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Welcome to Matt Ridley's Blog

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Matt Ridley is the author of provocative books on evolution, genetics and society. His books have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty languages, and have won several awards.

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Matt Ridley's latest book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with scientist Alina Chan from Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, is now available in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

    Archive for date: November, 2014

  • The EU versus the UN: who makes the rules?

    Published on: Wednesday, 26 November, 2014

    Increasingly, trade rules are set above the level of Brussels

     

    My column in the Times:

     

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Political institutions evolve slower than social ones

    Published on: Tuesday, 18 November, 2014

    Britain's government would be familiar to Daniel Defoe

    My Times column on the little-changed political institutions of London:

    Two hundred and ninety years ago a novelist, spy, tradesman and bankrupt named Daniel Defoe began publishing his account of A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain. A book out this week by the distinguished sociologist WG Runciman imagines what Defoe would make of the island if he were to take his tour again today. His title gives away the conclusion: Very Different, But Much the Same.

    For all the astonishing changes that would boggle Defoe’s mind — aeroplanes, toilets, motorways, telephones, cameras, pensions, the internet, religious diversity, vaccines, working women, electricity and vastly higher living standards especially for the poor — he would be just as amazed at the things that have not changed.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Ants, altruism and self sacrifice

    Published on: Tuesday, 11 November, 2014

    It's the selfishness of genes that makes us unselfish

    My Times column is on a disagreement between Edward Wilson and Richard Dawkins about evolution:

     

    I find it magnificent that a difference of opinion about the origin of ants between two retired evolutionary biologists, one in his eighties and one in his seventies, has made the news. On television, the Harvard biologist EO Wilson called the Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins a “journalist”, this being apparently the lowest of insults in the world of science; it was taken as such.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
  • Greens take the moral low ground

    Published on: Wednesday, 05 November, 2014

    Why environmentalists defend the wealthy against the poor

    My Times column:

    A confession: I voted for the Green Party in 1979 – one of less than 40,000 people in the whole country who did so. It was then called the Ecology Party and I knew the local candidate in Oxford, which is some excuse. But mainly I wanted to save the planet, and thought the greater good should trump self interest. I was definitely on the moral high ground. Or was I? Hold that thought.

    The latest opinion polls show that the Green Party is doing to the Liberal Democrats what UKIP is doing to the Conservatives, and could even relegate the LibDems to fifth place in next year’s general election in terms of vote share. Peter Kellner of Yougov has analysed today’s typical Green voter and found that she is almost a mirror image of the UKIP voter. Where UKIP voters are older, maler, more working class, less educated and more religious than the average voter, Green voters are younger, femaler, posher, much better educated and less religious than the average voter.

    Read Full Post
    By: Matt Ridley | Tagged: rational-optimist, the-times
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