Tim Worstall

There’s two things to say about these new guidelines for prosecutors of rape cases. A Home Office-commissioned poll revealed earlier this month that two-fifths of the public believe that a woman should be held at least partly responsible for being sexually assaulted or raped if she was flirting with the man before the attack. Director [...]

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The European Commission’s slogan for the upcoming elections is: "European Elections it’s your choice" Err, no. Either "European Election it’s your choice" or "European Elections they’re your choice". They can’t even put a sentence together and yet they have the monstrous egotism to think they can run a continent of 500 million people?

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Here.

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That would be Newcastle then: "I’m gan fer me dinner like." "I’m like gan doon the pub like" Yes, but like what?  

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I offer you this joyous comment at CiF: Oh, a tax! What a great and novel idea! Nobody’s thought of raising taxes before. My god, that’ll totally rejuvenate Labour and suddenly the country will be fair and bunnies will dance and sing and – I think I might burst in to tears with all the [...]

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Alternatively, they labour mightily to bring forth a mouse or ten. I’m sorry, but this list is simply too dreary to bother with. The best they can come up with is build more council houses, design a green car, release some Cabinet Minutes, and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz About the only one that has any chance of actually [...]

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This death of capitalism thing. That the current difficulties require a fundamental rethink. An IMF analysis predicts that the UK will be among the worst hit this year and the only major economy to contract in 2010. It suggests that the global economy will shrink by 0.6% in 2009, compared with 3.8% in Britain. Japan’s [...]

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Taking atmospheric readings and photographs 20 miles above the ground, the Meteotek team of IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia completed their incredible experiment at the end of February this year. Building the electronic sensor components from scratch, Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta­ Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort managed to send their [...]

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Talking about broadband internet access: Mr Richards, chief executive of Ofcom said: "55 per cent have decided they do not want it at all, even though they can afford it – we call these the ‘self excluded’. "Even though people are bombarded by messages about the range of benefits of being online – whether buying [...]

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In societies divided by money, power and influence, this is always problematical as institutional structures are colonised by economic elites. Well, yes, but in societies not so divided the political and or regulatory systems still get colonised by elites. The advantage of "free market" systems is that there’s less of the country, less of the [...]

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To climate change: As the professor of energy policy Dieter Helm has shown, Stern’s assumption that our consumption can continue to grow while our emissions fall is implausible. To have any hope of making substantial cuts we have both to reduce our consumption and transfer resources to countries like China to pay for the switch [...]

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The Prime Minister indicates he will attempt to cap executive pay at the forthcoming G20 summit. He said that pay should reflect "hard work" and values rather than risk-taking. "Most people want business to have the same values as they practise in their everyday life," he said. "People would rather reward hard work rather than [...]

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Note to the President: when you stop sending them money, the bonuses will stop.

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Now does anyone really believe that the store of gold in vaults is worth over 2% of all tangible assets everywhere?  Seriously?  More: I know the gold bugs will hate this idea – because it harks back to the argument against gold – which is that it has no intrinsic value. Kill the heretic, kill [...]

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Really? How fascinating. How do they do this? Wash it on extra hot to shrink it? Take a chainsaw to the house? Feed it one of Alice’s pills? And, umm, which rational person would respond to tightened belts by reducing the value of an asset they already own? Puzzles, eh?

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Fascinating: Women spend an average of 74 hours a week on household chores and childcare, tasks that it would cost £32,812 to pay someone else to do, according to insurer Legal and General. By contrast, men spend only 53 hours a week on domestic tasks, although it would still cost £23,296 to pay someone to [...]

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Here.

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Now is the time for independent thinkers to be heavily engaged in this process. Now is the time for me and my mates to get our hands on all that lovely lolly and power.

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I agree with Peter Mandelson: Open trade has driven the rising levels of global prosperity that have defined the two decades leading up to the credit crunch. The growth of trade allowed countries and their companies to specialise and compete for sales globally rather than just in their home market. By allowing developing countries to [...]

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Are these people mad? Secretive hedge funds will eventually be subject to the same supervisory rules as banks, under a tightening of Britain’s system of regulation. The changes, which will require banks and other lenders to build up their reserves in healthy economic times, could become the basis for international efforts to overhaul regulation at [...]

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