Tim Worstall

It is all obvious or trivial except…

 

 

Entries from October 2008

What excellent news!

October 31st, 2008 · 1 Comment

Doing heavy household chores could slash a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer by a third, experts have found.

That’s my excuse sorted then.

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Tags: Trivia

Reviewing Obama’s half hour…..

October 31st, 2008 · No Comments

At times during this half hour of mawkish misery you longed for the wit and wisdom of a debate featuring Sarah Palin.

That good, eh?

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Tags: Politics

Bringing forward the infrastructure spending

October 31st, 2008 · 4 Comments

The rail regulator cancelled 19 schemes to remove pinch points on overcrowded lines yesterday after the Government ordered a cut in public funding for the railways.
Network Rail had proposed the schemes to increase capacity and to reduce delays on routes that have experienced record growth in passenger numbers. The Government has imposed a strict cap [...]

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Tags: Your Tax Money At Work

Polly reviews a new shopping centre

October 31st, 2008 · 3 Comments

There is something ominous about Westfield making its first "anchor" store Debenhams – the group devoured by private equity greed, asset-stripped, and pushed back on the market, denuded and loaded with debt.

WTF?

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Tags: Newspaper Watch

Muscular Christianity

October 31st, 2008 · 4 Comments

Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, has suggested churches with low attendance could be turned into gyms

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Tags: Your Tax Money At Work

Timmy Elsewhere

October 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Speccie.
Political corruption and EU fruit and veg.
 

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Tags: Timmy Elsewhere

Timmy Elsewhere

October 30th, 2008 · 6 Comments

At The Register.
The New Scientist and their misunderstanding of economics.

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Tags: Timmy Elsewhere

Bravo! Bravo!

October 30th, 2008 · 9 Comments

Take a pig living outdoors with space to run around. It is fed additive-free foods (spare fruit from the greengrocers, malted barley from the local brewery, etc) and is free to forage in the earth. It is just as happy as an organic pig, it lives just as long and eats just as well. However, [...]

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Tags: Food

A get out of jail free card

October 30th, 2008 · 7 Comments

So when the bureaucrats lose a court case they start to argue that they shouldn’t have to pay the costs.

Mr Dillon added: "Nice has been ordered to pay 60 per cent of the court cost incurred by Eisai who embarked on the litigation.
"Eisai Ltd is an international company which generated a net income of 598 [...]

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Tags: Your Tax Money At Work

Women, eh?

October 30th, 2008 · No Comments

The world’s greatest pub crawl, 14,000 pubs and counting, and look what happens:

He said there have been up to twenty drinkers in their team but most have fallen by the wayside after getting married.

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Tags: The English

Oh dear me

October 30th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Ummm….no, I don’t think so.

Gerald Toben, 64, is accused by the German authorities of offences ‘of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature’ Photo: PA

Uhn uhn. That’s David Irving in that photo. The Telegraph (or maybe it’s PA) seem to be having problems with photos of Toben. At one point they had one of Chris Huhne [...]

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Tags: Newspaper Watch

Quite

October 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Gordon Brown’s claims that a national ID card scheme would help prevent terrorist attacks are "absolute bunkum" according to a senior Government security adviser. Harvey Mattinson, a consultant at the information technology arm of GCHQ, said that the only real value of identity cards would be to help state bodies share information about people.

Nothing we [...]

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Tags: Civil Liberty

Bernard Henri Levy

October 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Wow, so drugs are legal in France eh?

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Tags: blogs

Timmy Elsewhere

October 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Speccie.
Drink crazed loons and daylight savings time.

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Tags: Uncategorized

Those BP profits

October 29th, 2008 · 1 Comment

As us financial sophisticate know, the method of accounting used by oil companies means that when prices are rising then so do their profits.
However, when prices fall so do those profits.
So, come the announcement of next quarter’s results and the drop in profits, possibly even reports of a loss, will all those currently shouting about [...]

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Tags: Business

Owoooooowoooooowoooow!

October 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments

A father of three who underwent a routine vasectomy at his local GP surgery was left fighting for his life in hospital after suffering gangrene.

Eeek!

It wasn’t until his stitches burst that he was rushed to hospital and doctors realised how serious his condition was.

Sob, sob, ouch!
 

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Tags: Health Care

Oh please….

October 29th, 2008 · 6 Comments

Fast-food outlets should be barred from opening near schools, Ed Balls will say today.

Do bugger off man.

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Tags: Your Tax Money At Work

In praise of suburbia

October 29th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I really do like this:

I think big ideas are overrated. My family have been chased all over the world by people with big ideas. We’ve fought in their wars, starved in their prison camps, died in their gas chambers, fled their conquering armies, sewn on their yellow stars and surrendered our property to their armed [...]

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Tags: Newspaper Watch

GM and Chrysler

October 29th, 2008 · 12 Comments

The boss of the US’s biggest carmaker, General Motors, is personally lobbying the Bush administration for aid of up to $10bn (£6.3bn) to prop up a merger with Chrysler.
Political and economic pressure is mounting on the US treasury to step in to avert the possibility of a bankruptcy of one of Detroit’s leading carmakers, which [...]

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Tags: Business

Loons

October 29th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Absolutely crazed loons:

It also shows that 27 countries are "importing" more than half the water they consume – in the form of water used to produce goods from wheat to cotton – including the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and the Netherlands.

They seriously seem to think that there’s something wrong with trade. That, by growing wheat [...]

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Tags: Environmentalism