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The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 5 December 2009

On Sunday night, I went to Wellington College to defend God. The Almighty does not need human help, of course, but I was asked to oppose Professors Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling, and — with Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford —  propose the motion that ‘Atheism is the new fundamentalism’. I had hoped that

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Africa sets an enterprising example

The hills of Michimikuru are a little piece of heaven: pickers in brightly coloured scarves move slowly through the chest-high bushes of the vivid green tea-fields beneath the slopes of Mount Kenya. But as the saying goes, local colour is other people’s poverty. Just ten kilometres to either side, the desert is encroaching; the mountain’s

Can we pump carbon back beneath the North Sea?

Few people have ever seen them, except perhaps from a plane. Yet these huge, remote structures have stood planted in the North Sea, buffeted for decades by wind and wave, pumping cash into the UK economy. They are the hundreds of oil and gas platforms which churn out the equivalent of 2.8 million barrels of