermarket chain and therefore attract a great deal of lobbying from environmental activists wanting to [...]
By Brian Monteith – 6 minute read AS WITH ANY political campaigning when it comes to saving the planet it is often difficult for the public to see the wood because of the trees. One such example is the hypocrisy surrounding deforestation, and there is no better exemplar of that hypocrisy than the European Union claiming [...]
By Brian Monteith – 5 minute read A CONSTANT REFRAIN in the EU referendum was how important it was for our farmers to be in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and the Customs Union. Take a step back for a minute and imagine then what that means for countries that have no place inside the EU because [...]
By Ewen Stewart – 6 minute read IT USED TO BE that governments understood that economic prosperity was hard won and a result of nurturing the private sector, encouraging enterprise and spending and taxing prudently. They understood that some deficit financing (spending a bit more than the tax receipts raised) might be appropriate occasionally but broadly [...]
