Tim Worstall

Yes, I’m still writing over here.

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Keep Britain Tidy looked at litter in 10 cities over two days in the first attempt to discover which brand names were most commonly discarded. Fast food litter was second to cigarette ends in littering the country’s streets and 29 per cent of that was from McDonald’s restaurants, Gosh! Just as McDonald’s dominates the restaurant [...]

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Related by one of my co-workers. Wealthy, fiftyish man, trophy wife, shags about. She decides that she’s not going to put up with it. Leaves a note. "If I’m not enough for you, I’m leaving. We’ll deal with lawyers later. Oh, BTW, I’ve left your dinner in the oven on a low heat." Hmm, he [...]

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Environmental justice is centred on the basic human right to a clean and healthy environment. That’s wrong for a start. A  clean and healthy environment is a luxury good, not a human right. If your starting point is such wibble then you’re bound to go seriously awry, aren’t you? Sorry, much to bored with this [...]

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The report, Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty, says that the poor are likely to be worst affected by rising temperatures because they tend to live in less energy-efficient housing, have less access to insurance against floods, and have less money to adapt to higher prices of fuel and food. The authors of the study, by [...]

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Price-conscious customers deserted Pound World in Poole, Dorset when they realised that the same products were available 1p cheaper on the other side of the street. The discount shop did a brisk trade when it started business in June but sales fell by 70 per cent after 99p Stores opened last month. Now bosses have [...]

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Or maybe yes. The Formula AE car will use a solar-powered battery to get it moving but will then use the airflow passing over the vehicle to power a turbine. It will be able to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than four seconds and is expected to cost around £100,000 when it [...]

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At the ASI. An excellent little essay has just been published.

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Hmm. Just got a spam email: Hello, Your site http://timworstall.com was recently nominated to receive a free donation page hosted by GiveAlways.com. You can start receiving donations immediately. The address for your donation page is (blah blah) Click here to login using the username & password below. After logging in simply click the "Generate HTML" [...]

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Genetic tests that can detect a raised risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer are being offered for the first time to people without family histories of the diseases, The Times has learnt. The programme, run by University College London (UCL), paves the way for a new approach to preventive medicine involving widespread screening. It [...]

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Oh dear, oh dear. She measures the effectiveness of chairty efforts by how much money is donated. Not by the results. And not even by the time donated by volunteers. Only by how much cash gets handed over. Then there’s this: Looking at those priorities, it’s worth remembering that every time someone gives to charity, [...]

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I rang Emma, suddenly fearful that she and her husband Matthew Rice might bow to the realities of modern management and flee Stoke for Indonesia. "No way!" she said. They’re building a new factory, only yards from their Victorian one in Lichfield Street, Hanley. "Stoke really works for us. There’s a brilliant workforce, they’re so [...]

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You know, this confiscation of drug dealers profits? Never be used for any other purpose, would it? W Stevenson and Sons has already been convicted of failing to supply accurate sales notes for the fish it sold. This makes it liable to have its assets confiscated – under a law enacted to seize the ill-gotten [...]

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John Constable, research director at the Renewable Energy Foundation, said wind has been generating at a sixth of total capacity for much of the last couple of weeks, dropping to almost zero at times. "This shows that wind provides very little firm, reliable capacity," he said. "At times of high demand in cold weather there [...]

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At the ASI. Laws and sausages.

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With the credit crisis causing thousands of job losses in white-collar professions, ministers are engaged in crisis talks with major employers in a bid to find posts for the 400,000 students due to graduate from universities this summer. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, John Denham, the Skills Secretary, discloses that four well-known companies [...]

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I once asked Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, the late, unlamented Hamas leader, if he would help an injured Jewish child if  he came across one lying on the street. He said no. And he was a pediatrician by training.

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Indeed the most startling thing about this industry is that if you look at the biggest 5 lenders they all offer precisely the same APR on £200 borrowed over 31 days. It cannot be a coincidence that they all quote a staggering, yet precise 1286.10% APR. This is a clear indication that the market is [...]

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If we want to avert this, and avoid sharing Japan’s experience of a "lost decade", then we have to dust down the history books. One of the monetary tools used by the postwar Attlee government was the direction of bank lending. The government must have an idea of the level of lending that is needed, [...]

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