Tim Worstall

On a post about Caroline Lucas and how her expertise in Elizabethan sonnets leads her to not understand perhaps the finer points of the economics of food retailing we get, as a comment: Shall I compare thee to a Somerfield? Thou art more grandly built with wider bays: Fair winds do bargains for the shopper [...]

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And manages to fail both the economics and the logic part of the paper: Competition law is designed to protect us from monopolies – where there is only one seller but many buyers. Yet the big supermarkets also hold monopsonies; many sellers (such as farmers) and one buyer (the supermarket). As the only major purchaser [...]

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I am all for most of the alternatives that Lawson sets out in his final chapter about the taxing of luxury goods, rationing…. Rationing? De we need to know any more about this nonsense?

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Here.

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An excellent piece on the dreadfulness of the Khmer Rouge. Malcolm Caldwell, Noam Chomsky, the usual blind idiots. It’s all there. Do read in full. Near the end: All of them claim ignorance of any wrong-doing. Perhaps the most galling example is a long letter of evasion and self-justification that Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot’s chief [...]

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Hmm: Britain should be a workshop, not a casino Making real products is far superior to having a lust for quick returns. It recognises the crucial link between effort and reward. Manufacturing output is higher than it was in 1990, higher than 1980, twice what it was in 1960 and three times what it was [...]

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Baroness Greenfield: populist scientist or talented self-promoter? So when did you stop beating your wife?

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Peter Preston: Why did schools take wildly different decisions about the snow? Because Ed Balls passed the buck More centralisation in the British education system. Oh yes. The Minister in Whitehall really does have the knowledge to decide upon the weather conditions at each and every school in the country by 8 am each day. [...]

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“At the minute, it would appear that more people are damaged by sunbeds than by nuclear power in the UK,” Sounds about right. And of course there are benefits to nuclear power beyond turning that strange orange colour.

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This will cause some explodey heads on the shores of the left if it goes through. Blackstone, the US private equity firm, has been approached by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money about backing a renewed bid for state-owned Northern Rock. So many of them waht Crok to become a mutual…..and for it to be sold [...]

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No, not about one of those boxes down in hte basement, nor a sheepish admission that this celibacy thing is all a joke. Still: “It has a great deal of enchanting, stunning technology, but few genuine or human emotions,” wrote L’Osservatore Romano. “Its significance is in its visual impact rather than in the story, and [...]

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A terminally-ill volunteer is being sought to donate their body for a reality television show backed by Channel 4 that would see them mummified and possibly placed on display in a museum. No, not that, I’m sure there are weirder shows in development. This: Fulcrum is not offering any payment for the project, other than [...]

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MORE than 1,000 sheep are being kept in British prisons, shock figures have revealed. I didn’t know we catered to the Welsh quite that much. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said the creatures are kept for job training purposes and to help reduce self-harming. Bit odd to claim that self-abuse is the same [...]

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When the dust settles, 170-ton dumper trucks close in to scoop up the rocks. They are taken to refineries where rare-earth metals – known in the mining industry as ‘unobtainiums’ because they are so scarce – will be extracted using boiling acid and other toxic chemicals. Trust the Mail to get such a thing wrong. [...]

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Are the genes of Manchester United football fans in a different league to those of Manchester City fans? It’s a pertinent question because the NHS is out to recruit both groups as sperm donors. The government is starting a pilot scheme in Manchester this month for a national sperm bank — and will target sports [...]

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The true threat to western employment and living standards is the rise of a globally competitive Asia, at a pace and with a power and penetration quite without precedent in history. No devaluation or indefinite deficit financing can conceivably be sufficient to price and equip ourselves to meet this challenge. Such evasions merely exacerbate our [...]

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The English character is not always attractive. The preference for irony over honesty is wearisome, while the occasional escapes from repression into drunkenness justifiably appal foreigners. Worse than both, however, is English puritanism, whose first priority has always been to prevent pleasure rather than relieve pain. Nick Cohen.

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Yah, y’know, it’s all about class innit? Private schools perpetuate privilege and thus we should….well, what? How about sorting out the State schools so that those with any aspiration for their children don’t flee them? How about even demolishing the distinction? Get the State out of the provision of education and leave it to simply [...]

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At the ASI. Does technological change mean that macroeconomic theories are out of date as soon as we’ve thought them up?

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President Barack Obama is under fire over claims that the Christmas Day underwear bomber was “singing like a canary” until he was treated as an ordinary criminal and advised of his right to silence. The complaint is that when the government appointed lawyer advised him of his right to silence then he went silent. And? [...]

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