Tim Worstall

Hmm. No comprehensive figure is available, but based on informal reporting through her own networks, Kinnell suggests that 134 sex workers, including a small number of transsexuals, are known or believed to have been killed since 1990. And there are thought to be about 80,000 in the trade. Total adult population is something like 50 [...]

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Umm: The WikiLeaks Task Force will “examine whether the latest release of WikiLeaks documents might affect the agency’s foreign relationships or operations,” CIA spokesman George Little said. I have a feeling that a rather large number of the CIA’s more junior peeps, the ones who actually do things and know what’s going on, are having [...]

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In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Paul Fisher, the executive director of markets and a member of the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), said central bank policymakers would like rates to increase as much as tenfold from their current historic low of 0.5pc as soon as possible. No, this doesn’t mean that mortgage rates [...]

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They point us to this article. The future of socialism in Europe is very much in doubt. Several countries are teetering on the brink of insolvency as a result of decades of excessive government spending for the welfare state. High taxes have handled the burden in the past, but people are now living longer, they [...]

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However, I am now a bit confused about the stated reasons of our progressive left of why they oppose Wal-Mart. After all, leftoids like to educate us that selling food and other necessities to ordinary people for low prices is bad when Wal-Mart does it. But when Hugo Chavez does the exact same thing, except that [...]

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The only revelation here seems to be that someone in the US embassy reads the Daily Mail. Which is rather worrying, I suppose.

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Yes, they really do exist. Subsidies for the use of fossil fuels. Obviously this is insane when we’ve also got huge subsidies for the use of non-fossil fuels. The thing is though, it’s different countries offering the different subsidies. It’s the rich western countries subsidising non-fossil while the fossil fuel subsidies are all in poor [...]

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The evidence is plain enough. In the wake of the election the proportion of new MPs educated privately stood at 35%, against 13% in 1997. Tories are more likely to have been privately educated, Labour to have been State so. So we’d expect the ratio to change between the Tories going down under a Labour [...]

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Lieutenant Mark Kent, who popped out of a red Salvation Army lorry marked “Emergency Response Unit” to fetch more polystyrene cups for tea and coffee, thought people were cheerier than they had been the previous day. He and his colleagues had handed out around 800 free teas and coffees this morning and were in it [...]

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Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures were still severely disrupting air traffic in Europe on Tuesday, with Germany particularly badly hit as European officials criticized airport authorities for failing to prepare for the bad weather…….Brussels airport cancelled flights because it was running out of deicing fluid,……. As the disruption continued, the European Commission criticized airport operators [...]

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So, the auditors to the big banks were worried, back in financial crisis time, that they might not in fact be going concerns. And they were right to be so of course. Banking is an inherently frail industry and even more so when bank runs are breaking out. For of course bank runs are what [...]

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Oh what silly boys you are Yes I’ve run companies and there is nothing to stop me doing so And yes my wife has owned shares in them Fulcrum Publishing was set up to publish her articles and my software. It was owned 50 / 50 as a result It turned out – I agree [...]

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Via, this The cold snap may have only just bitten but Heathrow’s snow team has been working for months to ensure the UK’s hub airport will once again be prepared for the onset of winter. With an extra half a million pounds invested in equipment this year, Heathrow’s airside department run constant checks of runway [...]

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Quite lovely to see Guardianistas tying themselves up in knots trying to prove that there are indeed indigenous peoples who do and should have special rights but that Britons are not such. Even if they are indigenous. The distinction seems to be that indigenous people must be an oppressed minority struggling for their rights, not [...]

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That snow outside is what global warming looks like Difficult isn’t it? Snow bound zebra is evidence of global warming.

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Mr. Chakrabortty has a write up of an interesting little experiment on e-Bay. Yet monetary cost and true worth are not the same thing at all, which is one reason why accountants, loss-adjusters and Alan Yentob all come in for such stick. It’s also why Rob Walker and Josh Glenn were able to conduct one [...]

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How many people live in Britain? The census next March is supposed to tell us. Population matters desperately for fair distribution of the wretchedly dwindling sums handed out to councils, police and the health service. Simply move to a system where local services are paid for by locally raised taxes. As happens in Denmark and [...]

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Andrew Bosomworth, head of Pimco’s portfolio management in Europe, said current policies are untenable in the absence of fiscal union and will lead to a break-up of the euro. “Greece, Ireland and Portugal cannot get back on their feet without either their own currency or large transfer payments,” he told German newspaper Die Welt. Those [...]

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Leslie Baleham, 64, was jailed for a year after raking in thousands after turning his home in Radford, Notts, into a den for sexual encounters. When investigators raided the brothel, they discovered the married accountant in bed with his Chinese madame Ping Ping Li with cash strewn across the bed sheets. Police counted more than [...]

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€30 of steel scrap or €800,000 of artwork? It is thought that one of the pieces the thieves were trying to offload for scrap was a steel sculpture by Basque artist Chillida titled “Topos IV”, valued at 800,000 euros (£675,000). Detectives at the time said the robbery had the hallmarks of “an inside job” and [...]

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