Blogs

I yearned for warmth and colour, Which I found in Lancelot Heat pumps, solar panels and gas boilers 1: Insulation: 0. The Warm Homes Plan has been released, finally. At its heart, the Warm Homes Plan is about future-proofing the UK’s housing stock: making homes warmer, cheaper to run and …

Courage, he said, and pointed t’ward the land This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon There is a great deal wrong with the way the utility infrastructure in this country has developed in since the great privatisation rush. The problems have been building up ever since, culminating in the …

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. Greetings, gentle readers. Welcome to the first Editor’s Blog of 2026. I had a notion – nothing as cheesy as a resolution mind you – that I would try to be …

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does. Social media has come a long way since Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter (I’m not calling it X. That’s a stupid name) posted “just setting up my twttr”, and the Harvard students’ simple profiles …

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. Hurrah and Huzzah. The Government is throwing £725m at the apprenticeship system to reset it and make it more fit for purpose. For construction, this is vital. We are never going to get anywhere near the 1.5million …

Water, water, every-where, Nor ‘ere a drop to drink Never has the oft-used quote from Coleridge’s The Tale of the Ancient Mariner been more appropriate, than the morning I write this. However, more of that later. I was, of course, going to write about last week’s Budget. About some of …

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our generation you shall find, This is an industry that is built on relationships, on people knowing each other, dare I say, liking each other, and choosing to work together. We all know that. How much of that getting to know and …

We have been waiting all this fortenight: Now help us, lord, since it lies in thy might I’m rather inclined to think that pushing the Autumn Budget back from the end of October, as it was last year, to the end of November, was, on balance A Not Good Thing. I …

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear Oh dear. What on earth has been going wrong at the BBC? There has clearly been, for some years, a lack of management oversight, and of management cojones to deal …

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;     If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; I don’t know if it’s an age thing, or a just-me thing, but I am getting increasingly eye-rolly at stuff that lands in my in-box. I receive a tonne of emailed …