Tim Worstall

Avatar is a computer-effects-heavy 3-D space fantasy, set 125 years in the future, about a disabled US Marine, Jake Sully, who is sent to Pandora, a moon of the distant Centauri star system, to find supplies of “unobtainium”, an energy-rich mineral. So, that’s us having to find a new synonym for weird and wonderful metal [...]

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You live in a state where the most severe criminal punishment is life imprisonment. Someone proposes that since armed robbery is a very serious crime, armed robbers should get a life sentence. A constitutional lawyer asks whether that is consistent with the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. A legal philosopher asks whether it is [...]

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People in industrialised nations are now 4in taller on average than in 1860. Good, innit?

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Every extra month helps Lord Ashcroft‘s (probably non-dom) money to do its worst in the marginals. Nice little snipe there. Of course, if you understood tax law you would know the following. Non-dom or dom makes no difference if you bring the money into the UK. Once you’ve brought it in then it’s taxed the [...]

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Geoffrey Lean notes that: Within two decades Denmark could get all of its electricity from renewable sources And then goes on to tell us how it’s all amazing and to do with the wind. Then at the end we see the kicker: More fundamentally, the wind – as critics often point out – does not [...]

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The Chancellor suggested that biometric passports, which carry the same information as ID cards, would be sufficient. In an interview in The Daily Telegraph today, he said there was “probably no need” to “go further” than the new passports, paving the way for ID cards to be scrapped. Although he claimed later that he wasn’t [...]

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Leah Wickham, a young woman from Fiji, broke down as she told the conference she will see her homeland disappear beneath the waves if we do not act now. Unlikely: The two most important islands are Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. The islands are mountainous, with peaks up to 1,300 metres (4,250 ft), and covered with [...]

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Pre-Budget report: Bankers may evade Alistair Darling’s bonus tax Bankers will avoid….. We’re just not sure how as yet. Also worth pointing out that predicting tax evasion is predicting a criminal offence: not quite the right verb to use there given that.

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Now have EU protected status. I’d never actually heard of Cornish sardines, had to go and look it up. Ah, you mean pilchards then?

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A new forecast for 2010 predicted it will be almost 1F (0.6C) higher than the long term average of 57F (14C) across the globe as a result of natural weather patterns and global warming. The figures, presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, come as scientists released a statement claiming global warming is [...]

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Sponsored Article So, are you mourning the fact that you can no longer play those 80s video games? Are you also mourning the fact that you cannot quite manage to give up smoking and think that playing an 80s video game will help you to do so? In which case, we’ve got something for you [...]

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Casual sex, hookups aren’t emotionally damaging, study finds

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Lede of lead story in the New York Times: Nine days after announcing a major intensification of the war in Afghanistan, President Obama arrived is Oslo Thursday to formally accept the peace prize.

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restructuring in Texas has been successful because the industry is free from federal oversight

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Here. Those regulating returns on investments cannot calculate returns on investments.

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Blimey! Deloitte’s say that tax avoidance by large corporates is around £2 billion. HMRC says that tax avoidance by large corporations is around £3 billion. Ritchie says that tax avoidance by large corporations is around £11 billion. In Ritchie world the HMRC figures are proof that Deloittes are wrong and Ritchie is right. Update: Today’s [...]

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Why can’t tax avoidance be illegal? Because if it’s illegal then it isn’t tax avoidance, it’s tax evasion. Then again, who really expects linguistic accuracy from a piece of cutlery?

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No other business operates having to allocate as much as half its revenue in bonuses. OK, banks do not allocate half their revenue in bonuses. That’s simply complete nonsense. Half their net revenue might be allocated to staff pay, this might be true (for, you see, banks do have these pesky things called expenses to [...]

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It was announced that allowances will remain at 2009/10 levels with the personal allowance being £6,475, age related allowances £9,490 for those between 65 and 74, and £9,640 for those aged 75 and over. The Chancellor stated in today’s PBR that the freeze on all personal allowances for 2010/11 will still provide taxpayers with a [...]

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Figures in the Treasury’s pre-Budget report documents reveal that in 2014/15, the national debt will be £1,473 billion. That is 77.7 per cent of gross domestic product What am I missing? Nominal GDP is about £1.4 trillion isn’t it? So that debt is more like 100% or so of GDP….unless we’re expecting a great deal [...]

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