So, where do we go from here? There is no viable option, it seems to me, but to embrace whole- heartedly the proven technology of the renewable energy route

David Cameron remarked that Thatcher had "smashed through the glass ceiling" - she did, but not for women, simply for herself. She did not open the door for other women behind her; rather, she smashed the glass and replaced it with barbed wire fencing. She reinforced a system that does not allow for female leadership unless it acquiesces to patriarchal modes.

Power's action on the brain has many similarities to drugs like cocaine, and can cause similar changes to the brain, including, in extreme cases, a sort of addiction to power. Margaret Thatcher found it exceedingly difficult to live without this drug and harbored a bitter and unforgiving resentment against the colleagues who brought her down until dementia came over her.

North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Un is behaving rationally. The 30-year-old is new leader of a gang which has taken over - nay, created - an entire country, and like any boss he wants to keep his gang in power and build its wealth and status.

Power has neurological effects on the brain which can include a distortion of thinking, a degrading of morals and a blunting of empathy. Democracy and its artifacts were invented to counteract this neurological condition and a free press is one of the great inventions of democracy.

Whatever you think of the current standoff between President Barack Obama and the Republican-led Congress over the budget, what you are witnessing is raw, messy democracy in action.

Petraeus's already considerable power expanded when he took over CIA. And power is drug with psycho-active properties, one of the strongest of which is as an increase in sexual appetite. As Henry Kissinger famously observed, "power is an aphrodisiac".

Whatever you may think of a film which insults the Prophet Mohammad, or Tom Holland's conjectures, they are to be countered by rational debate, not bigoted threats or actual violence.

Should you be looking for a window into the lopsided nature of the 'special relationship', you need look no further than the reverence with which political classes on either side of the Atlantic observe the others internal affairs.

More than two thirds of the public wants the coalition to claw back powers from Brussels, according to a poll. And a majority would support refusin...