The price of fish Different scales Fish are getting more expensive, but they do not all move at the same speed IT IS a good time to be a fisherman. The global fish-price index of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) hit a record high in...
Britain Student loans Fees fi fo fum The new student loans system is proving more expensive than expected POLITICAL apologies are rarely so awkward. In 2012 Nick Clegg,the Liberal Democrat leader,explained in a short film why he had broken a promise...
Rural broadband Going underground Frustrated country-dwellers build their own internet connections FUSION splicing is a technique network engineers use to string together optical fibres. It is not a skill that Christine Conder, a 60-year-old farmer's...
Politicians and religion Doing God David Cameron's frank Christian talk is more astute than the reaction to it suggests FEW Britons have well-defined religious beliefs, but many have tastes in matters of religion. As with tea, they don't like it too...
Muslims and education Religious studies Giving schools more autonomy and encouraging religious groups to run them will produce the occasional disaster IT IS known as the Trojan Horse plot, but it may have been less subtle. Late in 2013 an anonymous l...
Germany's government Easy politics, bad policies By indulging her Social Democratic coalition partners, Angela Merkel risks turning Germany in the wrong direction ANGELA MERKEL, Germany's chancellor, is popular because Germans see her as a steady han...
Voting habits Movers and voters Why moving house makes people more right-wing DO PEOPLE move to Conservative bastions in shires and small-town England because they tend to vote Tory? Or do they vote for David Cameron's party because they live in Tory...
French consumers Made in France, not What a new love of shopping malls says about French society WITH polished stone floors and a plate-glass roof, a shimmering multi-storey shopping mall has just opened beside a motorway north of Paris. Named Qwartz...
Shale gas Raise the pressure Government dithering keeps frackers above ground FOR all the debate about it, Britain's shale-gas industry is minuscule. Whereas roughnecks in America have sunk many thousands of wells since a boom began more than a decad...
Pfizer and AstraZeneca A matter of trust British politicians are understating their nation's appeal to drugs firms IAN READ, the chief executive of Pfizer, an American-based drugs giant, says his company wants to go where it is welcome. Odd, then, th...
