Tim Worstall

Iran will not allow its universities to begin teaching certain disciplines it deems too “Western”, and existing courses will be revised, a senior education ministry official ruled. After all, we’re terribly short in courses on how to conduct a stoning, chop the hand off a thief or how to rape a young virgin so that [...]

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Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of Americans Are Fat? Yes, I think I would buy that. Not getting your regular fix of food does tend to lead to not being fat. Skeletally thin even.

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From an editorial: A Republican-controlled Congress leapt at it, passing the Homeland Investment Act, which allowed companies to repatriate some $300 billion in 2005 and pay only 5.25 percent in taxes. As for all of those promised factories and jobs, they did not materialize. Research by three prominent economists, including Kristin Forbes, a former top [...]

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By slashing government spending, by making half a million people in the public sector and as many again in the private sector redundant, he might be claiming to cut government cost but what he is actually doing is something much more sinister and dangerous. What he is doing is deliberately sucking demand out of our [...]

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At the ASI. Just yet another reason why we don’t need the EU.

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For a moment in 2008, it seemed that such lavish rewards would vanish. The bubble in football like the bubble in the economy would be replaced by an interlude of sanity. No such luck. Last week, as Rooney demanded a salary of £10.4m, the City prepared to gorge itself on a bonus pot of £7bn. [...]

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On its own terms it has to do everything in its power to achieve the economic growth on which its budgetary forecasts are based – not least the creation of some 2.5 million private-sector jobs over the next five years even as half a million public sector jobs are forecast to be lost. What will [...]

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Ministers were accused last night of deliberately driving poor people out of wealthy inner cities as London councils revealed they were preparing a mass exodus of low-income families from the capital because of coalition benefit cuts. Why should poor people be subsidised to live in expensive property? Subsidised to live somewhere, sure, but there are [...]

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Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, is expected to announce plans within days to dispose of about half of the 748,000 hectares of woodland overseen by the Forestry Commission by 2020. But only one and a half cheers. Why not sell the other half too?

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The New York Times actually has a decent column in it. Why would Democrats support a program that has such a deleterious effect on their most loyal constituencies? It is, in part, callous political calculus. It’s an easy and relatively cheap way for them to buy a tough-on-crime badge while simultaneously pleasing police unions. The [...]

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In addition my tolerance of the comments that add little or nothing to debate (and that’s rather a lot of those that seek to oppose my views, I suggest) will be even lower than usual. It’s an interesting version of “debate” isn’t it? Developing the agenda this country needs does not require debate here with [...]

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So, this one that Caroline Lucas (the original calcs done by you know who) has come out with. That sacking 490,000 civil servants will cost more than employing them. For the benefits that have to be paid will be higher than the wages. In any case, surely this cannot be right, if you consider the [...]

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Via Guido: Lord Ashcroft (Conservative) To Ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they expect citizens to organise their tax affairs in order to maximise tax payable. Lord Sassoon (Commercial Secretary, HM Treasury; Conservative) The Government expect citizens to pay tax that is due by law. Note, due by law, not by “spirit”.

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Yup, usual stuff. Entirely ignores that corporation tax is largely bourne by the workers, not the shareholders, and certainly not by the company itself. Trots out his known to be wrong estimate of tax avoidance. This is fun too: These big companies’ tax rate will fall from 28% to 24% over the next four years [...]

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At the ASI. Why council rents should be 100% of market rents.

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Urban areas will bear the brunt of the spending cuts announced this week with every major English city facing a triple whammy of the biggest job losses, council cuts and benefit withdrawals, a Guardian analysis of the impact of the key decisions reveals. Local authorities with dense populations face the deepest cuts, according to a [...]

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In Blood on the Trading Floor: Waste, Sacrifice and Death in Financial Crises, Dr Crosthwaite claims his anthropological study of investors and traders found evidence of an element of masochistic satisfaction in running up losses. He maintains that the crisis was the modern equivalent to the traditional Native American practice of “potlatch”, a ritual ceremony [...]

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Nisar Ahmed was found to lack the “basic skills” of anyone entering the teaching profession by a General Teaching Council (GTC) disciplinary panel which believed he was incapable of ever improving. While 13 other teachers have received temporary suspensions from teaching for incompetence Mr Ahmed, 46, is the only one to have no time limit [...]

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The explicable miracle of Hiware Bazar is just one example among many given in the UN report – dryly entitled The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity – to prove the point that looking after nature makes economic, as well as ecological, sense. Not quite: what you example shows (an example of careful rainwater harvesting) is [...]

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This: Families who want to travel abroad during the half term break are having to pay almost 70 per cent more om average than they would the week after, according to fresh research that highlights how parents are being stung by travel companies. Should read: Families who want to travel abroad during the half term [...]

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