Tim Worstall

So, I’m in the post office, long queue, start reading the “Argos style” catalogue they’ve got. Buy books, coffee makers, slipper and bathrobe sets, that sort of thing. Come across a “home distillation kit”. And yes, it’s for making booze, not essential oils of citrus or anything. They do things a bit different when in [...]

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Ladies and Gentlemen, please start your doggies

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Wonder how many people will receive this Amazon email today? More importantly, how many might act upon it? Are you looking for something in our Business, Finance & Law Books category? If so, you might be interested in these items. Chasing Rainbows: Economic Myths, Environmental Facts Climate: the Great Delusion (Independent Minds) The Rational Optimist: [...]

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But worse, note the extraordinarily limited thinking on display. It is that of the rational economist which assumes that the future is entirely predictable on a probabilistic basis, that the past is a certain guide to the future and that uncertainty does not exist as a result. So, they argue, because for a while (and [...]

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We’re told often enough that we’re a horribly patriarchal, uncaring society. We don’t take account of gender properly and our reactions and attitudes towards transexuals (or whatever the correct phrase is these days) is simply appalling. And of course this is all far worse on the “right”. Might I offer a counter-argument? Deirdrie McCloskey. Her [...]

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Via Angry Bear.

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So, we’ve a list of cars that qualify for the £5,000 off deal for electric vehicles. Which one isn’t on the list? The unfortunate thing is the Roadster is the only EV on the market now that meets all the technical criteria for the grant – all the others named today won’t be on sale [...]

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Yes, still entirely possible to have a lovely screaming match about the real costs but: Although the net burden so far has been just £90m, the NAO said That’s the actual cost on the current or income account. The Government’s bank rescue debts amount to £124bn, with £67bn of capital injected into the lenders and [...]

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All terribly fascinating: In 2009, Dr Goetzl studied a group of 50 elderly adults through the National Institute on Aging, examining their levels of key cytokines (proteins that either attack viruses or bacteria or cause inflammation that leads to decline in health). He discovered that truly healthy 70-80-year-old women had the same levels as healthy [...]

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I have been saddened, shocked, disappointed and disheartened to learn today that the Fabian Society, a think-tank that I have long admired and worked with on many occasions, is allowing Provident Financial to sponsor one of its events on financial inclusion taking place tomorrow in Westminster; not least as Provident is one of the worst [...]

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Railway union boss Bob Crow reckons putting a one-penny tax on text messaging would wipe out half the UK’s deficit, demonstrating a rather optimistic approach to financial planning. It’s not just that he’s ignorant of basic economics, that you’ll get fewer such messages if you charge for each and every one of them, it’s that [...]

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So back a while we thought about (and actually had worked out how to do it) how we might take advantage of a gap in the law regarding light bulbs. Call them heatbulbs. As Richard records today, it wouldn’t have worked. We wrote recently about what appeared to be an ingenious attempt by a German [...]

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Serious that is: been involved in running a golf club or golf society, sat on the Handicap Committee, that sort of thing. I’m looking for someone who can walk me through the whole process of who can issue an “official handicap”. Anyone?

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In a 42-page opinion, Judge Hudson wrote: “Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market.” Allowing Congress to exert such authority, he said, “would invite unbridled exercise of [...]

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Go back to The Guardian it looks like. Update: as in the comments, the title of this should really be, “So, what’s Polly Toynbee’s husband going to do now he’s taken redundancy from the Audit Commission?” Same answer…..

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It’s a good piece, certainly. But our man, Mr. Chakrabortty, entirely manages to miss the implication of his finding. If fund managers and front bench politicians are so hermetically sealed off from the real world, if they really don’t know what’s actually happening out there, then we should simply not be using fund managers and [...]

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Pressed on whether he believed strict new EU guidelines that limit the cash element of bonuses to 30pc and tie awards to a multiple of base salary will result in a flight of talent overseas, the internal market commissioner rejected the claim. “I would not be overly impressed by the blackmail exerted in which this [...]

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The bank had argued that it was legally required to pay bonuses to bankers for work done during 2008 – in the lead-up to the banking crisis. However, Allied reconsidered its position following a letter from the Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan. In November, it lost a case brought by a former banker, John Foy, [...]

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A reasonable review from the very much pro-climate change side.

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Here.

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