Blogs

First-time homebuyer Tyrone France was very clear on his priorities when he and his wife recently moved into their new-build house in Exminster, Devon – the first addition had to be solar panels.

30-year-old Tyrone, who is an IT specialist for a media company, was intent on making their house a home that they will live in comfortably for the next 15 or 20 years, and for him energy security was a big part of that dream.

“Buying our first home was a very exciting step,” he said, “but we also want it to be our home for years to come. We decided that the earlier we could...

We might have expected George Osborne to throw everything but the kitchen sink at today. Instead, he provided us with a fully funded budget, and didn't spend the money on cheap giveaways. How very grown up of him - but he's kept plenty of wriggle room to offer some stunning manifesto pledges on IHT. At current interest rates cash ISAs were fairly pointless before, but now are likely to be unnecessary for the vast majority of savers. The new £1,000 tax allowance for savers means you’d need to have cash savings of more than £100,000 at one per cent interest to need to shelter any of it from...

In their newly published letter ‘Who is my Neighbour?’ the Bishops of the Church of England call on us to draw on our deeper consciences as we approach the General Election in May.

In particular they rightly call us to reassess the policies the political parties are offering us in terms of values.

How will this policy impact on the weakest in society? How will this affect future generations? Will this action bring about justice, peace and reconciliation? What makes for the common good? What kind of society do we expect to live in? It seems to me that at this time there are...

A recent scientific report has suggested that 4 out of 9 ‘planetary boundaries’ have been crossed*.

If pushed beyond safe limits, the Earth may become less hospitable for humankind to prosper. In this update on the boundaries, the authors found that climate change, the loss of biosphere integrity (through species extinction, and the loss of genetic and functional diversity), land-system change (for example deforestation), and biochemical flows (such as phosphorus and nitrogen from fertilisers) have passed beyond safe levels. The other five processes relate to ozone depletion, ocean...