Tim Worstall

Yet another Tory Boy blogging.* Isn’t it time someone found a cure for this affliction? *Actually, he’s just restarting and wants a boost so there it is.

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Here.

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I may or may not be taking part in a new little project soon. However, before I do so I just want to try and get a sense of the size of the market. I’ve seen that Google’s total search volume (US only) appears to be 10 billion a month. Yahoo’s volume is 10% of [...]

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At the ASI. Farming getting ever more efficient is the key to having a civilisation at all.

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The couple met when Young was a rising property entrepreneur and Michelle was working in the retail industry. What does “working in the retail industry” mean? Shopgirl?

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Just in case Polly Vernon is inundated with emails accusing her of being selfish, let me tell you an apparent secret: having children is not an altruistic act at all, but a deeply self-gratifying one. Enlightened self interest. It’s what keeps the very species going.

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Economists have long argued for this flexibility in pay over the economic cycle – remuneration going down when times are hard and going up when times are good. Pay takes the strain rather than jobs. The difficulty has been persuading workers to accept that cuts in their pay are fair. What you do is split [...]

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Doesn’t the gung-ho posturing of the princes rather undermine the courage of ordinary men and women in the forces? No, that’s actually what Princes are for. Yes, the Royal Family are immensely privileged. Yes, they’re rich beyond dreams simply by being members of the lucky sperm club. Yes, we do this so as to have [...]

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Whoo, boy, this is a strong piece. And no, I don’t disagree with a word of it. Lord Mandelson is destroying Labour for the sake of the EU. He is determined to prop up Gordon Brown until after the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, whatever the cost to his party. See how they operate, [...]

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Shows what happens when you take your eye off the ball. What could be clearer evidence of guilt than that? As their solicitors told them, it did not matter that their computers had been examined and found to be free of child pornography, or that they could produce alibis to show they could not have [...]

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“I don’t see how we can repatriate a few powers here and there unless we are prepared to use the nuclear option which is to say ‘if you don’t allow us to have these powers back we are going to leave the EU altogether’. That is the only way you can negotiate.” Phillip Davies MP.

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Families fight to save Slough grammar school. What? Who is trying to close Eton?

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It’s gonna be really crap, isn’t it?

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At the ASI. Instead of bemoaning the fact that we don’t have tried and trusted technologies, why not try testing and developing technologies we can trust?

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Keynes v. Hayek from the 1930s. It’s not immediately apparent that Hayek was wrong you know. Everything you need to know about Iranian democracy written on the back of a stamp. Please add to this collection of cartoons. Yup, politicians are liars. Yes, even Obama.

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Looks like the Foreign Office really is very European. Foreign Office staff abroad are entitled to flights home every year as well as at the beginning and end of their posting. They can fly business class if their embassy is more than three hours from London by plane. Such tickets can cost more than £2,000 [...]

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Poll after poll shows how greatly the BBC is valued. When 20% of respondents say they resent the licence fee as they never use BBC ­services, Professor Barwise says they lie: in fact only about 1% don’t watch or listen to the BBC. He wants to conduct an ­experiment: offer these deniers a full licence rebate [...]

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If there were any doubt that the prime minister is still resisting the political shift demanded by the crisis and alienation of Labour voters, it should surely be dispelled by the government’s refusal to use its stakes in the banks to drive up lending in the face of Thursday’s evidence of a disastrous slump in [...]

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Thousands of motorists were caught by the camera including Alan Dawe, a lorry driver, who was caught travelling at 41mph. He challenged the fine and during the court hearing it was discovered that the paperwork giving legal authority to the speed camera identified its location incorrectly. It was recorded as having been placed in Seatown [...]

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If the fact that finance is a social utility had been borne in mind, it is hard to believe that the trade in credit default swaps (CDS) would have been allowed to balloon. Excuse me, but why should my decision to buy (or to sell) a CDS be something which is supposed to create some [...]

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