Tim Worstall

The House of Lords should become a second chamber where just two-thirds of members are elected Ooooh! There has been an internal cabinet committee battle over whether to support a wholly elected second chamber, or to leave an appointed element. The gossip is that M’Lord Mandy of Fop has been insisting on retention of an [...]

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Collateralised debt obligations of the type involved in the Goldman case were fancy new inventions with no clear rules, no free market, and no transparency – all features that were, from the banks’ point of view, great news. They could make them anyway they wanted, sell them any way they wanted, price them any way [...]

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It’s called “civil society” Leo. Bugger off and leave people to get on with it. That’s how you get 500,000 children doing something they enjoy, organised by volunteers who also enjoy what they do.

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Here.

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Ritchie, here. “Bankers’ bonuses and pay at the top end of the financial services industry have driven Britain’s rising inequ ality over the past decade, new research from the London School of Economics shows.” But there are bankers, economists and Tories out there who deny this very obvious reality. It could be said that this [...]

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But it’s my brain and what I have to say that will allow me to succeed. Ashley Dupre on posing for Playboy.

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Bacon lovers, this bagel’s for you: Brooklyn baker crafts bacon, egg and cheese bagel.

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Or, if you prefer, Brad DeLong’s take on what the financial system can do for us: Trading money now for money later: people who want to save now and spend later can make win-win trades with people who want to spend now and save later. Risk: people who are unusually averse to risk in general [...]

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Clubbers continue to use mephedrone despite ban After all, no one uses heroin because it’s now banned, no one smokes dope, crystal meth consumption is zero, cocaine never graces the nostrils of would be politicians and booze consumption in the US was entirely nothing throughout the 1920s.

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Rather good actually. Think of Superman as the politician and Supermonk as the market…..

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George Monbiot asks how, when English politics is trapped in a neoliberal consensus, is green socialism able to flourish in Wales? Because the Celtic fringe has always been more “left wing”, more communitarian, more socialist and even more social democratic than England. I’ve shouted about this for years….over the weekend we had Polly Toynbee saying [...]

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I find this all really rather amusing (despite the fact that I’m due to fly in 10 days). The government tonight launched an unprecedented plan to bring home an estimated 200,000 people stranded abroad by the volcanic ash cloud – including possible deployment of the Royal Navy – as European airlines staged a series of [...]

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Manufacturing’s share of GDP in the UK is also little different from the share in other advanced economies, with the notable exception of Germany, where it is about 24pc. But in France, manufacturing’s share is about the same as in the UK, and in the US it is actually lower. True, manufacturing used to account [...]

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The study from the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies blamed Mr Brown for over-spending before 2007 for the severity of the recession faced by Britons. Mr Brown’s policies as Chancellor meant that Britain is now suffering from “one of the weakest fiscal positions” among developed countries, the IFS said. This was because Mr Brown had [...]

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BARRY George – the oddball cleared of murdering TV beauty Jill Dando after serving eight years for the crime – has been REFUSED compensation for his time behind bars. Despite a “not guilty” verdict in George’s retrial, Government law chiefs REJECTED his massive £1.4 million claim with a shock ruling that he has not proven [...]

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Indeed, Mr Clegg’s exotic lineage and cosmopolitan lifestyle is a world away from his gritty Yorkshire constituency. The multilingual Lib Dem leader was born to a Dutch mother and a half-Russian father, and employs a German spin doctor. Interesting in the sense of being scurrilous as we should be at this stage in an election [...]

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AN overseas holiday used to be thought of as a reward for a year’s hard work. Now Brussels has declared that tourism is a human right and pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidised by the taxpayer. Under the scheme, British pensioners could be given cut-price trips to [...]

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It is time to reframe the question. Banks and financial institutions should do what economy and society want them to do… “Economy and society” ‘s desires being intermediated and interpreted by Will Hutton of course. This is entirely the opposite of a free market. There what an organisation does is determined, or at least what [...]

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At the ASI. Now it’s the World Bank that tells us it’s a very bad idea indeed, this Robin Hood Tax.

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I should first say thank you to Faber and Co. They very kindly sent me a freebie copy of Phillip Blond’s new book, “Red Tory”. I have a feeling that the thrusting young exec who thought that having people who marginally know what they’re talking about review the book was a good idea will be [...]

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