Tim Worstall

That is the only possible reaction to this: Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton were criticised for claiming up to £66,000 in housing expenses since 2006 on a £700,000 home after they had already paid off the mortgage. Despite an "unequivocal" breach of parliamentary rules, the couple were not told to repay it. The Sunday Telegraph [...]

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Hang on a minute….enhanced CRB checks include all allegations? Not just convictions, not just even charges, but allegations? Ones that are investigated and dismissed? Since then, all criminal allegations, whether or not they are ever proven in court, have been entered on to suspects’ police records and disclosed to future employers who request enhanced CRB [...]

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Not all that green after all. Ministers have set a target for all new housing to meet the highest "level six" sustainability rating by 2016 – which would in effect see them rated as "carbon neutral". To meet the standard, all the energy used to heat, light and run appliances within the home would all [...]

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Stubble is the way to win a woman’s heart, a study has shown. Researchers found that women are more attracted to men with stubbly chins than those with clean-shaven faces or full beards. Women participating in the research rated men with stubble as tough, mature, aggressive, dominant and masculine – and as the best romantic [...]

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Ahem: Bulgaria’s weightlifting federation announced Friday they were pulling both their men and women’s teams from the Beijing Olympics after all 11 athletes tested positive for an anabolic steroid substance. Makes you glad we’re spending £20 billion on the 2013 Games, don’t it?

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You know how Polly T keeps going on about how Sweden is so wonderful, the Nordics are the people we should be emulating? The birthday party case takes state intervention to a new level. Before the beginning of lessons the boy had cheerfully threaded his way through the class handing out invitations. When the teacher [...]

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Gordon Brown is facing a £1 billion annual bill for the 1.1 million people who have yet to be compensated for the 10p tax fiasco. Gordon isn’t going to pay a sinle penny of that £1 billion. We, the poor bloody taxpayers will.

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The usual suspects are arguing that the Doha Round of WTO talks should be abandoned, given the likely effe4cts of the deal that’s on hte table. The basic thought revolves around our old friend, the infant industry argument. Further cuts in manufacturing tariffs and services regulation in developing countries, which are under consideration in the [...]

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Hundreds of thousands of parents will be banned from ferrying children to sports matches next year unless they have had criminal records checks, under new rules. The clampdown is part of an escalation in child protection policies which will see 11 million adults vetted before they come into contact with children or vulnerable adults. Under [...]

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Speccie. Apparently we have a choice on the EU. Me, I’m going ffor the rich fat pygmy one.  

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At CiF. About the gender pay gap and Harriet Harperson. I’ve still not quite got writing for there right yet. They tell me that they want 550-650 words, and yet everyone else seems to write as long as they want, meaning that I  look pretty short and dismissive. Still, let’s see what the comments are [...]

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You’ve heard of the Mickey Tax? The idea that each visitor to the United States from the visa waiver countries should pay a tourism tax to. umm, encourage tourism to the United States? And yes, Disney is indeed heavily involved in this. Why do you ask? What, you didn’t think that politics worked this way? [...]

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This seems fairly clear: Mr Straw said on Wednesday that “there is a difficult balance to strike here, between giving witnesses who fear for their safety the confidence to give evidence in court and ensuring that innocent people are not convicted”. So what does a lawyer think of this? He is wrong. There is no [...]

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Here, made out of cardboard. An impressive achievement, yes. But as to being recyclable? Don’t people know that steel is recyclable and is indeed recycled? Aluminium?

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Her defence of El Gordo: Not a bad social democratic agenda. And she’s right, in terms of social democracy it isn’t a bad agenda. There’s only one teensie little problem with it though. Britain seems not, at heart, to be a social democratic country.  Thus the offering of a social democratic agenda just ain’t gonna [...]

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I do wonder at times you know, I do. For example, is this guy actually as thick as he sounds or has the newspaper deliberately made him look so? Friends of the Earth supported the government’s drive to use far more renewable power, but said loading the cost onto the consumer was misguided. Who the [...]

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My, God, doesn’t it make you proud? The way in which nearly 500 million consumers are protected from the evils that global capitalism would force upon them? Truly, we should be grateful for the hard work all those tens of thousands of highly paid politicians, with their associate mandarins and mistresses, assistants and arselickers (where [...]

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A nice piece of banstubation here. We have the first part, a real tragedy: Drivers have been given a stark warning of the dangers of hands-free mobile phone calls after a haulier was jailed for causing a fatal crash whilst talking on a Bluetooth headset. Then we have the call for the ban: Relatives of [...]

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You know you’re too steeped in internet traditions when you get to the office at 8:30am, notice you’re the only one around, and catch yourself….

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Speccie. The new Iraqi oil law and yes, the creation of jobs is a cost, not a benefit, of a plan (that link seems to have gone walkabout….)

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