Tim Worstall

Well, that’s good to know, isn’t it? Is there actually anything that isn’t consistent with global warming?

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New blog. Ovid? Ovaries? Dang, she’ll clean my plate. Worth reading though

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This might be a reason why we will not have a General Election on the same day as the euro-elections, June 4th. In the European Parliamentary elections, all spending on behalf of party list candidates is campaign expenditure. They do not have a separate limit or account for individual expenses. As a result, all spending [...]

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Things steaming up downstairs. Lots of angry MPs muttering about the lack of preparedness by the Palace authorities. The underground carpark is closed because there is no grit or salt on the estate. And even though it’s been snowing since tea-time yesterday, only in the past hour have a few men with shovels started digging out the drive at Members’ Entrance. [...]

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Another former senior tax inspector said: "One of the problems the Revenue has is that the company doesn’t have to disclose the amount of tax actually paid in any year and the accounts won’t reveal the liability. Each company has its own method of accounting for tax: there’s no uniform way of declaring it all." [...]

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Oh, boy, this Grauniad investigation is indeed fun: International companies based in the UK may have hundreds of subsidiary companies, which many use to take advantage of differing tax regimes as they move goods, services and intellectual property around the world. It is estimated that more than half of world trade consists of such movements [...]

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I thought this was going to be amusing and indeed it is. A household name has been deliberately loaded with debt so that it no longer has any profits to pay tax on. Horrors! If someone doesn’t make a profit then they don’t pay profits tax. But of course the people receiving the interest do [...]

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Me, I welcome this news: Paying for the right to work for nothing is one of the more interesting economic concepts to have come out of this downturn. Time was in the US when spring would come and a young man’s fancy turned lightly to thoughts of a summer internship. Every year, hundreds of thousands [...]

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Tax exiles and convicted criminals are set to be stripped of their peerages under Government plans to clean up the House of Lords. The whole point of appointing people for life is so that they can’t be removed. Once you can remove them then you compromise the very independence that they were appointed to have. [...]

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The second change, it says, is a sharp increase in marital break-up in recent decades. "Women’s new economic independence contributes to this rise," the report says. "It has made women much less dependent on their male partner, as has the advent of the welfare state. "As a result of increased break-up, a third of 16-year-olds [...]

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"The snow fell crisp and even over night so when we arose, Arkady and Sasha worked with the horses to get the troika ready. Our breath looked like clouds and the animals steamed in the cold winter air. Then we were off, to town, a glorious journey through the winter wonderland. Sadly, we lost Uncle [...]

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Here.

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So, my flatmate says, try out the posh pub around the corner. So I did. Apparently a posh pub is one where the clientele are fat birds with pearls. With expensive beer. Not really my kind of thing. Ho hum.

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A comment seen elsewhere: Robert E. Lee’s sins are well-known, and heavily-paid for; besides, Obama was telling a wicked joke which was actually funny…. but what the hell, a Lee story that OUGHT to be more widely known: One thing that Americans sometimes undervalue is being a good loser. Lee lost badly, after all, in [...]

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He’s calculating how much tax havens cost the UK in lost tax. The paper is here. Method one is to look at some estimates of total wealth, impute a return and then say tax should be paid on that imputed return. However, some (much? Most? A teensie bit?) of that return will come in the [...]

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COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political [...]

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A close friend said: “You get these sorts of issues in any organisation. But it’s bollocks to say Robert promoted people because they were his friends. He’s promoted people who are complete c***s.”

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Or perhaps that should be public choice politics: Unsurprisingly, British politicians rarely reach his elevated level.They do not change the constitution because it is unjust, but because they calculate that change is in their interests. It isn’t just changing the constitution of course: all and every acts by a politician are so motivated. There’s also [...]

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And indoctrinate them: And then, of course, there is school. Miss White is Rosa’s year one teacher at St Peter & St Paul’s RC Primary School. In the past year, I have noticed Rosa has begun to recycle and energy-save and spout eco policy with exquisite fervour and zealotry. In the past six months I [...]

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Didn’t click with me yesterday but this from Polly’s column: The area between tax dodging and reasonable offsetting – of pension contributions, research and development, preventing double taxation, new investment and legitimate reliefs – is the thick fog where lawyers and accountants make their millions. Between the spirit of tax law and its practice, fortunes [...]

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