Tim Worstall

The artists are squatting in the mews house of a property in Clarges Mews which sold for £22.5m in April 2007. The owners, Timekeeper Ltd, discovered the occupation in mid-December when they spotted a Christmas tree. Timekeeper has instructed solicitors to apply for an eviction order. A hearing is due today at Central London county [...]

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So, Melanie Reid, fresh from calling for voluntary slavery, decides to insist that rugby and rugby players just ain’t sexy. First comment to the piece: I wonder what rugby position her ex-husband played? Mark , Bishop’s Stortford, UK Lashings of ginger beer for Mark from Bishop’s Stortford I think, no?

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Asked by Richard Murphy. The English isn’t great: ignore that. The issue is this: do you believe anything said here? Is redomiciliation really a case of ‘moving up the scale of offshore administrations’? Or could it be something much more pernicious – the opportunity for a company to flee from one jurisdiction to another, lock, [...]

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This doesn’t sound right to me at all. Established in Ireland in 1990, Dell employed more than 4,500 staff in Ireland at its height and is the country’s biggest exporter and second largest company. It accounts for approximately 5 per cent of Irish GDP and last year contributed €140m to the south western economy in [...]

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The real problem is the nature of neoliberal democracy. Well, glad we’ve got that settled then. We’ll obviously have to abolish the system then eh? Perhaps replace it by rule by civil society? Those who thrust themselves forward rather than those we elect? Corporate interests have become central to domestic and foreign policymaking. With minimum [...]

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The real problem is the nature of neoliberal democracy. Well, glad we’ve got that settled then. We’ll obviously have to abolish the system then eh? Perhaps replace it by rule by civil society? Those who thrust themselves forward rather than those we elect? Corporate interests have become central to domestic and foreign policymaking. With minimum [...]

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A group of climate change protesters who brought Stansted airport to a standstill after occupying a taxiway in December were sentenced yesterday, as it emerged that they and others who joined them face the threat of being sued for more than £2m in damages. Well, yes, you are liable for the forseeable losses to others [...]

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Well, yes Irwin. Quite. All of this makes it even more urgent that attention be paid to green policies, as these will not only reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses, but dependence on carbon-based fuels. George Osborne has been trying to do just that by pressing for a tax on carbon or on CO2 emissions. [...]

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Animals that died out thousands of years ago could be recreated using genetic information retrieved from well-preserved specimens recovered from permafrost, dark caves or dry desserts. I’m going to launch a plan to resurrect a ballet dancer from a raspberry Pavlova. Maybe even John Holmes from a spotted dick.

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So, add together these two things. 1) We’ve got a recession and shops are going bust all over the place. There will be, therefore, any number of places that can be taken up on month by month or even week by week rents. 2) We’ve got the ban on incandescent light bulbs. But this isn’t [...]

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Right on Brother! Our historical experience gives us a clear instruction: we always need more of markets and less of government intervention. We also know that government failure is more costly than market failure. Hurrah! The President of te European Union speaks out!

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Isn’t this just marvellous? Every Tuesday, at 9.45am precisely, a 50-seat executive coach draws up at a bus stop outside Ealing Broadway station in West London. No one ever gets on and, a moment later, it departs – empty – on a 70-minute trip to Wandsworth Road in South London. Once there, it waits for [...]

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The Lib Dems would give parents up to 19 months off, with the father able to take over care after six months if the mother wished to return to work, allowing men to be with their child beyond what Mr Clegg calls the "cooing and wiping phase." Fathers already have the entitlement to take just [...]

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Richard Murphy (and I quote in full, so that you get the full flavour): I thought I’d finished with Tim Worstall. But not quite as it turns out, for he left a comment on this blog yesterday which really does blow his whole position apart. I’d said: It is impossible to suppose that a man [...]

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This is laughable, coming from Polly. Cameron’s plan for retrenchment is economically illiterate, and would be frighteningly dangerous if he were in power. Economic illiteracy accustaions from Our Pol? However: Take his plan for a loan guarantee to let banks lend again with the state as guarantor. It sounds good – indeed, the government has [...]

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Must, be, Richard Murphy tells me so. Our latest comment call and response: “. It is impossible to suppose that a man who can argue (as you did in the Guardian, very recently) that “Things in markets are worth what the markets say they are worth” is a true heir of Smith,” I fear that [...]

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At the ASI. About geoengineering.

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Pupils in every secondary school should be taught the statistical skills they need to make sensible life decisions, one of Britain’s leading mathematicians says. A basic grasp of statistics and probability — “risk literacy” – is critical to making choices about health, money and even education, yet it is largely ignored by the national curriculum, [...]

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. He’s approved higher taxes for top earners and promised further help to pensioners and the poorest. In all this, we see the return of Labour values, which seemed at times over the last 10 years to have vanished into history. Nobody wants a state-run economy or 97% marginal taxes, but the notion of a [...]

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Much has been written in recent weeks about Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the storm of activity with which, following his inauguration in March 1933, he sought to resurrect the US economy from the Great Depression. Among his less-noticed measures was a cut in public sector pay. Today, is it credible that hundreds of millions of [...]

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