Tim Worstall

….get sucked into silly government subsidy boondoggles. The Japanese Government is secretly hatching plans for a huge underwater treasure hunt in the depths of the East China Sea in an urgent effort to secure supplies of the “vitamins of industry”. The ambitious project, which could begin as early as next spring, will probe the seabed [...]

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Rare is the good news story on the environment; rarer still does it come from the private sector. It is to giggle, isn’t it? Good news on the environment has been bombarding us from every side for centuries, almost all of it coming from the private sector. Farming becomes ever more productive, reducing the amount [...]

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Sadly, another indication that we are ruled by idiots. With pilot schemes already going well, within two to three years she is determined to see pails of rotting food routinely collected along with the rubbish, then processed at local plants to generate electricity. She foresees a day when every town will have its own anaerobic [...]

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There’s a simple answer to this: That raises a painful question. If Australians, Indians, Canadians, and even Americans can recognise the Anglosphere as a new factor in world politics, why is it something from which the Brits themselves shy? It’s that Brits themselves don’t shy from dealing with the Anglosphere. As the very article itself [...]

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A police spokesman said: "The officer tried to offer words of advice but the male refused to accept them. So the officer was left with no option but to issue a fixed penalty notice of £30. It’s a crime now not to listen to police advice?

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More bansturbation! Motorists could be banned from smoking behind the wheel of their own cars while driving them as part of their job, it has emerged. Isn’t that wonderful? Your car, with no one else in it, becomes another place where you may not smoke. It gets better too: Prof Richard West, the Government’s leading [...]

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The last thing I do before my head hits the pillow is check email or approve blog comments. You might think that’s sad, but there you go. And it takes me approximately one minute to fall asleep. Exciting, isn’t it?

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The latest entry has the results of a ComRes Poll, which shows that 44% of MPs now favour Fixed Term Parliaments. Sadly only 25% of Tory MPs have seen the light. Meanwhile 41% of Labour MPs and 88% of LibDems are on the side of the righteous. 44% of parasites want to know how long [...]

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Teachers are leaving the profession in increasing numbers, with a quarter of a million no longer working in schools, according to figures published by the Conservatives yesterday. w00t w00t! So we’re training too many teachers, which means we get to close down a few of the teacher training colleges! Great, anyone got a list?

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At the ASI. The Tax Justice Network does not prove what they think they prove.

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This is female sexuality packaged up as a product geared to generate profit: capitalism with tits, basically. In a society where sex and sexuality are still oriented from a sexist, capitalist perspective, it’s almost normal then for women to place value on how they are viewed by men, simultaneously objectifying and undermining their own sexuality [...]

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The centre cannot hold, and that’s the good news in the United States these days. Quietly, doggedly, cities, regions, counties and states have refused to march to the Bush administration’s drum when it comes to climate change, the environment and the war. Some of the recent changes are so sweeping that they will probably drag [...]

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At the ASI. Negative Equity and something that appeared when I wrote it rather than when it should have because I am a technological ignoramus.

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A drug that reverses severe liver damage could be used to treat disease in heavy drinkers who find it impossible to give up alcohol. Scientists developed the drug after discovering a way to prevent the formation of excessive scar tissue caused by cirrhosis, hepatitis and other medical conditions. To their surprise the drug not only [...]

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A girl of five who had half her brain removed has taken her first steps. The careers that are closed to her. She’s still vastly over qualified to be a politician for example.

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There’s a reason this is happening: The Chinese town of Guiyu is the graveyard of Christmas past. It is where presents – game consoles, laptops, mobile phones – come to die. It is also where they are reborn. In this giant scrap-yard, so dangerously polluted that its children are being clinically poisoned, the electronic objects [...]

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There are only 364 shopping days before Christmas! This has been a public service announcement.

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Isn’t it? Children as young as five are routinely being used to quarry stone for the booming British patio and garden landscaping market, one of Britain’s leading stone importers has warned. Chris Harrop, a director of Marshall’s Plc, said that large sections of the gardening industry were turning a blind eye to the use of [...]

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Not a lot going on really, so why not print the PR release from a charity? The credit crunch is driving more and more middle-class children to shoplift expensive gifts denied them by their parents, a charity has warned. Now there’s a reason to lower interest rates, eh? He estimates that up to half the [...]

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Yes, I know, that’s tomorrow. But read this. Solar PV at less than $1 per Watt. Panels at less than $2 per Watt. Plus a variation of Li batteries that provides 10 times the storage. That’s cheaper than electricity from coal for the capital costs. Plus, of course, no fuel costs, nor CO2 while running. [...]

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