Tim Worstall

It’s time professional people changed their tune: their duty is to support tax systems – not undermine them. Rilly? Just to take an extreme example: the duty of a barrister when defending someone accused of tax offences is to go all Soviet on them? Yes, yes, you’re right, my client is a horrible person who should be [...]

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Tyler notes that defence inflation is higher than normal inflation. Defence prices rise faster than general inflation both because the earnings of personnel rise faster, and because the price of defence equipment rises much faster. Addressing just the first of this. Earnings do, generally, rise faster than inflation. That’s what it means that we’re getting [...]

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Some details of Kim Jong-Il’s lifestyle: Mr Kim said the North Korean leaders had dozens of villas, some of which were built underground, that were stuffed with chandeliers, silk wallpaper and expensive furniture. He said some of the villas were equipped with special ventilation systems in case of a nuclear attack. He said Kim Il-sung [...]

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News just in: Guy Ritchie is to direct a Hollywood film version of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Vinny Jones as Guinevere perhaps? The idea just cries out to be previewed….perhaps Jamie K, would care to do the honours, him being good at that sort of thing?

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Maybe, it’s from the right company anyway…..

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I came away with a downwardly-revised estimate of the probability that western civilization is doomed. Art Carden

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Of course, Sachs would support absolutely anything that raised more money for development. But he does at least point to the correct question: incidence of the tax It won’t be the banks and bankers (no, no matter what Ritchie says, it won’t be) who carry the costs. It will be all users of financial markets. [...]

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The European commission announced moves today to shore up the euro and ward off market pressure on Greece by considering a ban on complex derivatives allegedly being used to undermine the single currency. The draconian move suggested by José Manuel Barroso, commission president, follows a joint campaign by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the [...]

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Lloyd Webber sequel cursed by plot What? It has one perhaps? Bit dangerous for a musical isn’t it?

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According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the condition is the darkness in an animal’s skin, feathers, or fur is acquired by populations living in an industrial region where the environment is soot-darkened. It can be gene related It does, however, mean that the probability that its members will survive and reproduce is enhance. The condition evolves [...]

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French people having an affair. Rumours that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy are both having affairs are gaining momentum in France. Well I never. That is surprising, isn’t it?

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The Left, as it now too courts the religious Right, is abandoning gay people in every way but lip-service.

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Someone’s got to pay the debt….

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Here. Energy systems face the same problem…..which isn’t good news for renewables.

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Maurice the Builder shows us how.

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Now, look, imagine this. You’re turning out for some village third rugby team. You’re crap, you know it, you’re there for a wander around in the mud and a few pints afterwards. I have been known to play this sort of rugby myself it being the level and standard to which I am suited. You [...]

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And I’m amazed that The Guardian of all places publishes it: Politicians and the media continue to refer to the economic downturn as being the result of a financial crisis. This is wrong. We have 15 million people out of work because the housing bubble that drove the economy since the last recession finally burst. [...]

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I don’t find this surprising at all. If people maximise it is their overall well-being that they seek to enhance. If he’d actually paid attention to his economics courses at Southampton all those years ago he would have known this. People maximise utility, not income, leisure, work, sleep, sex or any other one thing. All of [...]

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The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like [...]

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James Bulger’s killer Jon Venables proves vengeance does not work. Now it’s time for mercy Mary Riddell. Look at what actually happened to Jon Venables. Horrific crime, trial, sentence, yes. Was he then thrown in a cell and the key chucked away? No, actually, he wasn’t. He had the best education and upbringing the State [...]

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