Tim Worstall

On average, there is now one hole every 120 yards of road, with £8.5 billion needed to bring the condition of roads up to scratch, the report from Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) said.

Just marvellous.

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Now, clearly, the 50% tax can’t both be a fiscal lynching and an ineffective waste of time.

You’d think that someone writing regularly for a major national newspaper would be able to grapple with logic, wouldn’t you?
People threatened with lynching tend to change their behaviour. That’s the purpose of the threat of course. So if people [...]

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The Identity & Passport Service, which addressed her as ‘Mrs Bear’, told her in a letter: "It is deemed to be a frivolous change of name, which would bring IPS into disrepute. It could also pose problems for you at border control in some countries.
"IPS is [...]

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Here.

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When charming leftists stick their nose into things they don’t understand they become ratchet-jawed purveyors of monkey-doodle and baked wind. They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people’s money. They are the lap dogs of the poly sci-class, [...]

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High earners who make contributions to their pensions in the next tax year are set to benefit from the introduction of the 50% tax rate.
The Treasury confirmed today that people earning £150,000 or more, who will be paying the new marginal income tax rate of 50% from April 2010, will also benefit from 50% tax [...]

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The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the faecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever.

Eh?
Entirely the wrong way around, completely.
We worry about small scale units, where birds, pigs and humans live cheek by jowl. For the thing we are worried about is such a [...]

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How could or should a Muslim indicate that they’re not planning jihad?

Perhaps I could carry a sandwichboard with the slogan "I ‘heart’ John Stuart Mill".

That would be one way to get locked up immediately by the current crowd, yes.

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At the ASI.
On the costs of bureaucracy.

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Viagra has been making a fortune for Pfizer for some years now. It’s going to stop doing so soon.

Pfizer’s worldwide patents on sildenafil citrate will expire in 2011–2013.

Now I think we can all agree that the invention of the drug has increased human happiness? At least, it has done amongst men. Whether their female partners [...]

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Doom and gloom, the shrinking of the economy will make Britain a third ranking rather than second power.

Britain is going to feel very different in the years ahead. Already the markets have given their judgment; the pound has suffered a devaluation since 2007 that is bigger than those in 1931, 1949 or 1967. The British [...]

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In the US, as the financial sector soared, the manufacturing base contracted sharply.

Erm, no it didn’t. US manufacturing output has continued to rise.
I wouldn’t buy an economic analysis from someone getting such basic facts wrong.

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This is one way of looking at it:

"Tax got to 82 per cent [in the 1970s] and I thought this was kind of unfair," he said. "Also, I see… that the government has taken it up to 50 per cent and if it goes to 51 I will be [...]

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Well, not quite in full.…
 

12:39 Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ… that thing is fucking huge…
12:31 Harriet Harman is taking the top off what seems – and I may be mistaken – to be a tube of some form of lubricant.
12:29 Quietly, but with a determined look fixed on his face, Alistair Darling is unwrapping what appears, [...]

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So I’m actually fairly hopeful about Britain; right now, the fact that it’s not on the euro is serving it well.

Quite.

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From guess who?

But profit is not waht itn used to be. Under IFRS profit is the change in the net worth of your balance sheet on a mark to market basis: it is not the result of your trading in the quarter.
So if you made incredibly harsh provisions (and most banks did) and then some [...]

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If you’re around and about in London over the next couple of weeks might I suggest a little outing? The London Marathon will take rather longer to complete than it normally does.

Major Phil Packer, 36, will not reach the finish line at Buckingham Palace for another fortnight, during which he plans to drag himself around [...]

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Six years on, the reality is that a pre-tax salary of slightly less than £16,000 is all that a single, childless worker requires to attain the standard of living of the typical person in Britain.

Yet poverty is defined as £13,400 a year*.
There’s not exactly a great deal of clear blue skies between those two numbers, [...]

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At the Register.
What Darling should have done in the budget. Stop taxing the poor.
 

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At the ASI.
Isn’t it wonderful having two levels of government that can be lobbied for special favours?

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