Tim Worstall

A STAGGERING 250 people are dying of starvation a year in British hospitals Don’t forget, that’s not the ones they’re deliberately starving to death on the Liverpool Pathway, this is the ones they’re not trying to kill.

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Demos today launches a report arguing that the principle of national service, abolished in Britain in 1960, still has something to offer. A national civilian service — a sort of “civic corps” — would look very different from its military forebear: it would be flexible and tailored to people’s lives, not a one-size-fits-all compulsory scheme. [...]

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Twats in search of some press copy. How else to explain this? The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) says Britain, which was the world’s fourth largest economy as recently as 2005, has slipped to seventh this year behind America, China, Japan, Germany, France and Italy. By 2015, it predicts, Britain will be outside [...]

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The climate conspiracy theory falls apart when you consider the effort that would be required to sustain such a scam (recruiting thousands of scientists, falsifying mountains of data) and then ask what plausible motivation there could be to continue such a vast conspiratorial effort? None, is the simple answer. Sigh. Sadly, not understanding quite how [...]

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And they look like being big ones: Alistair Darling is drawing up plans to face down the country’s top bankers by taking the “nuclear option” of a windfall tax on their bumper bonuses as part of measures aimed at the super-rich. This will be retrospective legislation of course. We’re already two thirds of the way [...]

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At the ASI. We don’t have Victorian levels of poverty. We don’t even have Victorian levels of inequality.

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Same old nonsense here: To counter this the new corporation will contain a Growth Capital Fund providing mezzanine debt and a UK Innovation Investment Fund that will take equity stakes in digital, life sciences and clean technology companies. The Government has already pledged £150m to the innovation fund. It’s entirely possible to construct a theory [...]

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see more Lol Celebs

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Millions of shoppers will pay inflated prices for Christmas presents this year because of where they live. Major stores are operating a postcode lottery, with prices for the same item twice as high in some branches. Price discrimination, don’tcha love it?

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At CiF. Sticking it to the localists. Globalisation is good, see?

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The reality is that tax is paid by consent in the United Kingdom. This may not appear to be the case for those in employment with limited investment income, but for those who are self employed or who run companies the relatively high rate of compliance with tax law is the consequence of voluntary disclosure [...]

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He’s not even capable of quoting himself accurately. The new report: The TUC published its report on tax avoidance in the UK entitled The Missing Billions1 in February 2008. That report suggested that the UK was losing at least £25bn a year as a result of tax avoidance activity, £13bn of this resulting from the [...]

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Yes, another one for the TUC. It’s a cracker as well. In the opening lines: This paper does four things. • It assesses the reforms the UK Government has proposed in that period to tackle tax avoidance. It estimates that measures undertaken by the Government since Budget 2008 have saved the taxpayer £1bn. Ooooh, goodie! [...]

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At the Register. On IP and the Manchester Manifesto.

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Almost one million Scots are unable to read and write properly, according to an influential group of educationalists who have called for an overhaul of the country’s approach to literacy. According to the Literacy Commission — which also includes business leaders and the novelist Ian Rankin — about a fifth of adults do not have [...]

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Estimates vary as to the amount the exchequer would collect if corporate and individual tax evaders were brought to book. The TUC puts it at up to £25bn. Richard Murphy puts it at that sum: and yet we’ve repeatedly shown that he’s wrong.

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There is mounting pressure on the Government to fall into line with other European Union countries by reducing the legal limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50mg. Oh, why’s that? ”Road safety has improved significantly in recent years – 1,000 fewer people now die on the roads in a year [...]

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Err, no: That represented a liability of £5,530 for every one of the 21.1 million families in Britain. We’ve not had to pay out £5,500, each and every family of us. We’ve had to put at risk that amount for each and every family of us. As to whether the risk is worth it, well, [...]

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Today’s Ritchie installment: Alistair Darling is under pressure to slap a punitive new income tax rate of up to 70 per cent on top earners in a “tax-the-rich” mini-Budget next week, it emerged last night. Gosh! But put your mind at rest: This is nonsense: I am certain there is no such plan at all [...]

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Pornography study that was doomed to fail after scientists couldn’t find a single man who hadn’t viewed X-rated material

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