Tim Worstall

Of course the unit minimum price wouldn’t solve the whole problem: some people will always set out to get drunk. But it would no longer be cheaper to get hammered and forget your troubles than it is to buy a Big Mac and sit down to talk them out with your friends. It would be [...]

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So Pret a Manger’s sushi is in fact frozen. But then, so is all sushi right across the EU: Pret points out that under European Union rules, fish served raw has to be frozen first to kill off any parasites. No doubt someone will be along soon enough to explain why this law is essential [...]

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All women will eventually turn into their mothers, so the old saying goes. And now scientists have come up with the proof. Researchers who examined the faces of mothers and daughters have found they age and wrinkle in exactly the same way. As I’ve said before, they’ll get onto that nice Mr. Darwin soon enough. [...]

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It’s amazing that an accounting Professor gets this so wrong. The fledgling economic recovery requires that more spending power be placed in the hands of normal people and small businesses. All political parties should look at the operations of the insolvency industry, which is enriching itself at the expense of normal people. The point of [...]

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Sigh: There’s rather a big snag, however. We are already well over that limit, at 387 ppm. Concentrations passed the 350 point in 1987, and international negotiations are bogged down over plans that would eventually stabilise them at 450ppm. So the world would not only have to cut emissions back far faster than anyone has [...]

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For some years she had been suffering from dementia. Last line of Telegraph obituary of Elizabeth Prophet, self-styled head of one of the more eschatological US religious sects.

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So tere’s a new book out called “Time to Eat the Dog“. The logic of which is that pets have CO2 emissions from the food they eat therefore perhaps we should cut down on hte number of pets we have in order to reduce emissions. Yes, well: That logical error is illustrated by that tiger: [...]

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Women pay more for health insurance than men, have more extensive health needs than men, OK, that seems entirely logical: more health care needs, then insurance for health care will cost more. Men pay more for car insurance, men, because they die earlier, get more each year for any given amount put into an annuity….. [...]

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Fortunately, things have improved since the 18th century; no more than one in ten of my London friends are harlots. Then again, I don’t know any Tories… Chris Blattman.

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We don’t need to cut and chop any more! Hurrah! ‘I lost over half my body weight and found myself a man’, says woman who shed 13 stone. Just send everyone who wishes to change sex on a diet instead.

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We had all of this when we were trying to measure blog readerships. Guardian.co.uk remained the most popular UK newspaper website with British web users last month with 11,882,653 domestic uniques, 36% of the total. Remember the difference between (as defined by Google Analytics) uniques and absolute uniques? A unique is one bod turning up [...]

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David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is the subject of growing talk in Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Scandinavia that he is in line to become Europe’s first foreign minister. The post of high representative is one of the key innovations of the Lisbon treaty, which is on the brink of ratification and aimed at streamlining the [...]

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Indeed, it has always been the case that in order to have economic growth it is necessary to have more people. In fact, not just no, but bollocks. If economic growth were a matter of just having more people then there would be no rise in the size of the economy per capita, would there? [...]

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Decent enough writer but no great logician. “Publishers, stop spending your millions on this tripe,” she implored the book trade’s movers and shakers at The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, at the Grosvenor House Hotel, in Mayfair, where she was inducted into the Hall of Fame. “The publishing industry is going to implode. They can’t pay [...]

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The National Audit Office has found that 1.5 million pensioners are overpaying on income from pensions, savings and investment. The errors cost each an average of £171 a year. The auditors also found that 3.2 million pensioners are overpaying because they do not claim the tax allowances to which they are entitled. And 2.4 million [...]

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No, really, he is. Highlights: I think it fair to say I know something about tax, accounting and economics, having been trained in each of them. Well….. That mantra of economists is one of certainty. Economic modelling is based, as I see it, on just two fundamental premises, and I’m aware I’m simplifying, but not, [...]

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Tim Worstall, one of my personal heroes, Very nice indeed: but why is it that a man can only be a hero to other people’s wives rather than his own?

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GM: In an article for Fortune magazine, Rattner offered a savage verdict on the leadership culture at the industrial giants, singling out GM’s former boss Rick Wagoner for his “friendly arrogance”, and top executives’ reluctance to mix with workers. “Everyone knew Detroit’s reputation for insular, slow-moving cultures,” he said. “Even by that low standard, I [...]

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On these limits on financial market pay. On average, under Mr Feinberg’s plan, the total compensation of the 175 executives affected will fall by 50pc. But basic cash salaries will see the biggest reductions, being cut by as much as 90pc in extreme cases. At AIG Financial Products, the London-based division which traded in the [...]

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So Paul McCartney is using the Millenium Dome to rehearse. Loudly. Local complains: He was forced to turn down the volume after a local resident complained about the “din”. Eric Pemperton, 67, said at the time: “I called the council. They told me, ‘It’s Paul McCartney.’ I said, ‘So what? He doesn’t pay my rates, [...]

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