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The history of the Congo in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not a happy one. Between 1885 and 1908 it was a personal fiefdom of Léopold II of Belgium, and then was subsumed as a colony into the Belgian state. That period when it was the Congo Free State, ruled as a separate kingdom from Belgium by the king, Léopold, was particularly brutal. Léopold’s private police force, the Force Publique, was established to maintain order, and initially to try to oust the Za

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. It seems obvious we are all in dire straits now – so it made me think of some of the other straits that have been critical to mankind. The straits of Gib, Magellan, Malacca, Bosphorous, Bougainville, Bering, Cabot, Cook, Messina etc; most of them, significant to the world of trade and of course conflict. A geographical pinch point, as Damian Valdez suggested recently in an ar

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Of the 32,000 species of fish (more than birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians combined), there is one called the Flapjack Devilfish (Opisthoteuthis), an octopus found 2000m underwater. It also happens to reside where sea miners want to pillage nodules of minerals on the ocean floor. I first met a group of lawyers from the environmental charity called Client Earth about fifte

This article was written by Richard Horswill. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own. Another oil and gas crisis driven by war! Sounds familiar. Ultimately this supply shock will drive up consumer prices particularly in non discretionary areas. Heating and eating are a given, however the impact on discretionary spending will be somewhat different. The dilemma seemingly being faced by Central Banks, particularly the BoE, is based upon their inflation expectation

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