Tim Worstall

Philip Rorden, 45, and Janet Worstall, 46, both of 2911 Huron-Avery Road, were arrested on Ohio Street during a Norwalk police investigation into the sale hallucinatory mushrooms, said Assistant Prosecutor Doug Clifford. Rorden is charged with four counts of trafficking in drugs, stated Norwalk Municipal Court. Rorden has been under investigation since October, according to [...]

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The Business. William Harford sent me some very interesting numbers on the Guardian Media Group accounts. A lower effective tax rate last year than Tesco’s indeed. (No, I don’t know why that table won’t resize.)

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One very good argument against State funding of political parties is that it entrenches the current incumbents: further, that it allows the State to define who can be considered as a political party, even to ban some people from standing for election. Yup, happening here in Portugal, right now.

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Do read in full. I had a strange idea yesterday. I had the idea of inviting Harriet Harman home for dinner. This isn’t a thought that occurs to me often, but I suddenly felt it might be fun. I’d invite my Dad too. And then, when we’d given Harriet a nice meal (what do you [...]

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There’s something to be said for tax havens, but it’s an unpopular case to make in the middle of the Liechtenstein storm. The danger is that the tax competition that they bring, and which should be welcome, will be annihilated along with the secrecy which they struggle to justify. Without tax havens, without the possibility [...]

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José Javier Pomés Ruiz, a Spanish EPP member, led the attack. “Coming along and saying ‘publish’ when you have not been involved in the process, I do not think that is 100 per cent honest,” he told Mr Davies. “If you look at the headlines and look at the report, there are great differences. Passing [...]

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This looks like yet more of Richard Murphy’s work. And I simply don’t understand what is being said I’m afraid. The Guardian’s analysis of Tesco’s accounts over the past five years also shows that the company has paid an effective tax rate of just over 20% on the rest of its profits, at a time [...]

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Women managers wanting to work part-time after a baby are seeing their talents and qualifications wasted because they can only find employment well below their skill levels, according to the most comprehensive UK study of the impact of motherhood on careers. Almost half of women professionals who downgrade to lower skilled part-time roles move to [...]

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To be honest, I don’t know whether this is a good idea or not. Thousands of problem drug users will face losing welfare benefit payments for up to six months if they repeatedly fail to participate in drug treatment programmes under "three strikes and you’re out" proposals to be announced today. The move to use [...]

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Something spotted in the pub last night.

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So, Boris Johnson picked up Tariq Aziz (well spotted that man)’s cigar case 5 years ago, from the ruins of his villa. Now the Met is insisting that he hand it over to them: A Met Police spokesman said: "The Met works very closely with a number of countries, including Iraq, to recover items that [...]

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Senior MEPs have declared that a secret report finding "massive suspicion of fraud" in European Parliament funding worth £100 million a year will never see the light of day. Hans-Gert Pöttering, the parliament’s president who is due to meet the Queen during a visit to the UK, is coming under increasing pressure to publish the [...]

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Millions of highly-qualified women see their careers collapse once they have children because employers will not let them work flexibly or part-time, a new study claims. One in four professional women leaves her job after starting a family, with almost half having to move into jobs where the average employee lacks even A-levels, it says. [...]

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The largest earthquake to hit Britain for almost quarter of a century was felt across large parts of England in the early hours of this morning. Who was it that finally perfected their technique?

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At the GI. This really is most amusing, most amusing indeed. You know that horrible long working hours culture we’ve got? The way the work/life balance is out of whack? The way in which Denmark and Sweden, for example, do it all so much better? Umm, you know that their total work weeks are longer [...]

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From the upcoming Economic Journal, Women in Britain who work part-time have, on average, hourly earnings about 25% less than that of women working full-time. This gap has widened greatly over the past 30 years. This article tries to explain this part-time pay penalty. It shows that a sizeable part of the penalty can be [...]

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Came across this: Surname: Worstall This very unusual surname is of Olde English pre 7th century origins. It derives from twin hamlets in the far north of Yorkshire near Yarm, now known as High and Low Worsall. These places were first recorded in the famous Domesday Book of the year 1086 as ‘Wercesel’, the translation [...]

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The Business. Sovereign wealth funds and GM crops.

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Two siblings being born on the same day in different years was unlikely enough. But when Kim MacKriell had a third child delivered on the same day, she beat odds of more than 130,000 to one. Ruby MacKriell was born last month on January 29. Her brother, Robin, was born on January 29, 1994, and [...]

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