Tim Worstall

Here. For example, if it was whooping cough then we would use the mucus from the chest of someone with whooping cough to make a remedy to protect against getting whooping cough…..some people and myself are doing are using these nosodes as an alternative to vaccination. So what the Woo Merchants are doing is recapitulating [...]

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But the north-south divide exists. It has been there for all my lifetime and it is about to grow sharper. Independent research confirms what is obvious enough, which is that the government cuts are going to hammer the north more, and the north-east in particular. In a survey for the BBC last week, 324 council [...]

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So this fuss over conflict materials has finally hit The Telegraph. As one would expect, after it’s been filtered through the vaious NGOs, press releases and other wibbles, not a great deal of the accuracy is left. Most mobile phone parts are made in Asia by American or European companies, but the minerals that go [...]

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Pathways to Work was aimed at cutting the number of sickness benefit claimants, which has remained stubbornly high at nearly 2.6 million. Through the scheme, private firms were paid to find work for those on benefits. However, the report said that they “seriously underperformed” and had lower success rates than the state-owned Jobcentre Plus. In [...]

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Sweden, the most secular country in the world, gives the highest proportion of its gross domestic product in aid. Of the top 10 aid donors, only the United States is a strongly religious country. Well, yeah, but no, but yeah but. As to Sweden being the most secular country in the world: At the end [...]

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Does the Tax Justice Network actually read the posts on the Tax Justice Network site? I want to emphasise that these two examples come from the same post, not from different ones. So: the transaction was an offshore sham, designed to avoid tax on the sale of real assets in India. The Indian authorities saw [...]

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Born in Scotland, raised in Australia — or so he said, in his impeccable British regional accent… Someone have a word would they? Impeccable, yes, British, yes, regional, yes, but I can’t think of any way in which you can have two of those three together, an accent which is both “impeccable British” and also [...]

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see more Lolcats and funny pictures It’s possible that this might come in useful as a comment on certain economic theories.

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At the ASI. Praising Damein Hirst for his economics insights (well, it’s not going to be for the paintings, is it?).

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Over at the TUC: But it’s worth looking at the index figure itself. The index compares the seasonally-adjusted level of production with 100 being the figure for 2006. The July 2010 figure is 90.8, which is certainly up from the low point of 86.0 last August, but its well below the figures of over 100 [...]

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Which goes some way to explaining why Britain, a country perfectly suited to growing apples, now imports 70% of those we eat. The apple shelves are a global tour, from Chile to South Africa, from New Zealand to China, even as we head into prime British apple season. We will never become self-sufficient in apples, [...]

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It is thought that just one third of the electronic equipment discarded from within the EU is recycled in line with European regulations. And Under European regulations, all electronic waste must be recycled to reduce its impact on the environment. Most electronic equipment contains harmful metals and chemicals that are dangerous to the environment and [...]

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Gosh, don’t the benefits of that rent control thought up by ivory tower academics go to the right people?

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It’s R. Murphy time at CiF again and before we get to the economics allow me to stick the boot in. And that’s a challenge for all who do believe in society, the rule of law, the value of government services and the democracy we enjoy. Are you willing to pay by cheque or card, [...]

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At the ASI. If $75,000 a year is what makes us happy then we’ve another century of this free market capitalist globalisation to go.

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The coalition’s spending cuts will hit the poorest in society 10 times harder than the richest as the health, social and education services they rely on are slashed, an extensive new study for the Trades Union Congress has found. Those who gain most from public services and redistribution through the tax system will lose the [...]

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After that enormous EU election ballot, nine out of ten top British environmentalists told me that they had not voted for it because, as one explained: “We actually know what its policies are” (the exception was Jonathan Porritt, a former chair of the party). And of course it was Sir Jonathan Porritt Bt. who actually [...]

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Allotment holders have been banned from donating home-grown vegetables and jam to local hospice – because the gifts breach health and safety rules No, you’re still allowed to donate for the patients to eat: after all, they are already dying. No, it’s this: For years amateur gardeners at Botcherby Paddock, Carlisle, have donated their produce [...]

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and 100,000 more families were homeless at the end of the 1980s than at the beginning Umm, no, I don’t think so. There weren’t 100,000 families homeless at all, let alone 100,000 more. There haven’t been 100,000 homeless families in the UK since the Blitz. Inadequate, sub-standard housing, perhaps, but that ain’t “homeless”. And in [...]

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Via, this: There are an estimated 100,000 uncaught killers in the United States. Cops are overworked, departments underfunded, and as many as one in three murders goes unsolved. But the Vidocq Society — named after Eugene Francois Vidocq of Paris, the world’s first detective and founder of France’s Brigade de la Sûreté police force — [...]

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