Not long to wait now until everything is hunky-dory. Ed Miliband will no longer be Wallace, and will learn to eat a sandwich, Greta Thunberg will no longer be a doom-goblin and will make a (halfway, let’s not get carried away) intelligent remark, and the world will be bathed in golden light as the evil use of fossil fuels will be banished, to be replaced by the lovely, non-damaging, infinitely renewable electricity. No more pollution, no more planet-killing emissions. Now, do

I’ve just read a book called “the Last Titans: Churchill and de Gaulle”, by Richard Vinen. It’s a dual biography, as the title would suggest, and at the same time a story of the relationship between the two men, probably the most significant leaders of their countries during the twentieth century. The parallel biographies, and the way the two characters were driven together by the second world war, make fascinating reading. The two were not always hugely fond of each other, a

This article was written by Richard Horswill. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Back in January of 2023 I highlighted how the Reddit retail investment community targeted silver as they had done in the case of Game Stop, a video game retail outlet that a hedge fund had shorted. The upshot was the bankruptcy of the hedge fund Melvin Capital. The small investors had taken on the big guns and won! Could silver really have been the next retail target? The real

After Tom Stoppard’s recent death at 88, the former BBC investigative journalist, John Sweeney, quoted the playwright on the subject of journalism:-   “People do terrible things to each other, but it's worse in the places where everybody is kept in the dark.” (Night and Day)   Neither Stoppard nor Sweeney were referring to the world of commodities but it applies as much here as anywhere else.   Zambia is, alas, a resource country in which darkness rules. A country under-repor

Alice walked moodily down the road. She kicked a pebble out of her path; it bounced off into the overgrown grass of the muddy verge. Normally, she loved Christmas, but this year so many things seemed to be going wrong in Wonderland, and she couldn’t see how they would ever get put right. She’s an optimistic little girl, as a rule, and well able to float happily above the vicissitudes and idiocies of the politicians. But what was nagging her now was how stupid they were being,