Tim Worstall

Gavyn Davies talking about the various letter about cut now or cut later: Inflation or deflation? These are big intellectual differences, with real ­heavyweights of the profession lining up on both sides. It will take a decade or more to settle this one. Pity we’d rather like to know what to do next year though [...]

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This looks reasonably unremarkable, just a shufling of the details of the system: The Conservatives are working on a pilot for a new automated bank-based system that would remove the responsibility of deducting and paying income tax from employers. The new system could save businesses up to £5.5bn according to the Tories and increase revenues [...]

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At the ASI. Why what Ben Bernanke’s just done means the Robin Hood Tax won’t happen.

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After nearly 13 years in Government, Labour is telling its activists that they should not use the party’s achievements in power when seeking votes at the election. What achievements? Quite.

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The fact that it is more expensive: Fortnightly bin collections are to be extended across the country to save money. We already have the taxes in place to cover the externalities of waste disposal: landfill tax for example. So, if recycling did indeed save resources as a whole, given that we’ve already internalised the externalities, [...]

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Mr. T goes nuts or summat

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New York Daily News, in a piece on stars facing forclosure: Cash-strapped Michael Jackson is auctioning his trademark glove from “Billie Jean,” the Neverland Ranch gates, and about 2,000 other items this April. The singer has been plagued by financial woes since he was acquitted of child-molestation charges in 2003. He went into default on [...]

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One might be tempted to say, it can’t get worse than the status quo, but that what the Russians said in 1917, and boy were they wrong. Eric Falkenstein.

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Richard does find them: Apparently a qualified physician, he is no longer wasting his time treating patients. Instead, he is now working with renal units “to look at existing approaches that aim to reduce carbon emissions, and to develop sustainable models of kidney care,” busily “undertaking carbon modelling of clinical pathways.” The cost of this [...]

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Statins? Chinese herbs? How DO we tell the truth? Double blind clinical trials. Next!

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A gross violation of human freedoms and so on. Yes, take that as read. However: Malaysia has caned three women for having extramarital sex, What we now need to know is did the caner enjoy caning the canees? And what would be the punishment for such enjoyment of spanking (a mild form of sadism this [...]

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As you will know, you well informed people you, the government provides different levels of subsidy for different renewable/non CO2 polluting technologies. What you might not realise is that they are cretins for doing so: Ms Thompson said: “We are not confident that the [subsidy] regime for what is one of the cheapest forms of [...]

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Big new report from the UN. The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found. OK, they make the usual mistakes: they’re [...]

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Google and ICI are not, as far as we know, conducting headhunter sorties on town halls for badly needed directors of diversity stakeholder inclusion. Andrew Gilligan

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Mr Brown will tomorrow (SAT) launch Labour’s election slogans for the general election, still pencilled in for May 6. They are: “Ensuring the recovery”; “Protecting frontline services”; “Standing up for the many”; and “Protecting future jobs and new industries.” Protecting future jobs and industries? What is the Prime Mentalist gibbering on about? 1) Logic: as [...]

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Well, yes, mebbe: The second letter, organised by Lord Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University, criticised those who signed the Sunday Times letter. They wrote: “They argue that the UK entered the recession with a large structural deficit and that ‘as a result the UK’s deficit is now the largest in our [...]

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Sometimes they get it right: The scandal surrounding the golfer’s alleged infidelities won’t harm him in the long term because “gold needs him”, experts say.

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OK folks, get on with this democracy thing. So, what would you like added to our democracy? Me, I’m going for the currently number 6 one, English votes on English laws. Of course, I go further than they propose, insisting that Frogs, Wops, Dagoes, Portugee and Krauts should also be barred from voting on what [...]

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On credit card interest rates: In the meantime they ignore the real issue of incidence concerning banks – which is that the cost of rebuilding their balance sheets is falling on these least able to pay. The time for regulation of interest rates has arrived, and is long overdue. So, both banks and governments underprice risk in [...]

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Here (yes, it continues). Given the things he’s called me over the past couple of years I thought that was pretty mild: as well as being apposite.

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