Tim Worstall

Men are more likely to grant a woman’s request if she times it at 6pm, a survey has found. The survey was done by: The survey was carried out by the pharmaceuticals corporation and contraceptives manufacturer Bayer Schering Pharma. Appropriate because of course 6 pm is about when a man is pondering what he’s going [...]

[Read more →]

Do you remember the Hills Report? That’s the one that said that the 90th percentile family had £850,000 of wealth while the 10% percetile one had £8,000? And thus that there was a 100:1 wealth ratio in this country? And do you remember me spluttering that this was entirely insane, that they were measuring the [...]

[Read more →]

Separate research from the Soil Association showed most livestock in Britain is now fed on genetically modified (GM) soy grown in South America. Raising livestock in such ‘factory farm’ conditions is contributing to deforestation as trees are chopped down to make way for the soy crop. It also uses up more water and produces more [...]

[Read more →]

Screen violence ‘desensitises teenage brains’ Violent films and video games really do numb the brains of teenagers, with repeated viewings making them less sensitive to aggression, according to a new study. It’s called catharsis and Aristotle thought it was a thoroughly good thing.

[Read more →]

Another report from Ritchie today. First we propose that everyone who has a UK passport should be tax resident in the UK, automatically, wherever they live in the world. That means they would always have liability to pay tax in the UK on their worldwide income, gains and wealth, just as all US citizens do [...]

[Read more →]

The technology could have generated up to 5% of Britain’s electricity requirements, and created hundreds of jobs and develop technology that could have been exported around the world. Instead it is likely that new nuclear power stations will be approved, which will doubtless be financed and owned by foreign companies and produce fewer jobs. Jobs [...]

[Read more →]

As this blog’s Maine based furniture maker says: Bury us? We Berryed you And I’m told, but cannot confirm, that that’s Marvin Gaye doing the backing vocals. Happy Birthday Chuck.

[Read more →]

From here.

[Read more →]

Glorious opening: In ‘The Missing Billions’ tax avoidance by UK companies was estimated at £12 billion. That estimate is not updated here, largely because,… No, sadly they don’t go on to say the true reason why: it would just be so embarrassing to have to admit that this was one of the parts of that [...]

[Read more →]

Research by my union shows that, between 1918 and 1961, the debt was more than 100% of GDP. Quite, we fought two world wars in the 20th century. What’s the fucking excuse now?

[Read more →]

In other words, pensioners, savers, companies, households and individuals are lending to the banks. Err, yes. That’s what “depositing money in a bank” means. That you are lending money to the bank. Just amazing what you can learn in the byways of heterodox monetary theory, isn’t it?

[Read more →]

Rock’s fake rebels The Rolling Stones were always more reactionary than revolutionary, as Keith Richards proves Blimey, that’s a revelation, isn’t it? About a band whose first album was nothing but note for note covers of blues standards?

[Read more →]

Born in 1945 in post-war Britain, the welfare state met its end in Britain this month, when the chancellor George Osborne repudiated the concept of the “universal benefit”, the idea that everyone, not just the poor, should benefit from social protection. Y’what? If the rich become ill they can use the NHS, if the middle [...]

[Read more →]

So they’re not going to fund the Severn Barrage. Sir Jonathan says: Jonathon Porritt oversaw a 2007 report that backed the giant barrage while he was chair of the government advisory body, the Sustainable Development Commission, which was itself abolished last week. Last night he said: “If the government is not prepared to find any [...]

[Read more →]

So long since I lived in the country: Are they bayonet or screw? Is there some code which tells us the base size? Hmm, looking at a couple of sites, seems that it’s either the B 22/Bc (bayonet) or the E27 (edison screw). Sound about right to you for the basic, standard, tungsten filament bulb?

[Read more →]

On this red mud in Hungary: Soon after the spill, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences declared that the red sludge was nontoxic. The chief executive of MAL went on camera to say it was a completely harmless substance, that it could simply be washed away with water. They were quickly proved wrong. The first responders [...]

[Read more →]

I’d hesitate to insist that it is absolutely true but…. As can be seen (from the above chart) there was a step change in the US economy’s indebtedness from the early 1980s onwards and then an additional one in the late 1990s/early 2000s. A similar picture is apparent across most of the Western World. Basically [...]

[Read more →]

By higher education becoming a market, whose expansion, we learn, will be dictated by student choice – “as students will be paying more in than the current system, they will demand more in return”. Does this chairman of the Tate and former trustee of the British Museum believe that the ambitions of these institutions should [...]

[Read more →]

Erm, can anyone explain Will’s column to me today? Other, that is, than the obvious undercurrent that they’re all stupid bastards for not listening to Will Hutton, those world leaders the fools? For a start he seems not to understand the difference with fixed (but changeable) exchange rates based on a gold standard in the [...]

[Read more →]

On another one of Tony Juniper’s idiot misunderstandings of the economics of growth and climate change: “At the moment, we judge success basically in terms of how much economic growth we can achieve, which in turn is often a proxy for how much stuff we are using up. It’s a big challenge, but then it [...]

[Read more →]