Tim Worstall

It’s a validation.

Other manufacturers in India and China producing similar products are expected to earn an estimated £3.3 billion over the next six years by cutting emissions at a cost of just £67m.

Yippee!
We’ve saved 3.3 billion of ecological damage at a cost of just 67 million. Hurrah, Hurrah!
This is exactly what we want to be [...]

[Read more →]

THE solicitor-general, Vera Baird, has signalled the introduction of new rights for millions of carers of elderly relatives and sick children, raising the prospect of a clash with Lord Mandelson, the business secretary.
Under the proposal, in a bill to be outlined in the Queen’s speech on Wednesday, carers who believe they are [...]

[Read more →]

Our Wullie manages to get rather confused again.

He was in London last week, promoting his new book The Subprime Solution and between events he met the Chancellor, the Governor of the Bank of England, the Secretary of State for Business and Regulatory Reform and even – for a few minutes – the Prime Minister. One [...]

[Read more →]

At the ASI.
It doesn’t matter where something is invented, wealth comes from the use of it.

[Read more →]

The civil servant at the heart of a Whitehall leak investigation was in hiding last night as a political storm raged over the arrest of the Tory frontbencher Damian Green.
The 26-year-old civil servant was detained at his home in Middlesex at 6am on November 19. The assistant private secretary, who has been suspended from his [...]

[Read more →]

What is the point of the media if it does not see its primary task as gathering information to hold power to account?

The primary purpose of the media is to make money for those who own it. Just like any other business.

[Read more →]

At the ASI.
Why do deeply confused people like Neal Lawson have any influence upon public policy?

[Read more →]

But Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said the UK should take responsibility for emissions.
"The committee should put pressure on the Government to abandon climate-wrecking plans to expand UK airports and not to build coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage from the outset," he said.
"Investing in green energy and cutting [...]

[Read more →]

Lord Mandelson is drawing up plans to choose which businesses and industries are important enough to be saved in the event of their going bankrupt as the recession bites, the Guardian can reveal.
In his first newspaper interview since returning to the cabinet, the business secretary said he planned a more interventionist policy for industry.
Company data [...]

[Read more →]

Yes, I’m still going over at The Spectator. This for example.
Some idiots are suggesting we manufacture a depression by capping bank interest rates.

[Read more →]

At the Register.
If you squint at it the right way, we’ve already solved climate change.

[Read more →]

A rise in global temperatures of less than 2C (3.6F) could begin a meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice, causing sea levels to rise by several metres and threatening tens of millions of people, according to a study by WWF, the conservation group. “Responsible politicians cannot dare to waste another second [...]

[Read more →]

The resort of Torbay has spent £30,000 of taxpayers’ money on flip-flops for women who are too drunk to stagger home in high heels.
Sigh.

[Read more →]

What is clearly needed, though sadly highly unlikely, is an international conference (perhaps as a serious offshoot from the lightweight G20 conference a week ago?) to reach a binding agreement on the oil price for a five-year period rolled forward,…

Snigger.
He’s seriously suggesting that oil should be pegged at $90 a barrel. Have these people learnt [...]

[Read more →]

FROM this autumn, all public bodies occupying large buildings have had to display an energy efficiency rating. I am told that less than 1 per cent of 3,200 buildings assessed have scored the top A grade. Among those scoring lowest are the offices at 3 Whitehall [...]

[Read more →]

That’s what it is, trying to call the bottom of a market and start buying again.

Helical Bar has spent the past few years scaling down its portfolio, but Mr Slade said the company intends to start buying again from spring 2009, to seize opportunities that only arise "once or twice in a property career."

He’s called [...]

[Read more →]

Given that this is in The Mail I think we might file this under the "immigrants cause cancer to house prices" heading. However, it’s sourced from the New Scientist which, as long as it doesn’t stray into matters economic, is a respectable source.

And for centuries it seems we were looking in the wrong place. Forget [...]

[Read more →]

Labour in vain
Home from Heathrow just in time to hear a distressing first on the BBC Today programme. Hazel Blears was actually faded out. While still speaking. I nearly dropped the marmalade.
In the old days they would have tried politely to hurry her along, but yesterday, as Ms Blears twittered happy thoughts about new Labour’s [...]

[Read more →]

It would appear that we’ve had that for rather a long time.

Being 4ft 11in paid off for Edith Kent. Her diminutive stature meant that she could crawl inside torpedo tubes — and helped her to become the first woman in Britain to earn the same wage as her male colleagues while working as a welder [...]

[Read more →]

Oh yes we do.

Here in Singapore, the government continues to respond to the worsening downturn with austerity of the sort that avowed scrooges like nineteenth century prime ministers William Gladstone and Robert Peel would have approved of.
The latest cost-cutting move is a pay cut of up to 19pc for all senior civil servants, including the PM [...]

[Read more →]