Politics

British households could save £400 a year if we left the clocks alone this weekend instead of putting them back an hour, according to Professor Aoife Foley, an energy expert at Queen’s University Belfast. The logic is simple. We use a lot more electricity in the evening than in the morning. That is why daylight savings time was introduced in Europe and North America during the First World War. Some countries later abandoned it only to bring it back during the Second World War and during the energy crisis of the 1970s. Every time the reason was the same: it saves precious energy. As Britain and Europe grapple with an

This week, on BBC radio, I made a confession: I am a denier. Not a climate-change denier – an apocalypse denier. I thought it was a clever point – to distinguish between my acceptance that climate change is happening and my scepticism that it will imminently bring about the fiery destruction of Earth. Apparently not. You should have heard the intakes of breath. Apparently even apocalypse denialism is unacceptable in polite society now. It was on Nicky Campbell’s show on 5 Live. I was up against a spokesperson for Just Stop Oil and the question was whether that movement’s art-splattering and road-blocking antics are justifiable. I made my point –

Renata is a young paediatrician from St Petersburg who, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, keeps crying at work. Her colleagues are baffled: why is she sobbing over Ukrainian deaths when she doesn’t have relatives there? She’s surrounded, she says, by ‘complete incomprehension’ from her fellow-doctors, ‘and I’m quietly going insane.’ Her mother Vinera, a school headteacher, advocates the war, believes the West has its eye on Russia’s ‘inexhaustible wealth’ and that it envies Russia’s people for their ‘spiritual’ values. Renata no longer goes home to visit Vinera: ‘I find her disgusting, she’s a hypocrite, I’m disgusted by her views.’ Galya is a violinist from Samara, locked in a failing marriage

He’s had his money worries in the past, but life seems to be pretty sweet for Nigel Farage right now. Less than eighteen months after announcing his retirement from frontline politics – claiming there was ‘no money’ in it – Farage’s fortunes seem to be on the up. Newly published accounts for his company, Thorn In The Side Ltd, show he increased his total net assets by almost half a million pounds in a year, rising by more than £480,000 from just over £666,000 up until May 2021 to more than £1.1 million until May 2022. Now installed as the face of GB News, the former Ukip leader has developed

If there is one thing we have learnt since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February, it is that very little he says bears any relation to the truth. For nearly a year, the Russian President has been constructing his own house of mirrors: his rhetoric gives no indication of what is fact or fiction, bluff or candour, hard truth or hot air. Each speech he gives further distorts the reality he presents. Yesterday, Putin spoke at an event held by the Moscow-based think tank Valdai Discussion Club. The theme of his speech was ‘A post-hegemonic world: Justice and security for everyone’. Whose hegemony does this refer to? That of the