Tim Worstall

If you’re on Team Edward, you might think the fundamental transformation in Twilight: Breaking Dawn is a person getting turned into a vampire. Or if you’re on Team Jacob, you might think it’s a boy morphing into a wolf. But if you’re an economist, it’s the conversion of undifferentiated assets into relationship-specific assets. Although, umm, [...]

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This one is going to cause all sorts of shouting matches. Defendants in rape cases are to be granted anonymity in an unexpected move that women’s groups immediately branded an insult. The proposal provoked anger among campaigners. Ruth Hall, of Women Against Rape, said that the decision was an insult and a backlash against the [...]

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A team of more than 3,000 “behaviour detection” officers hired to spot terrorists at US airports have failed to catch a single person despite costing the taxpayer $200 million (£140 million) last year. In the sense that the gin keeps away the elephants at least….

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The centuries-old position of ale taster has been reintroduced by a London market, which is describing the role as the “best job in the world”. Might I suggest that applicants read Decline and Fall first?

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Oxford students who take ‘socially useful’ jobs could have fees waived The problem, of course, comes in the definition of “socially useful”. Teaching and social work are suggested. Hmm….would teaching in a private school be counted as “socially useful”? I have my doubts about that. And why would “social work” be counted as more socially [...]

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In the comments here. Folks I’m a straight long time married (44 years to the same woman) white haired guy. And I’m politically and socially conservative. But I could give a flaming rat’s ass about what Kagan does, or doesn’t do, in her bedroom. She can screw alligators for all I care. It’s simply a [...]

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Now, anyone know where I can buy some ferrets? I have a business idea. Dizzy.

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Breaking news. After over a century and a half of research the Met Office (formed, 1854) is able to reveal the secret of the British weather system. Far from the common conception of it as a capricious Goddess who must be propitiated with a complex series of manouvres involving kagoules, umbrellas and the ritual incantations [...]

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Please! Diane Abbott has earned her stripes to run as leader Let her win, please….pretty please? That would be the end of Labour as a serious electoral force…..

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Mark Serwotka tells us all that there is no room for cuts. Oh Noes There Ain’t! Today in Brighton more than 1,000 Public and Commercial Services Union representatives from across the UK will debate plans to launch a massive campaign of resistance against what we expect will be the deepest, most damaging public spending cuts [...]

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Yes, you can guess who this is from: I wrote about short selling and the danger it causes a few days ago and the right wing blogosphere – blinkered to a man (are there any right wing women?) – led by Tom Worstall (as usual) responded with the usual clkaims that a) I had no clue on the issue [...]

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Just why is the globe’s international financial centre on a rainy island off NW Europe? Sure, we could argue that it’s some remnant of Empire, could argue about language, all sorts of things. We could also note an interesting historical point: there have been two great bursts of globalisation. 1880 ish to 1914 and 1980 [...]

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In, surprisingly, The Guardian. Today, online trading by retail investors is a huge industry. In the UK, many thousands of amateur traders log on each day in an effort to beat the market – that restless sum of countless, competing bets on the value of stuff. In the main, they fail. And fail quickly. Quite. [...]

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This is an amusing piece from our favourite retired accountant. But this artificiality will not be the end of the problem. Copying the culture and failed policies of the Republic will be the biggest disaster for Northern Ireland. As the Republic has now resoundingly proven, building an economy on the basis of corporate tax rate [...]

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The ban on naked short sales of euro-denominated government bonds, credit default swaps based on those bonds, and shares in Germany’s 10 leading financial institutions was announced after European markets closed on Tuesday. This only applies in Germany but still, what on earth are these people trying to do? Banning CDSs on bonds? You mean [...]

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Umm, no. For that is not the preserve of Archbishops, however mighty they may be. It’s only the Big Boy himself who gets to make that decision. There was an intake of breath among the congregation, yet I wondered if I’d misheard the Archbishop. I hadn’t, for the text is on Rowan Williams’s website: “If [...]

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The Government will establish a commission to consider a UK Bill of Rights that would give British courts supremacy over European legislation. You can’t. Not without repealing the European Communities Act 1972 you can’t.

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Not something you’d expect to see here I know. But along with his decision not to join the euro he did make one other good decision. The 3G auction for spectrum….so good in fact that India is following in his footsteps. And the cost of its India expedition is set to increase still further as [...]

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Evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests the state would make considerable savings by raising the minimum wage – as every extra pound earned is knocked off the bill for tax credits. Two thoughts for Polly. 1) While it is indeed true that some people do lose benefits pound for pound as their incomes [...]

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Citizens UK brilliantly confronted the party leaders in the election with miserably poor Treasury cleaners in their campaign for a living wage. They succeeded in squeezing from Labour a promise that a living wage minimum of £7.20 would be paid to all Whitehall staff, even the outsourced. If the Lib Dem policy of raising the [...]

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