Tim Worstall

Ex-husband uses JCB to dig up his wife’s driveway – then dumps load all over her car. Can we accept that if you need a JCB for such a load then you’ve been having some digestive problems?

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How does this work then Seumas? As both Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, and John McFall, Labour’s Treasury select committee chairman, argue, only government direction to maintain lending – either via majority state-owned banks such as RBS or through new publicly owned banks – is going to overcome the comprehensive failure of the [...]

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One of my pet themes, I know, that capitalism and free (ish) markets are two entirely different things. John Lewis has been crowned Britain’s favourite shop. John Lewis is clearly competing very well indeed in a free(ish) market. But it’s not a capitalist organisation, it’s a workers’ co-op. There is no necessity at all for [...]

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This will annoy a lot of people. Battery hens are healthier than free-range chickens, a study from the National Veterinary Institute in Sweden has suggested. OK, OK, it’s not the most rigorous of studies, this is true. But then the people who will be annoyed are those who ought to be annoyed at every opportunity. [...]

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Excellent.

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If we go by the Adam Smith definition of wealth creation, as the combination of materials, labour, land, and technology in such a way as to capture a profit (excess above the cost of production), That isn’t, I think, quite the "Adam Smith" definition of wealth creation. Firstly, he would use "land labour and capital" [...]

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A quarter of dark-haired women rated themselves above average in bed, beating blondes and redheads.

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A slightly odd assertion here. He’s always been a trendsetter. But could David Bowie have caused the latest fad sweeping the nation – the credit crunch? It may sound like a ridiculous question, but it’s not as mad as it seems. Even when it comes to finances Bowie leads the way – and back in [...]

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Is it just me of has The Times got this entirely the wrong way around? But, as usual with humans, things got out of paw. They are not pack animals. The big cup goes to their heads. So they took interbreeding us poor canines to extreme ends, that gave Josef Mengele a dog’s name when [...]

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So, we’ve got something called the Serious Fraud Office. They investigate financial crimes. Very important, of course. Stuffed full of the finest forensic accounting brains our nation can produce. Of course. Serious Fraud Office asks for £15m to cover ‘urgent’ hole in budget Mhm, hmm. They cannot even manage their own budget. Fills one with [...]

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The man chosen by President-elect Obama to run the US Treasury failed to pay $34,000 in taxes over several years in the first half of the decade. Tee Hee.

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From the Press Association wire: A US woman who enrolled in high school under her daughter’s name and tried out for the cheerleading squad has been committed to a mental health facility for three years.  

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Volkerkerker, a new word for me (yes, there should be an umlaut in there, as there indeed should in the word umlaut, but I’m afraid my technical skills don’t extend that far). Nigel Farage used it in a speech in the Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday to describe the euro. Volkerkerker. "A prison of nations". Has [...]

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I’m told that today (Tuesday) the Greek government sold some bonds. Can anyone point me to the results of that auction? Amounts, coupon, discount to par, maturity? We’re being told that they managed to get them away under Euribor which shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise. You’d expect a sovereign govt to pay [...]

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All hail the power of the pill! Just at the time when people are at last waking up to the near impossibility of securing dignified, free and genuinely sustainable lives for the 9 billion people who will inhabit the planet by 2050, along comes one of the men who might justifiably claim to have done [...]

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Here.

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You and yours, the BBC discussion programme, is having one on whether Britain should join the euro today. A blitheringly stupid idea I think you’ll agree. And one being put forward by Oliver Kamm. To take part on the day Call us on 03700 100 444 (Calls charged as 01 or 02 number and are [...]

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Where we’re about to get a new law: One cabinet member described it with relish as "socialism in one clause". Socialism. Worked so well everywhere else it’s been tried, eh? The government will create a new over-arching law creating a duty on the whole public sector to narrow the gap between the rich and the [...]

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British people already fly twice as much as citizens of the United States, and one fifth of the world’s flights use the UK’s airports. That first part might actually be true. An American is more likely to drive a long distance, a distance where we are more likely to fly. That would be something to [...]

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Wind turbines mounted on town houses like David Cameron’s often do not provide a great deal of electricity because of a lack of wind in urban areas, according to research into the new technology. Well, yes, we know this. Manufacturers claim some of the new micro turbines can provide 30 per cent of a household’s [...]

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