Tim Worstall

This report leads to this paper. I’m really rather hoping that the actual paper doesn’t say anything quite as stupid as is being reported: Their new research argues that estimates of conventional reserves should be downgraded from 1,150bn to 1,350bn barrels to between 850bn and 900bn barrels and claims that demand may outstrip supply as [...]

[Read more →]

The MD of the IMF says that a transactions tax won’t really work. For it’s all too easy to create derivatives to get to the same risk profile and end product, derivatives that won’t be subject to the tax. Ritchie says: Second, derivative dealing not subject to financial transaction taxes by banks can easily be [...]

[Read more →]

Sex and bowls and rock and roll.

[Read more →]

But it soon became clear that James had a strong ideological agenda that was at odds with the deeply held beliefs of most Englishmen of all political persuasions.  James’s rough actions belied his smooth words about tolerance.  He embarked on an aggressive campaign to remake England along continental lines, a campaign that attacked deeply held [...]

[Read more →]

But an interesting attempt to give a sense of scale: AXA also calculated that a woman in her mid-20s working in the private sector would have to contribute almost a quarter of her annual salary every year to get a pension comparable with a public counterpart. Given that pensions are simply delayed compnesation that means [...]

[Read more →]

VOLCANO IN FINLAND SPARKS THREAT Volcano? Finland? RESCUE agencies were on high alert last night after a volcanic eruption in Iceland threatened to trigger a larger explosion at a second volcano. Err, no, Iceland and Finland are not the same place. Round and about 1,500 miles apart actually. Like, you know, London to Morrocco, London [...]

[Read more →]

For there lived an extraordinary contraption, a testament to the Prince’s insatiable lust and to his immense corpulence. Known romantically as a ‘siege d’amour’, or love-seat, this chair allowed the distinctly unathletic Bertie to have his way with two women simultaneously, all with the minimum of effort. Rightie ho. And there’s a photo of it. [...]

[Read more →]

So, Obamacare has passed. This now makes health tourism to the US a viable proposition. We know very well that the treatment there is, certainly for certain cancers etc, vastly better than it is anywhere else. But until now of course you didn’t go over there for such treatment because you had to pay for [...]

[Read more →]

“Who’d have thought we’d have a black son before we ever met a real live Democrat?” From The Hurt Locker. Update: I am reminded that this line is actually from The Blind Side, not The Hurt Locker. Ah well….

[Read more →]

However, there is one additional appointment that could be made – a minister for de-legislation, with the specific task of hunting down and repealing laws that have failed to work or have simply made people’s lives worse, not better. I’ll make an offer: I’ll join any political party at all (yes, really, SWP this is [...]

[Read more →]

Financial journalists and mining seem not to go together. To remove the gas from the coal beds, pressure at the wellhead is reduced and the gas “floats off” from being attached to the methane. Err, no, the gas is the methane. However, the larger story is interesting. As well as the unconventional shale gas that [...]

[Read more →]

This isn’t an entirely thought out position here, more of just a little note. We’ve not seen the banks and the finance industry complain very much about the Robin Hood Tax proposal. Could be that they don’t think it will ever happen, this is true. Could also be that they don’t think that they’ll be [...]

[Read more →]

One of them is that you end up with headlines like this: Goat grabbing competition held in Kyrgyzstan Even the sub head isn’t much better. Horsemen take part in a Kok-boru, or goat grabbing, competition as part of celebrations to mark the spring equinox in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The article itself, well, it’s [...]

[Read more →]

What a wonderful finding! Two rival theories have been put forward as to why: one suggests that we’re fair to strangers because we mistakenly treat them like kin, the other that social conditioning makes us this way. In a recent edition of the journal Science, new evidence is presented that comes down solidly on the [...]

[Read more →]

WIGAN v Leeds is the hottest Super League ticket in town next Friday – and you and your family could be there for FREE. Your rugby league-crazy News of the World has teamed up with The Co-operative, official partner of the RFL, to give away 50 family passes. Second prize is two family passes…..

[Read more →]

A PUB landlord who was jailed for defying the smoking ban says he was allowed to light up in his cell. Nick Hogan, 43, claims he was even given tobacco, cigarette papers and matches by prison officers. He got six months after refusing to pay fines for flouting the 2007 ban. And he was stunned [...]

[Read more →]

A 300 per cent increase in the price of copper has led to metal theft becoming the fastest-growing crime in the UK. Criminals sell the cable on to scrap dealers who ship it abroad. An epidemic of thefts is thought to have cost British Telecom several million pounds already this year. Last week thieves tore [...]

[Read more →]

This is interesting: Gutfreund did violence to the Wall Street social order — and got himself dubbed the King of Wall Street — when in 1981 he turned Salomon Brothers from a private partnership into Wall Street’s first public corporation, a decision that can now be seen as the first pebble kicked off a cliff [...]

[Read more →]

Well, yes and no. LABOUR’S new 50% tax on high earners will leave Britain with the highest income-tax rates in the G8, just a year after the UK had the second lowest in the influential grouping. It will have the joint highest personal tax alongside Japan among the world’s leading economies. Marginal tax rates are [...]

[Read more →]

On why you should be voting UKIP: Yes, quite, we’re adults and we’re British, so we’ll decide for ourselves thanks very much: vote UKIP.

[Read more →]