Tim Worstall

But there is a slight problem here. Do normal people, real people, actually give a shit what politicans and bureaucrats do? Other than paying for it all, of course?

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But we have no precise models of participatory democracy on the scale that is currently called for, involving hundreds of millions, and potentially billions, of participants at a time. Well, I’ve got good news for you. I have got a precise model. I’ll offer it to you for free as well. It’s called a market. [...]

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I’d kill ten innocent men to go back there for ten minutes. Scroll through. I wonder if my own son will ever remember anything so fondly about me as that. Pop is being buried in a military cemetery today. One more Last Post here, one more Reveille on the other side.  

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Lord Mandelson was hit in the face with a cup of green slime by an anti-airport protester as he arrived to attend a low-carbon energy summit in central London this morning. OK, OK, so the bird was from the entirely silly group Plane Stupid but still. Full makrs for effort at least, eh?

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The list is said to contain the details of Midlands construction workers who have been involved in trade union disputes and employment tribunals since the 1990s. It was reportedly found by officials from the Information Commissioner’s Office in a raid on the Worcestershire offices of a private consultant last month. At least 40 contractors – [...]

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And some of their sons wrote about it. I don’t envy the task, the work that was done, but by buggery I envy those who can write like that.

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To (over)simplify, the emergence from the Dark Ages was a long, bloody experiment in social organization. Finally, in the century or so between the Glorious Revolution and the publication of The Wealth of Nations, Europeans started getting things right.

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That silver lining in the cloud? It’s not going to last very long, is it?

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I promised to write a daily log of my time on the “Viva Palestina” convoy but my attempts to keep you updated with events have been thwarted ever since we reached North Africa. There is a very clear agenda by some to keep Gaza out of the news and I am dismayed by the Zionist [...]

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A COUPLE of glasses of beer or wine every day is good for your bones, scientists said yesterday. Moderate drinking can significantly increase their mineral density. So instead of "I’m off for a couple of quick ones" it’s now "Got to go and get my osteoporosis treatment dear".

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Save the planet! Don’t use bog roll, install a little shower attatchment to wash you off. OK, why not….except I thought that the energy to heat water and in fact, water itself, were scarce resources that we should be using only minimally?

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Test scores at 11 aren’t infallible predictors of performance at GCSE and A-level, but they are a good guide. From a slightly odd source it has to be said. Peter Wilby.

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Wild seafood is tasty, sustainable – and free. Tasty I’ll grant you. Sustainable I won’t. Whether a common resource is in fact sustainable or not depends on the demand for that common resource. Wild seafood is no more sustainable than fisheries, pastures, oil reservoirs or water aquifers. Sustainability depends solely on the question of whether [...]

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I’m sorry, but this phrase just contains so much that I don’t understand. and on this Saturday night we are on the Anglesey side of the Menai Strait, where the waters are so pure they allow sea salt harvested here to carry the Soil Association’s organic certification. Organic salt? Soil Association? What?

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Production quotas and prices have now been set for cooking oil, white rice, sugar, coffee, flour, margarine, pasta, cheeses and tomato sauce. White rice, the staple for many Venezuelans, can now only be sold at a price of 2.15 bolivares (71p) per kilo. Private companies insist that production of that kilo costs 4.41 bolivares (£1.46) [...]

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Maybe it’s a good idea and maybe not. The British Medical Association is calling for all prescriptions in England to be free and the National Pharmacy Association, and a host of patient charities are also in support. But one question. What is it that has changed since last time we did it? Although the NHS, [...]

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In my early teens I did take part in a temple ritual-baptism for the dead-that involved my getting dunked thirty times in an afternoon, in a great circular baptismal font supported on the backs of twelve life-size bronze oxen, on behalf of the inhabitants of a seventeenth-century Bavarian village; but that’s another story entirely.

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One of the great irritations of later life, more confirming evidence in this broadcast, is the dawning realisation that Phil Collins might be a nice chap —and one with real discernment. Jeepers, old age really sucks, eh?

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As you lucky people who live in London already know, you’ll have an opportunity to vote for me in the euro-elections on June 4th. Or, at least, for the party I’m standing for, UKIP. I’m hoping rather that voters will, or at least many of them will be, easier to convince than this particular one [...]

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