Tim Worstall

Having a brain capable of deciding not to eat meat may in fact be due to …. eating meat. The argument is that our large brains are very expensive, nutritionally, to keep going. Some other part of the body (with reference to the “standard” mammallian blueprint) must have shrunk in terms of the nutrition required [...]

[Read more →]

At the ASI. Yes, the internal NHS market does work. We have the proof.

[Read more →]

But prosperity is not a zero-sum game Quite. Bit odd to see that in The Observer though, isn’t it?

[Read more →]

Maybe 32 oC is too hot for a 47 year old not very fit man to try and cycle 50 km into a brisk wind?

[Read more →]

A new acronym appears: LGBTQI. And what does it mean? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex The “transgender” is sometime replaced with “transgender/transexual” which would, I suppose, give us LGBTTQQI. I suppose we could have the occasional bit of fun by adding further terms: LGBTTQQII, so that we can include the indifferent. Or [...]

[Read more →]

see more Very Demotivational

[Read more →]

I note I am, according to something called Finance Centres International, the 485th most influential person in the world of offshore. Well, thanks guys. Four questions then. Why is Dan Mitchell 244th? Because Dan’s a better campaigner than Ritchie?

[Read more →]

At the ASI. Why hypothecation of taxes is a bad idea.

[Read more →]

On the other side if there is no agency problem then deregulation should remain the order of the day.  Trade restrictions create arbitrageurs – and the arbitrageurs ensure the trade restrictions don’t work anyway. Sensible policy.

[Read more →]

There are rumours that this has been known to happen, yes.

[Read more →]

But 40 years after it was enshrined in law in the UK, women are still paid, on average, 17% less than men for full-time work and 39.9% less for part-time work. No, this isn’t true. Firstly, this is using the mean average and ONS says that we should all be using the median: less affected [...]

[Read more →]

This will be interesting: Strike threat after councils impose two-year pay freeze Scotland faces a winter of disruption to vital public services after council workers reacted with fury to the imposition of a two-year pay freeze. Last time around, 78/79, such strikes were a factor in the electorate saying that the government of the time, [...]

[Read more →]

Construction of a brand new 1,300 mile road between the two cities was recently completed almost five decades after construction first begun meaning it is now theoretically possible to drive across Russia on a continuous joined up network of roads. Dressed in a casual polo shirt and wearing sunglasses, Mr Putin said he was keen [...]

[Read more →]

Cabinet minister may act over false claims of gay affairs The thing is, have things moved on enough now that the allegation would be an affair or two, thus breaching his oath to his wife, or that he’s gay? Which of the two is actually considered disreputable these days?

[Read more →]

Yes, that explains a lot

[Read more →]

And today’s example of a journalist who really doesn’t have a firm grasp on numbers is Paul Routledge in The Mirror. The Office for National Statistics says that 178 in every 10,000 people in management and professional jobs die before they’re 65. The comparable figure for middle-class jobs like teaching is 297. But for manual [...]

[Read more →]

However, fossil fuel addiction can be solved only when we recognise an economic law as certain as the law of gravity: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy they will be used. Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at [...]

[Read more →]

Impenetrable “clusters of privilege” are forming around the best state schools, Barnardo’s, Britain’s biggest children’s charity, warns today. Poorer families are losing out to better-off neighbours who move house or attend church to get a better education. Unfair admissions practices result in schools with skewed intakes that do not reflect their neighbourhoods, Barnardo’s says, citing [...]

[Read more →]

Odd one this. Via. Hmm. Dunno, dunno nuffink about our man in jail. Then again, someone trying to do a Ph.D in a British jail? Asking for a pint or two’s worth to pay his fees? Worth £20 of my money. Worth any of your’s? He only needs another 79 people to think so after [...]

[Read more →]

The idea that the best way to deal with amazingly profitable and slightly addictive substances is to let the most thieving and murderous people in our country sell them, and kill anyone who’d mention this to the regulators, also doesn’t strike me as top notch. Sadly, it was also one of the lines that Sunny [...]

[Read more →]