Legal
Cookie Policy
This page explains what cookies are, which categories this site uses, what each category is for, and how to control them either through our banner or in your browser.
1. What cookies are
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store. On a later request the browser sends it back, which is how a site can recognise that a setting has already been chosen. Related technologies — local storage and similar browser storage — do much the same job without using a cookie file, and we treat them under this policy in the same way. This site's record of your banner choice is kept in local storage on your own device.
2. How consent works here
When you first arrive, a banner appears at the bottom of the screen with three options. Accept All allows every category below. Reject Non-Essential keeps only the strictly necessary items and blocks the rest. Preferences opens a panel where you can allow analytics and functional cookies independently and save that combination. Nothing in the optional categories is set before you make a choice.
To change your mind later, clear this site's cookies and site data in your browser and reload any page: the banner returns and you can choose again.
3. Categories used on this site
| Category | Purpose | Set by | Consent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | Records the cookie choice you made in the banner, and supports basic security and load-balancing at the hosting layer so pages are served correctly. | This site and its hosting provider | Not required — the site cannot function without these |
| Analytics | Counts page views and the paths visitors take between articles, in aggregate, so we can see which sections are read and where readers stop. No advertising profile is built and the data is not sold or shared for marketing. | Our website analytics provider | Optional — off until you allow it |
| Functional | Remembers small display and interface preferences between visits, so you do not have to set them again. | This site | Optional — off until you allow it |
We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we do not embed third-party social media widgets or advertising tags that would set them. If that changes, this page and the banner categories will be updated before the new cookies are deployed.
4. Lifespan of a cookie
Cookies are either session cookies, which your browser discards when you close it, or persistent cookies, which remain until they expire or you delete them. Consent and preference records are persistent by design, because their whole purpose is to be remembered on a later visit. Analytics identifiers are persistent so that a returning reader is not counted as a wholly new one. Security and load-balancing items at the hosting layer are typically session-based.
5. Controlling cookies in your browser
Every current browser lets you block or delete cookies, and most let you block third-party cookies while allowing first-party ones. The controls sit in the privacy or site-permissions area of the settings menu:
- Chrome — Settings, then Privacy and security, then Third-party cookies and Site settings.
- Safari — Settings or Preferences, then Privacy, with per-site data under Manage Website Data.
- Firefox — Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Cookies and Site Data.
- Edge — Settings, then Cookies and site permissions.
Blocking all cookies is your right, and this site remains readable if you do. The practical cost is that your banner choice cannot be remembered, so the banner will reappear on each visit, and any interface preference will reset. Browsers also offer private or incognito windows, which discard cookies at the end of the session.
Some browsers and operating systems send a general do-not-track or global privacy signal. Support for these signals is inconsistent across the web; where we can detect one, we treat it as a request not to enable optional categories.
6. Cookies and personal data
Cookie identifiers can be personal data even when they contain no name, because they can single out a device. Our lawful basis for the optional categories is your consent, given through the banner and withdrawable at any time. The strictly necessary items rely on the exemption for cookies essential to providing the service you requested. How the resulting information is handled, who processes it and how long it is kept are set out in the privacy policy.
7. Questions and changes
If anything here is unclear, or you want to know what is currently stored for your device, email [email protected] and we will explain. We update this policy when the categories or providers change; the version on this page is the one that applies.