Tim Worstall

For a piece I want to do elsewhere. I know that certain regimes used to utilise children to inform upon their parents. But can anyone point me to some actual examples? GDR? USSR? In literature (Orwell maybe?) Anyone?

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What’s this Lib Dem thing? VAT on new houses? What? Sure, there should be equality between VAT on new housing and restoring old but that would be best done by reducing VAT on restoration. Reducing here meaning “eliminating”. For increasing the tax on the sale and or purchase of housing will reduce the liqudity of [...]

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THE number of Brits having a sex change has nearly trebled in just nine years. A new dossier reveals that 143 people changed sex in the UK in 2009, up from just 54 in 2000. Still something of a minority interest, isn’t it? That minorities have the same human rights as majorities is both true [...]

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It’s odd, I find myself giving one and a half cheers to the IMF proposals for bank taxes. And yet I’m sure that I’m one of those who is supposed to oppose them. The surprise from the banks has been palpable, and it will soon turn to bloodcurdling threats of the dire effects of such [...]

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About this continual series of statements that the Lib Dems are a party of the left. That the great tragedy of British politics has been the splitting of the left in this manner leaving the Tories to win power with a minority so often. I really get rather confused when people tell me that Orange [...]

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At least, the Telegraph has gone on the attack. Slightly iffy (although fully declared) expenses, he was a lobbyist in Brussels and he once said that the Brits were triumphalist about WWII. Oh, and we should legalise brothels. Certainly two sensible things he’s said there. Wonder how much will stick….

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Lordie be, the man’s got some nerve. So the IMF comes out and says that we shouldn’t have a Robin Hood Tax, that we shouldn’t have a financial transactions tax. We should, instead, have an insurance levy on balance sheets (or liabilities, same thing). Richard then says: I have recommended both taxes here And he [...]

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Make buying sex illegal for, all prostitution is violence against women. So, how’s that working out in Sweden then? At a cost to the Swedish tax payer of over US$ 7 million a year, Sweden has, over the last four years, convicted an annual average of three people for trafficking and 18 for pimping, and [...]

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Well, OK, The Truth according to The Independent.

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Dorling feels that politicians of all hues should be called to account for overseeing such unprecedented rises in inequality that put us on a par with Victorian society. “In countries like Britain, people last lived lives as unequal as today, as measured by wage inequality, in 1854, when Charles Dickens was writing Hard Times,” he [...]

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The Fund’s report rules out a financial transactions tax – something marketed by campaigners as a Robin Hood Tax – as impracticable, and likely to cause economic damage by distorting flows of capital around the world. Oh dearie me. So, a balance sheet tax it is then. Plus a cashflow tax, which I’m not quite [...]

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Here.

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That’s that thesis proven then.

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Dear Sellers, All your gains from trade are belong to us. Love, Buyers

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Many Americans assume that if a story has been in the news section of a reputable English newspaper, it has been fact-checked. Ah. No, this isn’t true. As Mr. Hari’s columns in a reputable English newspaper so elegantly remind us. Umm, actually, as Mr. Hari’s column in The Nation also demonstrates. Buried in the hard [...]

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GORDON Brown’s blundering over funding for regional quangos has landed the ­taxpayer with a £160million fine from the European ­Union, the Conservatives said yesterday. Why, because the Government are incompetent fuckwits, do I have to pay more taxes to a bunch of people in Brussels?

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As airlines waited for a weather update this morning, confusion surrounded Mr Brown’s announcement that HMS Ark Royal and HMS Ocean had been ordered to join the rescue operation in the Channel. The warships were still awaiting orders last night as ferry companies said there was no shortage of places on cross-Channel services. That is, [...]

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Polly tells us that: Yesterday’s report from the Centre for Economic Performance showed how bonanza bonuses in the finance sector cause risk-taking that contributed to the financial crisis. The report is here. The report says no such thing actually. What it does say is a great deal more interesting. We can provide some estimate of [...]

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George Monbiot today. He’s half right. Simple systems are indeed horribly vulnerable to disruption. More complex systems can trade their way out of such disruptions. He’s certainly right here. Aha! says George. But a system can become too complex and thus trip up over things which a simpler system would not! And, amazingly, we are [...]

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Two of the prominent businessmen who helped lead the charge against Labour’s rise in national insurance have been nominated to become working peers by the Conservative party. Simon Wolfson and Anthony Bamford were among the high-profile signatories to a letter supporting the Tory proposal to scrap the increase – a move that left Labour flatfooted [...]

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