Tim Worstall

I’m interested in finding out some fairly recondite information about government debt. Specifically, what was the age profile of the debt burden immediately post WWII (and what is it now)? I know that there were and are Consols for example (perpetuals) and would love to know whether those were still being issued at/just before 1945? [...]

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The simple fact is that since 1997 much of the massive increase in public spending has gone not on improvements in public services or better consumption of public goods and services, but on increasing the private consumption of those employed in the public sector. Always did like this particular economist.

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As more women come out of the woodwork alleging affairs with Tiger Woods, and details about his mysterious car crash two weeks ago continue to emerge including that he may have been under the influence of alcohol and subscription drugs at the time, Subscription drugs? Sort of a “Drug of the Month Club” thing? Sign [...]

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the right attacks anyone on the left born well-heeled or privately educated as a hypocrite – especially women, especially Harriet Harman. Erm, actually, we tend to have a go at you as well m’dear…..

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What are these people on? The Albany group, which works in Peckham, south London, where deprivation levels are high, has long been held up as a shining example of what is possible in NHS midwifery. It supports women to give birth wherever they choose – almost half give birth at home – and medical intervention [...]

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As the Fabians say in a pamphlet out this week, societies get the inequality they choose. In 1945, Britain had a national debt of 200 per cent of GDP, compared with 60 per cent now. From that economic disaster rose the NHS and the pledge never again to replicate the mass unemployment of the 1930s. [...]

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These people simply don’t have the first clue: In a report published today, the Committee on Climate Change has called for drastic action to curb the predicted growth in aviation including higher taxes on plane fares. Holidaymakers are already facing sharp increase in Air Passenger Duty which, by the end of next year, will mean [...]

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He announced that the Government had identified new savings which could be made in Whitehall costs worth £3 billion over the next four years. However, it has now emerged that the Government has recently begun tendering for a new £3 billion travel and hospitality contract. Official documents disclose that ministers expect to spend between £2 [...]

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If proof were needed that there is something seriously wrong with both our moral values and sex education system, it comes with the new that of the 195,000 abortions performed in this country last year, more than one third were repeats. No, not even our beloved NHS is that bad and incompetent at hoicking babies [...]

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At the ASI. Is inequality actually the problem it’s cracked up to be? Or is actual poverty more important?

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This is simply barkingly mad. Unemployment has high costs, but productive government spending, unlike private spending, pays for itself by creating jobs that generate tax revenues and cut welfare benefits. What? I can think of theories that say that when the private sector isn’t spending enough then the government must step up to the plate. [...]

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UN officials have likened the theft of e-mails from university climate researchers to the Watergate scandal, It is always the cover up that gets you, isn’t it?

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We are seeing a real confrontation between two kinds of power. One is elected parliamentary power, represented by the Treasury team and No 10. The other is the power of finance capital. London is a citadel for both kinds of power, British-state and global-economic. So it’s not surprising that the confrontation is happening here. The trigger [...]

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I have a feeling that they don’t: If companies are found not to have moved high-level staff in appropriate numbers, firms may be levied fines and forced to pay back tens of millions of pounds in tax. A senior HMRC source said: “We will be looking for substantial evidence that a move has taken place [...]

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Social justice demands As has been pointed out (Popper?) you can destroy the meaning of a word simply by qualifying it with “social”. Justice has a meaning: social justice is simply whatever my prejudices desire to happen. Still, printing the same damn thing in lots of papers saves on journalist’s costs, doesn’t it? And every [...]

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Err, yes, and? After all, bacon is far more important in our lives: we might have one, two or three or so babies but anyone with a well rounded diet will have, ooooh, 18,250 or so bacon sandwiches in their lives. It’s also important that they smell different of course for identification purposes: babies are [...]

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A hugely important initiative: Labour MP: ban shops from selling ‘sexist’ pink toys to little girls No, really, it is vital: “Since the early 1990s manufacturers and retailers of children’s products have fabricated restrictive boundaries of what it is to be a girl in today’s society. “As a result body image obsession begins younger and [...]

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Here.

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I will still defer to the collected expertise of climatologists, which, for the moment, still supports the AGW hypothesis. I also expect climatologists to defer to economists when it comes to the question of “what to do about it”. I still think a well-designed carbon tax or cap-and-trade system (the former being preferred to the [...]

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