Tim Worstall

Tyler sighed. “Yes, Major, you might well say that. But as it happens, I’ve read the Milburn Report, and it doesn’t mention the abolition of the grammar schools once. Not once. No, let’s not take it seriously then. Clearly it’s arsewipe material.

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A MOTHER was jailed yesterday for falsely claiming that a man she met on a dating ­website had raped her. Doesn’t it just fly by?

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Yes, I know that the RSPCA has these powers: A POLICE dog handler who allegedly left two German Shepherds to die in a car on one of the hottest days of the year is to be prosecuted by the RSPCA. The Nottinghamshire officer, who has yet to be named, was suspended from duty after the [...]

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I’m not convinced that this tells us what they think it tells us: Lawyers who entered the profession in the 1990s typically grew up in families with incomes 64 per cent above average. Those starting out in the 1970s came from homes with incomes 40 per cent above average. We’ve been told, endlessly, that the [...]

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What? Is Larry Elliott seriously suggesting this? he could prevent corporate tax avoidance by taxing companies on their turnover rather than their profits; What? So high volume low margin businesses pay more tax than low volume high margin ones? Erm, don’t we actually want high volume low margin businesses? You know, more efficient ones? Ones [...]

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Jonathan Freedland that is. Yes, let’s bring back the anti-usury laws. In the US last year, 1.2 million people filed for bankruptcy, hardly a surprise in a society where consumer debt has increased by 733% since 1980.That year is significant. Until then, anti-usury laws were still on the US statute book, as they had been [...]

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The News of the World made payments to its disgraced royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire after the two men were jailed for phone hacking, MPs were told today . Now let’s assume that what has been accused is true: that people knew all about this hacking. That people were, while on [...]

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The planned rises also failed to tackle the increasing problems that many consumers faced when paying their bills, with many people in so-called “water poverty”. The Citizens Advice Bureau told the committee that it dealt with 57,000 people who had struggled to pay their water bills last year. The charity described the current system of [...]

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…the incomes of rich and poor families have drawn further apart. Let’s take that as true (for households it definitely is in fact). Why? Seems an interesting question really. The answer is, at least in part (I would argue in large part but don’t have the figures to prove it) assortative mating. We match up, [...]

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An interesting definition: Mercantilism, which is the precursor of capitalism, originated in Rome and the Middle East, during the early middle ages. Mercantilism can be defined as the process by which goods are bought at one place for a certain price and sold at another place at a higher price, in order to realise a [...]

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Guardian editorial in praise of the dacha. You know, those second homes in the country that the city dwellers visit for a couple of months a year only, thereby pushing up prices so that locals cannot live in their own villages, creating those “ghost towns” that so disfigure the British rural areas.

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The last week has been one of the bleakest for equality in Britain. That’s a slightly excessive reaction to some catfight amongst bureaucrats, isn’t it? It also seems to be rather confusing Trevor Phillips and the EHRC with the real world.

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Dr McConnell added: “Children whose parents perceived their lives as unpredictable, uncontrollable, or overwhelming had increased risk of new onset asthma associated with traffic related pollution and maternal smoking during pregnancy. If there’s a link between asthma and in utero exposure to tobacco then how in hell has asthma incidence been rising as smoking rates [...]

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Tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers will be able to obtain free health care following a Government rethink, it has been announced. Yes, yes, I know, Johnny Foreginer freeloading…..but there are public health implications. We do want everyone to get their vaccines, get treated for communicable diseases, don’t we?

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Here.

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Demos has a new game for us all to play. Here. Answer some questions about why you are on the left. I did so: properly, not in jest, pointing out that I’m a liberal, a radical and even a progressive. Of course I’m on the left. Just because I’m not a statist doesn’t mean that [...]

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Life on the left means trusting that the better side of human nature can prevail against selfishness and greed. Bollocks. Those who trust in human nature don’t pass laws to insist that people will redistibute their incomes, pass laws to insist that education, health care, taking care of the elderly, are done by compulsion via [...]

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Twitter is fun and all, but the now public internal discussion about justifying the investment to the venture capitalists shows that yes, at some point in her life, every big-titted fat girl needs to be told flat out that she’s nothing more than a big-titted fat girl.

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In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard – essentially raped by her “husband.”

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Each year at least 55,000 victims of sex abuse face behavioural and mental health problems because of a postcode lottery in access to therapy, according to the NSPCC. Is sex abuse really that prevalent? Or are we talking about the usual rather expanded definition of whatever it is? US numbers appear to be lower: Composition [...]

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