Brendan O'Neill: The farmers fighting back against the irrational elites

Nothing speaks to the madness of the modern elites better than their war on farming. Consider France. One day President Macron is telling the world to get serious about ‘food security’. Post-Covid and with war raging in Ukraine, we must make sure food keeps being made and transported around the world, the French government says. Yet, at the same time, that same government, without missing a beat, is bringing in pesticide bans that could devastate sections of France’s own agriculture industry. Which could even lead to the closure of farms. Behold the schizophrenia of the 21st-century establishment.

Matt Ridley: European Commission buries science on bees

Is the European Commission determined to dim the Enlightenment? I ask this because its behaviour in one specific instance goes so utterly with dogma and against evidence as to suggest that there is no longer even a pretence of respect for reason left in Brussels. It concerns bees.

In 2013, you may recall, the European Union banned some uses of neonicotinoid insecticides to save bees. The verdict on this policy has now come in, from the commission’s own Joint Research Centre (JRC), whose job is to provide independent scientific advice to support EU policy.