Tim Worstall

* Via.

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Here.

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Speccie. More on that report that meat must be rationed and, somewhere, a bizarre assertion about child poverty.

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So, all of what’s going on, all that’s wrong in the world, is as a result of businesses buying regulatory favours through the political process. I find it difficult to disagree with the basic thesis, although "all" seems a little strong. And of course there’s nothing remotely free market about such client capture of the [...]

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Scientists who examined research covering more than 600,000 women across the world found that for every pound heavier they were at birth, the risk of developing breast cancer increased by six per cent. Hmm. We also know that smoking during pregnancy reduces birth weight (I think it’s 1 cigarette per day reduces weight by 6 [...]

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According to the Bank of England, mortgage lending in August fell by 95 per cent compared to the previous month – a drop fuelled by uncertainty over falling house prices and speculation over a possible stamp duty holiday. That uncertainty over the stamp duty. People who have worked in hte real world know that a [...]

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So I’m sitting here in this nice new (to me) office and I cannot get my spiffy little netbook to connect to the network. Obviously, the router itself is working as on this other computer I can access the net. And yes, it is indeed a wi fi enabled router. But will that netbook see [...]

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Telling us to grow our own food. Hmm, mebbe, if that’s what you want to do. But there’s something of a political agenda here, don’t you think? Prof Lang, who advises the Government on the crisis, said that people who relied on the large supermarkets for their food did so at their peril. "Ultimately people [...]

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This is, of course, a crisis only of Anglo Saxon casino capitalism, isn’t it? Those Continentals, with their much better regulated banks, don’t have the same problems. That’s why Swedbank is on the ropes, why the Danish banking system is imploding, why Fortis is being taken over. It’s only the Anglos, of course.

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Financial crisis: Bradford & Bingley nationalisation will cost taxpayers £150bn Erm, no it won’t. The total loan book for B&B is £40 billion or so. So that is the total exposure. Add the Northern Rock exposure and that’s how you get to £150 billion. But for it to cost that much you have to value [...]

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MacShane: In Berlin recently, David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty were he to become prime minister and the Treaty were not to be ratified. That would mean that the first period of any Tory government unleashing, as its main contribution to international politics, a festival of xenophobic hate against Europe. The Tories, [...]

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Pigs, aren’t they? Oppressing third world workers, extracting profit from their hides. Worth having a quick look at this Peter Hitchens piece. Don’t you think they’d all rather be working for a mining company listed on the LSE? You know, being exploited in the name of international capital?

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For Labour to have a fighting chance at the next election, radical demands surfaced at Manchester for significant policy change. Not just a crackdown on short-selling, but action against speculators in general. Not just providing local authorities with social grants to build 2,500 social housing units, but allowing them to borrow against their housing stock [...]

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Am I reading between the lines here correctly? The problem with El Gordo is that he’s a drunk?

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Yesterday critics were quick to attack Cameron for taking money from hedge funds. ‘Now we see that the same hedge fund wolf pack who brought HBOS to its knees are bankrolling the Tory party,’ said Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman. ‘No wonder David Cameron and George Osborne wouldn’t condemn short-selling or the hedge [...]

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Nice to see old Adam quoted of course, but perhaps not to support this point. By losing sight of the purpose of investment, its practitioners have succumbed to the illusion of wealth. This is why it is time to rebuild a new financial architecture on firmer bedrock, not simply patch up the old one with [...]

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Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: “The Bradford and Bingley boil must be lanced now. The Bush administration has already had to nationalise mortgage lending and it looks as though a similar prospect is staring us in the face.” I’ve not noticed that the US has nationalised mortgage lending. I have noted that [...]

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A useful little example of the incredible inefficiency of Soviet farming. In the 19th century Russia and Ukraine were the bread basket of Europe, but production dropped under Josef Stalin’s forced collectivisation policy and by the end of the Cold War the Soviet bloc had become a net wheat importer. Now thanks to rising world [...]

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Fascinating. The Rev Tim Hastie-Smith, chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, claimed that fee-paying schools work out cheaper because millions of pounds of public money is spent on bureaucracy. His claims come as research for the Independent Schools Council found state school education cost at least £9,000 per child per year. The average cost [...]

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Cabe is also calling for all homes to be powered by renewable energy with gas supply only available as a backup. It said there should be at least 50 dwellings per hectare (2.5 acres) rising to 100 in the centre,… Eh? At 50 per hectare that’s 2,178 sq feet for a house and a garden [...]

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