Tim Worstall

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I’ve seen Austrian cellars that have a less incestuous vibe than the Labour Party.

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General Fugh wasn’t the first Chinese flag officer in the US military. That was Brigadier Uzal G Ent, who led the raid on the Ploesti oilfields in 1943 and personally selected Paul Tibbets as pilot of the Hiroshima mission. Brigadier Ent’s grandfather was one of two ethnic Chinese Thais who settled in South Carolina in [...]

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Sorry, but this is one of the things that seriously annoys me each and every year when it comes up. Farm Subsidy by Constituency tells us which UK area gets the most farm subsidy. Which bucolic Tory shire would you guess? The answer: East Ham Yes, East Ham in London tops the list with twice [...]

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Well, yes…. The view from Solsbury Hill is no longer what it was when it inspired a single by Peter Gabriel, former lead singer of Genesis, in 1977. To the dismay of residents, it has been scarred by building and excavation, and next week Gabriel joins their fight to save what he calls “one of [...]

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At the ASI. The effect of ‘elf’n’safety  bureaucracy on workers’ safety. Not a lot actually.

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This resistance to any form of subsidy for nuclear power: Will nuclear power stations get built? “You will have to ask the nuclear operators,” he replied. “I’m not ideologically opposed to nuclear,” Mr Huhne insisted. “My scepticism is based on whether or not they can make it work without public subsidy. One of the things [...]

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A tad more complex and deeply rooted in our history than some manage to grasp: The problem with you liberal conspirators is that though you are always banging on about class, you really don’t understand it. You imagine, for instance, that because Richard Drax has a quadruple-barreled name he must be a social grandee. But [...]

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In his first interview since taking office, Mr Lansley told the Daily Mail that he would also end the scandal of foreign doctors who cannot speak English working in the NHS. He said he was prepared to pass new laws if necessary to ensure that GPs ‘have the relevant language skills to ensure that they [...]

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Dale Vince, the company’s founder, admitted that trying to generate solar power under England’s frequently grey skies was an inefficient way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Even in the sunniest parts of England, the farms will generate a third less electricity than farms of the same size in southern Spain. However, Mr Vince said that [...]

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From this bloke: Alexandros Stavrakas studied philosophy and anthropology at the LSE and UCL. He is the editor of Bedeutung Magazine. We get this: Our collective decisions should not be the result of docility in the face of the constructed objectivity of the “facts” of economic theory, but the product of subjective and collective ideological [...]

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Might as well repeat the comment I left there: Umm, as a scientist, isn’t it sorta incumbent upon you to actually know what you’re talking about? “The core problem is that the current modus operandi of global society is the production of goods and services sold for profit, with these profits subsequently reinvested in further [...]

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Michael Billington (Guardian’s theatre critic) seems to think that the arts shouldn’t have to face cuts. The figures, as Melvyn Bragg recently pointed out, tell the story. The arts take a minute 0.08% of the national budget. Yet they employ close to two million people and contribute £16.6bn to our exports. The theatre alone makes [...]

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Cougars may want to reconsider tying the knot with a much younger man. Women who marry a partner seven to nine years younger increase their risk of dying by 20 percent, according to a study published in the journal Demography. The risk of dying is still 100%* I think you’ll find. *Unless you’re the Virgin [...]

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But this is good news for him and the rest of us. #Osler detail: Kaschke case struck out for Abuse of Process, alternatively o/s limitation period. less than 20 seconds ago via mobile web Outside court with Dave Osler, @slsingh, Robert Dougans, @dontgetfooled, @freedebate, @mepadraigreidy, @paul0evans1, @efctony 18 minutes ago via mobile web Dougans even, [...]

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The government simply used the borrowed money to run an inefficient and bloated public sector…. Odd that Ritchie doesn’t mention that line really….

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Ritchie and the Tax Justice Network are up in arms that FIFA (the soccer bods) demand that FIFA be free of tax. This is extraordinary. Take, for example, the case of South Africa. It has spent a fortune building facilities for the Wold Cup and it seems unlikely that FIFA will be allowing it any [...]

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Latest from the eco-nutters: Draw back the curtain, follow the tireless motion of cogs and wheels back to its source, and you will find the engine driving our civilisation: the myth of progress. The myth of progress is to us what the myth of god-given warrior prowess was to the Romans, or the myth of [...]

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Commission president Jose Barroso unveiled plans for EU control over national budgets, including an incendiary demand that Brussels should vet budgets before their first reading in Westminster, the Bundestag, and other parliaments. Current account deficits and credit growth will be monitored. Brussels can imposing sanctions on states that let booms run out of control. “We [...]

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Interesting this, from John Monks: I wanted to urge the Greeks to copy the Finns who in the early 90s were faced with a sharp drop of 15% of GDP in their economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union but who produced an agreed national economic plan which put the economy back on the [...]

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