Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.

The aircraft that blew up the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington conveyed several messages to the world, of which one of the least remarked is this: the Muslims of the world are suffering.

Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource, and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science, environmental management, government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.

In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished.

When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register (NAR), which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury "the modern Domesday Book".

Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.

The world survived the fall of the Roman empire and will no doubt outlast our own so much more splendid civilisation.