Tim Worstall

I can see this might be true: Investigation into MI5 torture allegations could jeopardise national security Imagine that the investigation found that they had in fact been torturing people? Or even just standing by while it was done? That would damage national security, would it not?

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What? Circumcising men with HIV does not reduce the risk of them transmitting the virus to their partners, a study suggests, but nonetheless the surgery may have some public health benefits. Why in hell would anyone try testing that? The viral load is in the semen, not the foreskin! The point about HIV and circumcision [...]

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To Cadiz. Back Saturday. See ya then…..

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Not that anyone should hope that this means a long-term abandonment of the issue of choice as a vote-getter for Republicans. Isn’t that an evil thing for those nasty Republicans to talk about in reference to eletions? Choice?

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Here.

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I think that the main issue with inequality is not the gap between the rich and the poor. It is the gap between the earnings of top business leaders (or bankers in the English experience- Tim) and the salaries of academics and journalists (At the Guardian, ditto-Tim).

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There’s just one more goat, sitting in the Lords, Only one more goat, sitting in the Lords, And if one more goat, should accidently fall There’ll be no more goats, sitting in the Lords.

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Now this I didn’t know: Almost 800 people are now members of Dignitas. The clinic charges € 4,000 for assisted suicide. They’re charging four grand for five quid’s worth of morphine? Nice mark up there, ain’t it? You could OD on 50 quid’s worth of heroin from half the pubs in the country instead……

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Greater intelligence may in part partially explain why people from a high socio-economic background live longer than those of lower social status, researchers have suggested. And yes, they are indeed saying that higher intelligence is likely to lead to higher socio-economic status. No, not all of the difference, but 25% or so of the difference [...]

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Seizing children’s mobile phones and bicycles could deter them from getting into trouble, according to Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary. Is there something in the water in Westminster? Something that turns those who imbibe it stark staring mad? “I’d like to see police given the power to confiscate, temporarily, a young troublemaker’s mobile phone,removing [...]

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But….. It is instructive to look at the pattern of the great depression. The level of Britain’s gross domestic product in 1930 was not reached again until 1934. The annual unemployment rate of 1929, 8.2%, was lower than in every year during the 1930s, reaching a high of 17.6% in 1932. That’s Danny Blanchflower and [...]

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Muphry’s Law is, of course, that any complaint about spelling or grammar, any display of pedantry, will contain itself a greater error than the one complained of. As a corollary might I suggest Hadley’s Law, after Hadley Freeman? Any article complaining that people do not understand finance will contain statements which shows that the writer [...]

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My, they really do seem to be insistent upon being allowed to boil the planet, don’t they? Gene scientist Craig Venter has announced plans to develop next-generation biofuels from algae in a $600m (£370m) partnership with oil giant Exxon Mobil. That’s one heck of a lot of money to be putting into pure research (for [...]

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Who campaigned for the post on the issue of transparency….refuses to reveal his own salary. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…..

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19.  Aren’t you just a monetary crank trying to solve all the world’s problems by printing money? Yes, but like a broken clock the monetary cranks are right twice a century; 1933, and today.  The other 98 years I am a Chicago-trained, libertarian, inflation-hawk.  Twice a century I put on my Irving Fisher super-hero suit, [...]

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On the subject of competing environmental goals and how we might choose between them. She gives us a good example of what happens when someone with a PhD in Elizabethan poetry gets entangled in science, even a social science like economics. She tells us that cost benefit analyses are not the way to take environmental [...]

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Freedom of Information requests to all councils, devolved assemblies, Westminster and the European Parliament show that, in the financial year 2007/08, just under £500million came from public funds to pay 28,730 professional politicians in the UK. Hmmm. Thirty years ago, no more than 2,000-3,000 people in the UK were paid with taxpayers’ money for political [...]

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A Nobel Laureate in Economics* with something vital to say: The idea of justice demands comparisons of actual lives that people can lead, rather than a remote search for ideal institutions. * Yes dearieme, Bank of Sweden in memory of, no, I don’t care.

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It is no coincidence that Germany and Spain, which have shut the door on new nuclear power, have invested most in renewables and seen their green industries rocket. Spain now generates as much as 40% of its electricity from wind power and studies show the investment in renewables has lowered wholesale electricity prices in Spain [...]

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Erm, no: Today’s green paper will lay out various options. On retirement, everyone who can would pay a lump sum of around £20,000 up front and nothing ever again. Or that sum could be attached to the value of their home, deducted from their estate after death along with accumulated interest. Or, if you delay [...]

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