Tim Worstall

Whatever else international criminal law should achieve, it is surely to stop those identified as likely to commit sexual offences against children from travelling. Err, no. I’m happy enough that international law be used to try and if convicted punish those who have committed a crime. I’m not happy with any system of law that [...]

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Fears that women who gain positions through quotas will see their authority undermined are cited. But without big steps, women’s representation in the UK workplace and democracy is stagnating. The pay gap is starting to increase again in the UK, rising 1% to 17% this year, and women’s representation on company boards and in parliament [...]

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A sensible, idea from the Tories. The Tories will this week publish a review of financial regulation that raises the possibility of abolishing the FSA and returning banking oversight powers to the Bank of England. Putting banking regulation back with the people who a) know about banks and b) end up paying when they go [...]

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Sure, lapdancing is one aspect of the commodification of heterosexuality under late capitalism, and something that would not arise in a genuinely liberated post-capitalist social formation. Ultimately, socialism will put paid to the Spearmint Rhinos of this world. Dave’s Part. The thought that men wishing to look at naked women will be erased by a [...]

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Here.

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There is, as we know, a varied group of people who think that fractional reserve banking is for the very Devil. It’s a minority view, to be sure, but they do seem to be very intense about it. Various people screaming about how the banks get the profits from hte creation of credit for example, [...]

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Bishop Hill lays it out. This line stands out. Children, they believe should be taught to think like bureaucrats, which is to say rarely, uncreatively and only in a progessive, left wing manner.

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Nick Clegg makes an error of logic here. More precisely, it is a crisis created by the woeful gap between the globalisation of finance, of trade in goods and services, and the rules and institutions designed to regulate the global economy.Global economic integration has outstripped the rules made to tame it. So any political vision [...]

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But if the events of the past two years have taught us anything, it is that economic theory is a poor guide to practice. Economic theory is in fact an extremely good guide to practice. Consider, for example, this shortage of housing you are speaking of in the article. The ever rising prices underlying the [...]

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Joss Garman writing in The Observer. For the millennial generation the patronising cliches fall apart, because this isn’t about ideals so much as hard science and the terrifying reality that what the scientists have been warning us all about for years – those sea level rises, catastrophic droughts and melting ice caps – will now [...]

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Completely missing from the excitement over the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike was the most interesting point about it. Our coal industry went into the strike with 187,000 miners and 174 pits, of wildly varying efficiency. Four years later the inefficient pits were closed and the workforce cut by two-thirds. Yet output, at 100 [...]

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Mrs. Dromey seems to have been making statements which are, how to put this, less than robustly certain? The Office for National Statistics published new data showing that fewer female workers were sacked at the end of last year than male staff, most likely because more of them have jobs in the public sector. Given [...]

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At the ASI. Politicising the civil service: not a good idea.

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I call on all the bright young and not so young women out there to get involved. Presumably the dim will be encouraged to shut up and stay home. Although where that leaves Margot’s own career is a little complex.

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(did you know, interrupts the anorak eagerly, that if one buys eggs fresh they count as ‘food’ and attract zero VAT, whereas if one buys them rotten, for throwing at politicians, then they are classed as ‘luxury goods’ and attract full tax?) But the joy is worth the extra 15%, no?

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There’s poverty and Britain sucks.

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Dell and HP weren’t going to pioneer a $400 laptop, because they were already selling laptops for $1,000. Why mess with a good thing? MSI had no laptop business at all, and Asustek had only a small business selling full-price machines under its own brand, mostly in Asia and Europe. Since the Taiwanese weren’t addicted [...]

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Yesterday George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, laid out an economic policy that looks to any Keynesian like the perfect recipe for turning recession into deepest depression. It’s Margaret Thatcher in 1980 all over again – cutting, sacking and reducing debt just when the state should expand. Here’s his programme: cut corporation tax and stamp duty [...]

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At the ASI. What destruction of manufacturing?

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In particular, Mr Brown wants regulators to insist that banks take a more "prudent" approach to capital reserves, setting aside more money during years of growth to protect them against possible slumps in the future. Well, yes, but there’s still some small voice at the back of my head telling me that it was Brown, [...]

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