Tim Worstall

This piece of Polly’s is quite wonderful. She (accurately) points out that rational organisation of the hospital system gets derailed by grandstanding politicians. Places which are too small to be doing the safe number of operations of a certain type (no, you really don’t want to have your aortic aneurism fixed where they only try [...]

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The US administration signalled that BP may lose its exploration and production leases as retribution for the catastrophic spill. There are all sorts of things the US might want to do about the spill but tearing up the rule of law really isn’t one of them. Not issuing more leases….that would be fine. “We don’t [...]

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Among contacts in Russia it’s not unusual to find anti-semitism of a raw and visceral nature. The sort of stuff that would have had Moseley saying “I say, hang on a moment” in fact. Certainly, there’s enough who would blame all of Russia’s ills upon the Jews. And it turns out they’re right: Cities that [...]

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This little chart, showing the labour share of income. Now, just imagine that equity was your thing. That the workers by hand and mind get their fair share. You should therefore be arguing for a permanent recession, shouldn’t you? For, as you can see, the labour share of income really does go up in recessions [...]

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Politicians that is: White House officials on Sunday said they wanted BP to put “substantial” funds into an escrow account to cover claims by Gulf Coast businesses and residents affected by the spill. President Barack Obama plans to bring up the idea at a White House meeting Wednesday with top BP executives, including Chairman Carl-Henric [...]

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If I were running a left-wing political party, that is the sort of combination I would go for: acceptance of the market, social mobility, the environment, plus attacks on privileged groups or vested interests in whatever country I was operating in. You’d likely get me to sign on to that….it being pretty much straight classical [...]

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Huge excitement about people finding lots of metals in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has nearly $US1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits, far more than previously thought and enough to turn a country devastated by decades of war into one of the most important mining centres in the world, according to senior US officials. Woo Hoo! The NYT [...]

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“You are thrown in the deep end and you just have to talk all the time. Every time you talk in a foreign language you get a clip round the ear. It does work.” Would it be a violation of human rights if we actually tried that?

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Or at least, Mahd Mahdi’s interpretation of it. What kind of human beings we want to be, what kind of society we want, are always ethical questions, he insists. Again, he cites scientific research that shows how deeply rooted ethical understanding is in the human brain. Ethical reasoning and debate need to be resurrected. We [...]

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This brought the apt riposte from Marshall Auerback of the New Deal 2.0 thinktank. “So we’re supposed to ratchet up government spending when the economy is growing? When it can present genuine inflationary dangers? If this is the type of policy incoherence we have in store, then God help the United Kingdom.” That is of [...]

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Look, I know I make fun of the man but there is a reason: I am incredibly worried about the impact of debt on society. No one is free when in debt. This is said by the man who insists that we should borrow more money (through the government) in order to have further fiscal [...]

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Ritchie’s throwing his toys out of the pram again over comments on his blog: This blog is suffering another bout of comments from the fringes the political right wing. These people, who call themselves libertarian but whose whole object is to subject others to abuse, loss and poverty in pursuit of their own desire for [...]

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The mercenary lawyers who present these cases give $5 whores a bad name, because at least in those cases there’s some utilitarian benefit.

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At the ASI. On Henry Ford and his $5 a day wages. Not quite what people seem to think.

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I’ve only just realised that both N and S Korea qualified. At what point could they actually end up playing each other?

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It was Georges Mikes who pointed out that the continentals have sex lives while the English have hot water bottles. Things have changed over the last 60 years, this is true: SEX toys such as the famous Rampant Rabbit could be BANNED by barmy Brussels killjoys. Another law which will impact upon the English more [...]

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Miss Sanderson, who runs an academy in North London for young athletes, has the right to marry at St Paul’s because she was awarded a CBE in 2004. She told Hello!: ‘Dens and I had talked about it and I said, “It’s such a tremendous honour, so let’s exercise our right and do it.” If [...]

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The wage bill for 5,000 extra press officers hired between 2002 and 2009 stands at £126m. That’s an annual cost btw. Standard back of the envelope costing is total employment cost is twice wages. A nice quarter billion we can cut off the cost of government without any problem then, don’t you think?

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So, on the official EU measurements there is “more poverty” in this country than in Poland. That is what happens when you misdescribe inequality as poverty. As Professor Saunders mordantly observes: “The people in Britain who get defined as poor actually enjoy a standard of living far higher than most Poles. Polish workers move to [...]

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Miliband, the former foreign secretary who is running for the Labour leadership, has annoyed rival contenders by being ferried around the country to meet party members in a government Jaguar, flanked by protection officers. I thought using Govt vehicles on party business weas strictly verboeten?

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