Tim Worstall

Well, in passing perhaps. Ritchie is here in Hansard, in a speech from Stephen Timms. You can see which bits Ritchie highlights here and here’s a bit that, strangely, he doesn’t. However, I am not entirely persuaded by his criticism, or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington, of the work [...]

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“I wouldn’t be optimistic about seeing Bolt compete on British soil this year and there is a strong chance he won’t be back until 2012,” said an insider close to the negotiations with the Jamaican. Since April, foreign sports stars competing in Britain are liable for a top rate of income tax of 50 per [...]

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The group are the first of 52 dissidents to be released by the authorities as part of a surprise deal between the Catholic Church and the government in Cuba struck last week after a politically embarrassing hunger strike to near-death by dissident Guillermo Farinas. The Cuban authorities have promised to release all 52, but it [...]

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A system of first and second degree murder could be introduced after it was revealed Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, is “sympathetic” to proposals first raised four years ago. Just as we distinguish between manslaughter and murder. It would also be a useful precedent for those shouting about low conviction rates for rape. Part of [...]

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Easter Island, Chile, and the South Pacific plunged into darkness. Stunning news, well worthy of a newspaper story, eh? It could be as much as 24 hours before it happens again!

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So, is it cows that infect badgers with TB or badgers cows? Or both?

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Yes. It shall be the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to appoint a committee of inquiry to report within 6 months on the practical action necessary to introduce a banking transactions tax. What’s one of them? For the purposes of subsection (1), a banking transactions tax is a tax, charged at the rate [...]

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Karen Buck, MP for Westminster North, said the changes would result in a mass “exodus” of families from districts such as Westminster, Chelsea, Fulham and Islington. Err, yes, that’s rather the point. We rightly, and righteously, subsidise the purchase of food for those who do not have enough money to pay for food. We do [...]

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Something that so often gets missed. Yes, we live in a hierarchical society. Some think this is bad: all those public schoolboys and Oxbridge types running the place. The bit that gets missed is that there is no one hierarchy. There are many: But what is surely true is that the de facto hierarchy—who is [...]

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Fun thought: The new president at the Nou Camp, Sandro Rosell, has said there is a need to restructure the club’s debt and even borrowed more money to pay the players’ wages. Silly man. What, restructure the finances, win La Liga and the Champions League, increase income and expect to get out of the financial [...]

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Quite wondrous: It was not the dictatorships of the former Soviet Union and her allies which bothered the West, but the lack of market’s for the West’s corporations. Democracy means power of ordinary people. And capitalists are not ordinary people, they are ordinary parasites. So the USSR and the Eastern Block states were the most [...]

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Umm, OK then: How about going a different way – not back to nationalisation or further into privatisation? How about real public ownership and workers’ control? Imagine if the Royal Mail became the People’s Post, owned by each and every person in the UK, secure beyond the grabbing hands of politicians and their friends in [...]

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Via. PJ O’Rourke is once again proven to be right. In one of his earlier books, when in Poland pre-89, he’s at a “disco” and the subject of Jews dancing comes up. No, we’re not all that good at that, the only kind of dancing we have is dancing in circles. Summat like that. Or [...]

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More than 2,000 years after Lake Averno featured in the Aeneid and Odyssey, armed Italian police raided the area as part of an investigation into money laundering and mafia infiltration. Police suspect a hotel and restaurant on the shores of Lake Averno was used as a hideout by the Casalesi gang, one of the most [...]

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Here.

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The connection between this song And this one is?

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At the ASI. Do not believe the shroud wavers about the public spending cuts.

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Here. Background here. I really, really, want Alvin Greene to be the next US Senator from the great state of South Carolina. No, not because he’s a Democrat. No, not because he’s running against Jim De Mint (about whom I know nearly nothing). Not even because I’d like to see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [...]

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I came across Real Business Cycle stuff yesterday. As a result of someone making huge fun of it. Then I went and read a bit about it and it seemed reasonable: well, reasonable sometimes that is. Don’t bother with what it actually is, this isn’t the point. Similarly, I can see that the Austrian idea [...]

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Well, yes, OK: It costs £200,000 to raise a child from birth to the age of 21 – which equates to about £800 a month. Sure, no doubt. Dr Katherine Rake, chief executive of the FPI, said: “I think the cost of raising a child has a lot to do with the cost of childcare. [...]

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