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It's a true but worthless contribution to the debate. Why is the population increasing so fast? Because better medical provision in the poorer countries is helping people live longer and helping more of their children grow up to adulthood. What's the solution?

In that case, there's no need to cut back on meat production. Because 9% of crops are used for biofuels and industry, so that means only 11% are used for feeding people. Abolish biofuels, and we have almost doubled crop production for humans. Problem solved with no meat reduction. Or as an...

Certainly not poor in global terms, but I'm talking about "relative" poor. There are people living in official poverty who can manage a foreign holiday.

All problems affect the poor first. But I'm not talking about the starving poor, I'm talking about the one-holiday-a-year poor. Persuading someone that if they never go on holiday with their children will be better for the children than if they have a fortnight in Spain, is not easy. (Well...

I think you're a touch optimistic there. Most people in this country are not willing to materially lower their living standards in a bid to cut emissions, and the rest of the world won't cut theirs unless and until their living standards have caught up with ours.

A common denominator in most of these protestors is that they are rich. It's easier to say that we must give up a car if you have two cars. People who only have one car are less keen. One of the problems in getting people to agree to cut emissions is that the mechanisms to make them do so...

There is still a largish school of thought that reckons if you say anything bad about a woman, you refer to all women, as if men could be individuals but women are an amorphous mass that are all the same. I remember Ian Hislop on Have I Got News for You, saying to a woman who had been quite...

There's no logical reason to watch football either. I do it because I enjoy it, not because it has a logical reason. I don't need a logical reason to eat meat. Do I see humans as above animals, with the right to eat the animals but the duty to see they are treated humanely (arguments later...

No, I wouldn't agree with you there. If you believe that women are thick, don't quote me talking about just one woman who died over 100 years ago as if I was backing you up.

So what should we do about it? Obviously some animals are more repugnant than others - badgers, for example, being among the worst examples, the way they unroll a hedgehog so they can eat its stomach without troubling to kill it first - but many, many animals carry out this barbaric practice of...

earing in mind that Emily Davidson had a return ticket and left no suicide note, the reason she threw herself in front of the King's horse is perhaps because she wanted to pin a ribbon to its bridle and didn't realise how hard that is to do with half a ton of horse galloping at 40 mph.

I think the seventies is a poor example, partly because the high interest rates meant that (even to buy a cheaper house) the inflation adjusted cost per month was higher than it is now, and partly because the percentage of owner-occupiers was lower than it is now. Low interest rates area major...

If that's the case, then surely virtually every other era in this country would have been far more cruel and selfish? People had far less money and possessions in every era pre-Thatcher, at least.

Do you think that food banks are run by society? I don't. I think it's as Margaret Thatcher said in the interview that you quote, that individual men and women are running the food banks. Not "society".

Nasty streak? It's called "competitive". ;)

That could be explained in part by the limitations (currently unacknowledged) of using a TV camera that films 26 frames per second when a player's foot can and does move 2 feet in 1/26th of a second. They need to stop worrying about position of feet and arms, and just go off the torso like...

Barnes gave the impression that he hasn't been told he's leaving, but he doesn't expect to be offered a new contract. He's probably right. Played well today, though. He's had to learn a new type of game this season - quite a bit of dropping back into midfield to hold the ball up to play the...

The coach carries the kit as well.

How he writes out the bill is a minor point in the law about whether he is employed or not. If HMRC decides under the law that his contract is substantively that of an employee, they can unwind all the limited company arrangements. And in any case, whether an employee or not, the BBC can...

The idea of prisoners having to work, isn't new. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, just that it's been going on as long as prisons have been in use.