Tim Worstall

So, the Koch brothers fund various people because as rich men they spend their money trying to make the world a better place as they see it. It might not be a better world as you see it, that’s for sure, but they are spending their money as they think it will. The money comes [...]

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In B&Q they cost 20p. So why does the NHS spend £99 for a screw to put in your hip? The ones at B&Q are steel, have wide tolerances and are not sterile. The NHS buys screws that are titanium, with narrow tolerances and sterile. As the article itself says: We sell screws that are [...]

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At the ASI. Not as much of a change in his views as people seem to be saying.

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The world economy, which was growing at about 3% in per capita terms in the “bad old days” of widespread regulation and punitive taxation for the rich in the 1960s and 70s, has grown at about half that rate in the last three decades. Hmm. Taking a quick look at Angus Maddison’s figures that doesn’t [...]

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Dennis MacShane really is a one, isn’t he? David Cameron and Nick Clegg stand accused of sending the “wrong signal” to pimps and human traffickers across the world after the coalition decided against endorsing an EU directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves. As new figures show that fewer [...]

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The Reverend Robin Roe. Irishman, Church of Ireland priest, British military chaplain, MC, Ireland and British Lions rugby international (plus Barbarians, London Irish etc). Rugby led directly to his Army duties as, when England played Ireland at Twickenham in 1952, Roe was one of two novice priests – both Protestants – in the Irish team. [...]

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OK,  so toll road may or may not be of value. So, how do we try and work out whether it is of value? In the spring of 2006 it attracted just under 60,000 drivers a day. By the start of this year, the figure had fallen to just over 40,000, marginally more than when [...]

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Bjørn Lomborg, a self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” who has long opposed international curbs on carbon emissions, is now urging world leaders to invest heavily in clean energy. Erm, that’s not actually a great change from his previous views. In fact, I don’t see it as a change at all. He has always said that climate change [...]

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On Henry Ford and his $5 a day wages. So Don shouts at a newspaper and references an old post that I’d done on the same subject. Round and round we go as I point you to Don’s post. Great comment there though: Boeing has, apparently, decided that it’s okay if employees cannot afford the [...]

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To “suffer” from liberal guilt means that you are somewhat uneasy about all sorts of awkward things that it is tempting to harden your heart against, like global injustice, global warming, racism. It means that you are troubled by the stubborn persistence of our class system, though you personally have done fine by it. It [...]

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John Hilary is really rather funny in his rant against the cuts in overseas aid. We’re left with the impression that it’s all being gutted and that we’re going to leave the poor to starve in the gutter. Then he gives us some examples: Information received by Michael McCann MP indicates that Mitchell has already [...]

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Seriously, does anyone at all still believe this? In October 1984, six months into the dispute, the National Union of Mineworkers was desperate for cash to fund the strike, because a judge had ordered the confiscation of the union’s entire assets. The NUM leader, Arthur Scargill, had stepped up efforts to raise cash from the [...]

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A couple’s plans to build a £700,000 solar powered home in the Cotswolds have been left in ruins after developers built new houses which blocked out their sunlight. You can build green housing or you can build dense housing: but you cannot build both. Indeed, one of the few ways to get a release from [...]

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At Oxford he gained a reputation for being terribly kind to plain girls with nice manners and extremely waspish to pretty ones with nasty manners.

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Why is it (page 2) that those who could usefully wear makeup don’t? And what is it with cheap shitty silver jewelry?

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Good piece here. The Russian heatwave really isn’t a product of climate change, global warming or greenhouse gas emissions. It’s just one of those things: and the reason we’ve got a hotter record is that the longer you keep a set of records of some variable the further away from the norm the records will [...]

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For it is more important to be true to your wife than true to yourself, and more important to be true to your word than true to your desires. But there’s something to it all the same.

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Bob Herbert: America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Glen Beck: Despite the presence [...]

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This story and this story. Gay/not gay, cheating on wife/not cheating on wife, UK politics has, I think, moved on from caring all that much about either. Public payroll though is another matter.

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Via. See? Cash-strapped Bulgaria and Romania hoped taxing cigarettes would be an easy way to raise money but the hikes are driving smokers to a growing black market instead. Criminal gangs and impoverished Roma communities near borders with countries where prices are lower — Serbia, Macedonia, Moldova and Ukraine — have taken to smuggling which [...]

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