Tim Worstall

My comment there: This might be another of Mr. Chakrabortty’s pieces. Has the symptoms: Output in the building industry shot up 4% over the quarter, making it the largest contributor to growth. Rilly? This is what the ONS (you know, the people who collate these statistics) says: Manufacturing made the largest contribution to the growth, [...]

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Fascinating stuff really: Environmentalists have already raised concerns about the carbon footprint of proposed space tourism flights, such as that planned by British billionaire Richard Branson, but according to new research the controversial flights could have an even more immediate impact on the world’s climate. A new study, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, [...]

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He is a wag, isn’t he? Approximately £100bn–£125bn of British investors’ money is believed to be in Swiss banks. OK. The Treasury said earlier this week that the agreement, due to be hammered out in the new year, would bring in extra revenues currently held in Swiss bank accounts beyond the reach of the UK [...]

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Jeffrey Landrigan is awaiting execution: Landrigan’s father died of natural causes while awaiting execution for murder in Arkansas five years ago.

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No, my actual (rather small) point is that when the aspirational poor were previously shunted to distant dumping grounds, the biggest error was in not sending us far enough away from people like Polly Toynbee and her metrocentric ilk; those for whom if it doesn’t happen in London, then it doesn’t really happen at all.

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Blinder piece of economics here.

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An international superstar told a court she felt ‘vulnerable and violated’ after a blackmailer gained possession of highly sensitive pictures of her. The celebrity received a series of threatening and anonymous letters and emails from the crook, demanding she hand over tens of thousands of pounds in return for the images. The musician – who [...]

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As if this is not enough, many of the public sector workers released will not have the skills the private sector businesses will need. Many will not have the attitude required for jobs in the cold outside world. And in The Guardian as well. Might we hope that the Great Cull does in fact engender [...]

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Dean Baker, one of the few lefty economists I have much time for (no, really, some of his stuff is excellent. Like pointing out that the collapse of the housing boom in the US would have led to recession whatever happened to the banks, $7, $8 trillion of wealth disappearing will have that effect) I’m [...]

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Rent was always the glitch in the benefit system, and Beveridge never found a logical answer. Well, here at last is a final solution he never considered: put all poor people in distant dumping grounds where nobody wants to live because there is no work, then call them workless scroungers, lacking in aspiration for the [...]

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And he was doing so well too. He’s got superstar economics, he’s understood why someone like Rooney, who might be only 1 or 2% better than other strikers available, gets the really big bucks. Then he falls over himself. Ranking, the spread of technology, and the development of a common culture: superstars benefit from all [...]

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Food prices are rising, yes. But it really does annoy me when everything and the kitchen sink gets thrown in there as an explanation and the real causes get missed….or just mentioned alongside the nonsense. But other analysts highlight the food riots in Mozambique that killed 12 people last month and claim that spiralling prices [...]

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The Aeneid and Zombies: In thys sequel to the moost-loved epique of classical tymes, the howlinge soule of Turnus gooth nat to helle but rathir infecteth the manye deade left from the horribel werres that the booke doth narrate. Zombie Pallas, Zombie Mezentius on hys Zombie horse Rhaebus, and Zombie stag-of-Tyrrus-that-Ascanius-accidentallye-killede, all lumber wyth muchel [...]

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Well, actually, there’s a rather large number of people who think that it didn’t….or at least that monetary policy was a great deal more important. Which means that here, in our own times and conditions, QE, interest rates and the exchange rate are more important than “the cuts”.

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Just a quick look at quite how much bureaucracy has to be got through before new trains can be run through the Channel Tunnel. It really would all be a great deal cheaper without quite so much paper shuffling, wouldn’t it?

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And now it seems science may back up Ozzy Osbourne’s theory that he has a particularly hardy family tree. Researchers studying his DNA have found that the singer is the descendant of a Neanderthal man. I’ve always had my suspicions about Brummies you know…..

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This is one of those things that always amuses me. The incredible blindness of a certain type of Greenie environmentalist to what economists and others have been saying about the economics of being a Greenie environmentalist. Blindness to what even such Greenie environmentalists hold as one of their core beliefs actually. The fashion for collecting [...]

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This looks good: The changes, which are due to be detailed in a green paper by the end of the year, mean a single person could receive £7,280 a year and a couple £14,560. Ministers believe that removing means testing and the resulting reduction in bureaucracy will save around £6bn a year. They believe a [...]

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Britain’s spending cuts have been branded as “absolutely insane” by one of the world’s leading currency traders, who expects the pound to tumble beyond the low it has set this year. As we know, fiscal contraction in a recession isn’t being very Keynesian. However, there is another potential driver of growth: the external balance. If [...]

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Sir Alex Ferguson has alluded to Wayne Rooney’s contract stand-off being driven by the player’s advisers after claiming that agents, rather than players, are the root cause of difficulties in negotiations. This seems logical. You are, after all, a highly successful and experienced manager and businessman, you employ a number other of such. The players, [...]

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