Tim Worstall

The University of Leeds is advertising for a lap dance researcher.

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Speaking in 2005 defence counsel Michael Melville-Shreeve said Truscott was a ”sad, isolated, peculiar man with peculiar habits” who ”definitely needed help”. Could be…. On one occasion a milking parlour had been entered and he had stripped down to his pants and climbed into a huge vat of manure. Why? “This it was an extremely [...]

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Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession … in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist [...]

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Finally, we actually get a reply to the question. How does Richard Murphy make his sums work about how much revenue will be raised by increasing the tax rate on the top decile of families by 60%? Tim Good to note you agree the tax could be raised Your only query seems to be how [...]

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Which may come as a disappointment to her former boyfriend, “Owen”, a 35-year-old officer in the armed forces who has confessed to a mid-market tabloid that he thought her escort job was “knickers on” work. Tad naive for the military, eh?

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It also complains that the reactor design was submitted in feet and inches rather than metric figures Well, what do you expect from an American company?

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We’ve just had Ritchie telling us all that raising the marginal tax rate on top decile of households to 75% will bring in untold billions. That an average tax rate of 55% on such households won’t either change behaviour (ie, trade income for leisure) nor prompt any to bugger off and leave Darling grasping at [...]

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Up to £60 billion could be saved from Government spending by persuading civil servants to work harder and making Whitehall more efficient, the Conservatives will claim today. We don’t in fact want more efficiency nor do we want civil servants working harder. Given that what they do is largely to our disbenefit we’d prefer there [...]

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According to the new economics foundation that is. The Red Cross is providing water containers and purification tablets for the villagers, who have been hit by respiratory problems and diarrhoea caused by the volcano’s pungent sulphur fumes. Hmmm….

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Despite any number of Competition Commission enquiries in recent years Blond thinks the supermarkets are a near monopoly and should thus be broken up. Plus, this little idea: Mr Blond also said that local communities should be given the ability “to veto new supermarkets.” They of course already have that ability. Don’t shop in it. [...]

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O Mores: Mr Blond identified the country’s big supermarkets as an example of companies that are two dominant. So, that experiment in using Australians at the other end of the internet to sub the Telegraph. How’s that working out then? Seriously? Misues of personal data led to pensinoer’s death

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Oh yes it does! Splurge on infrastructure and it’ll all come rolling back in again won’t it? No government went bust building houses and railways now, did it? Ahem. Traders feared that the request for a six-month standstill was a sign that the Dubai Government was struggling with its other debts – and that the [...]

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China pledged it would cut its carbon intensity, the measure of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP, by 40 per cent to 45 per cent compared to 2005 levels. Hurrah! A deadlock over carbon dioxide emissions targets has developed, with the United States offering only a 17 per cent cut in its emissions, compared [...]

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Now I’m shilling for Oxfam:

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On a proposal to stop Italians having a decent lunch: Carlo Podda, of the Italian General Confederation of Labour, said: “What next? Should we abolish the boring ritual of sleep?”

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Ritchie responds to the criticism of his assumption that a 60% rise in average tax rates will have no impact upon behaviour. Here. Here’s the comment I left there: So, what you’re saying, in formal terms, is that moving the average tax rate up by 60% (from 34% to 55% as you describe it at [...]

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Why not sell out and advertise for him? The Sun has been the UK’s best handheld for 40 years. Top news, sports, photos, gossip and games in an easy-to-share format. No waiting for pages to load, no contract, no losing reception. There’s no substitute for the Sun.

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To live in a country like this! Bernard Levin once write a cracker of a column about what a joy it was to live in a country where the Advertising Standards Commission adjudicated upon the crispiness of Walker’s crisps (sorry, at this distance it might have been of Smith’s, but you get the point). We’ve [...]

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The Supreme Court will rule whether bank charges, imposed on millions of current account customers, are unfair. If the court decides they are, experts predicted banks stand to lose up to £10 billion while customers are likely to see charges imposed on a range of banking services which they have traditionally enjoyed for free. We [...]

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So, Compass insist (it’s really Richard Murphy, again) that we can raise taxes on the rich and everything will be just hunky dory. There are a few leetle problems with their assumptions though, it should be said. There are strong grounds for supporting reasonable proposals to limit the capacity of corporations to avoid tax by [...]

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