Tim Worstall

Twenty years ago most people understood cocaine as a distant, almost mythical substance – prohibitively expensive and thereby restricted to either metropolitan high-rollers or those in the higher reaches of the entertainment industry: “God’s way of telling you you’re earning too much money,” as Robin Williams once said. I can well recall the first time [...]

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Like it or not, Labour’s sanctions were exceedingly tough: last year 379,030 people had benefits withdrawn for failing to seek work. We already starve people (hyperbole alert!) for not seeking work. Why the fuss then over starving people who won’t take offered make work jobs?

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At the ASI. Finding another lie in the anti-smoking crusade.

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She asks me to bring your attention to something else so I give you some of her cartooning. aeroplane from lucy pepper on Vimeo.

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Yes, I know, strange question. But I’ve heard that there’s something, a treatment, machine, which the French use post partum which other peeps don’t. So what I’d like to do is track down a French gynecologist and thus find out a) whether this is true and then b) who makes them. Anyone got any ideas?

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The debt was more than twice this level in 1945, and we still built the NHS and secured decades of prosperity. Would have been helpful if you’d pointed out that Major Atlee was running budget surpluses at the time, no?

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Or at least, so we are told and asked over at LC. maybe so, but Finland, with a GDP below ours, manages to send 80% of its young people to university on 100% grants. So why can’t we do this? Largely because the 80% number in Finland is entirely bollocks. Here’s the OECD numbers for [...]

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Publishing press releases without even the intervention of Guardian staff. Copy on this page is provided by SABMiller, supporter of the Water Hub Wonder how much The G charged for that?

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Boy did the Gini coefficient decline from 1934 to 1945! As Lew Rockwell said of Hitler’s economics: Proto-Keynesian socialist economist Joan Robinson wrote that “Hitler found a cure against unemployment before Keynes was finished explaining it.” What were those economic policies? He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public works programs like Autobahns, protected [...]

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How does she do it? Mother-of-six Angelina Jolie shows off her sleek toned physique in racy corset Well, there’s the being naturally slim and genetically fortunate part, of course. There’s also the part about her having had two pregnancies (twins and a singleton) and adopting the other three. Could, y’know, mebbe have something to do [...]

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Investors have watched Ireland very closely for months, but concerns were heightened this week after French and German officials said bondholders should share any losses linked to a potential sovereign debt restructuring. Until now investors and governments operated on the basis that the EU would guarantee the interest payments of any EU country. That’s the [...]

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A free trade area for Africa, to help the impoverished continent match the spectacular growth of Far East economies, emerged as a distinctive British initiative at the G20 summit today. The anti-poverty strategy, which is partly the brainchild of former Labour minister turned G20 adviser Baroness Vadera, has been developed with Jacob Zuma, the president [...]

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A different method of viewing the, umm, slow version of Ace of Spades. //

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// And so are the people who serve it

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Kronebourg 1664 apparently changes reality

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Glass is being thrown; I fling myself behind a barrier and scramble on to a ledge for safety. A nonplussed school pupil from south London has had the same idea. He grins, gives me a hand up and offers me a cigarette of which he is at least two years too young to be in [...]

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see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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Seen it before really: A few coachloads of students went from my university down to the big Grosvenor Square demo and the ensuing scrap with the police led to the same sort of headlines that we can read this morning. Then, as now, there was concern, there was anger, there was indignation, but above all, [...]

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That generation of student’s isn’t going to forget this betrayal easily and in five years time they’ll be ready to punish both parties. So, err, when do these higher fees and loans come in then? After the current generation have graduated maybe?

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