Tim Worstall

No, please, read it carefully. Nursing is a profession for which demand is only going to increase. With an ageing population and more people suffering from long-term conditions, caring for patients is set to become as important to the health service as technological advances. With 200,000 nurses due to retire within the next ten years [...]

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The Resolution Trust that is. Set up with a donation of private money. Good on them. However, they might do better not having Jenni Russell writing about them. The man who painted my house two summers ago is out of a job. The company that has employed him for the last 10 years has sacked [...]

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I commented yesterday on Richard Murphy’s plan for a financial transactions tax on money that moved through CHAPS. One point was that the effect would be to entirely close down the short term money markets. I could add much the same of a great deal of what is done by corporate treasury functions – many [...]

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“Thick people doing thick things is not funny. Clever people doing clever things is not funny. But clever people doing thick things really is funny.” About Top Gear.

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The Welsh that is: a 1970s Argentine pop star called René Griffiths, who would arrive on stage on a horse and sing in Welsh.

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Shame about the facts: On Monday, Berliners knocked down a wall of Styrofoam “dominoes” – more fanciful than foreboding – to commemorate the moment when East Germans began hammering their way to freedom. The hammering was of course on the West Berlin side of the wall, not the East. Even after the freedom to pass [...]

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Why, this is tax avoidance, if not evasion! Growing worries about an increase in Capital Gains Tax, currently standing at 18pc, to narrow the gap with the new 50pc top tax rate next April has resulted in business advisers being inundated with “help me” pleas from entrepreneurs seeking to protect their business from further demands [...]

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Can’t you just feel the incomes policy coming? But there is growing support to restrict bumper pay in financial services. A hearing in Brussels this week was told by one witness that “in the same way that remuneration and fees structures caused the risks within the banks”, the high levels of pay within hedge funds [...]

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This is interesting: Aaron Regent, president of the Canadian gold giant, said that global output has been falling by roughly 1m ounces a year since the start of the decade. Total mine supply has dropped by 10pc as ore quality erodes, implying that the roaring bull market of the last eight years may have further [...]

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You know, the way that it’s all done over the internet from Australia? PICS PLEASE New dinosaur discovered in South Africa Scientists in South Africa have hailed the discovery of a huge new dinosaur, Aardonyx celestae, that predates the giants of the Jurassic period. Hmm, still a few teething problems, eh?

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Nurses will ‘need a degree in four years’ Look, I’m sorry, but hospitals do in fact have jobs that simply have to be done. Cleaning up a patient, dealing with bedpans and changing dressings etc. A degree is certainly not needed to do these jobs and could in fact be a barrier to doing them: [...]

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Let’s have a financial transfer tax on sums that move through CHAPS. This tax has everything going for it. Note: I advise the TUC on tax matters The proposal is here: A transaction tax of 0.05 per cent would have raised £37 billion in 2008, but would only impose a very modest charge on each [...]

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A grandfather was arrested at dawn and held in a police cell for six hours for using a single swear-word in front of a council official. Thomas Catcheside, 67, had his fingerprints and DNA taken, before being issued with an £80 fixed-penalty notice. Gosh, that’s an advance in freedom and liberty, isn’t it? It’s now [...]

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Bank Danamon has launched a national competition offering a new BlackBerry to the seven most active users of its ATM machines each week. Read on to find out how there will always be people willing to game markets.

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What is the City’s contribution to UK GDP? I’d like to nail down an accurate figure. No, not “financial services” for that includes all sorts of domestic insurance etc. What I’d like to know is that does The City contribute? I’ve got a Willem Buiter figure of 4% which seems low. Anyone got something better?

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You’ve really not grasped the point about markets, rising prices and speculation, have you? The fear is that panicky markets can cause enormous damage – panic-buying that prompts fights over resources, which in turn could lead to power cuts in some places and other such mayhem. But so far in facing this huge challenge, our [...]

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A core editorial staff will continue to work solely for the Observer. Other Observer journalists will be integrated into the editorial teams that work across the Sunday paper, GNM’s other title, the Guardian, and its website network, guardian.co.uk, which includes MediaGuardian.co.uk. There’s been a plan for years to close the Observer entirely and make the [...]

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No, really, she is: Helena Bonham Carter, the actress, has disclosed that she does not watch her finished films. As nobody else does either, that makes her normal, doesn’t it?

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The latest scheme to reduce climate change: “After home insulation and more efficient boilers, we now need more intrusive things – double glazing, cavity wall insulation, solid wall insulation,” he said. “We need much more of a whole house approach – one-stop shops where people can get a total report on what they need to [...]

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No, really, it isn’t, not by a long way. And no, I don’t mean it’s all been cooked up and that Hansen and Mann are wild eyed liars. Rather, the actual science really isn’t settled. We do know what the physics of, say, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be: from memory it’s a 0.7 [...]

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