Tim Worstall

The blocking is because of the persistent abuse Tim publishes on his blog of a great many people and by a great many people using language and tone that is unacceptable to a great many people It’s like banning a man from Church because he swears in the pub…..

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And I’ve left a comment there but shall add it here: Richard, Firstly this: “That foreign capital was not used to invest in Boots. It was used to acquire Boots. That is something fundamentally different of course. Investment requires the creation of new assets generating a tangible rate of return.” Yes, I know that’s the [...]

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Or turn them into mutuals perhaps: have the local politicians on the boards to make sure that what gets lent to has social value mebbe? After all, we all know that it’s this horible shareholder desire for profit which leads to the iniquities of the system: and more than that, the risk taking in pursuit [...]

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For example, evidence suggests that the vast majority households supported rationing, because it was fairer than the alternative of restricting food consumption through prices. Small individual action added up to a massive contribution: collecting food scraps – which due to rationing were nothing like the amount of food waste Britain produces today – was enough [...]

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And an extremely bad one for the rest of us as well. The organic farmers’ group the Soil Association objected to an application from Midland Pig Producers (MPP) for an intensive pig farm in Foston, Derbyshire, last summer, raising concerns in general terms about disease, antibiotic resistance and animal welfare in large pig herds. OK, [...]

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Yes, quite right on the substance of the case. And of course, Eljibiti is a word that we will all now have to use. This is an order and yes, we must indeed remember Ms. Pisani as our source.

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Rightie ho Richard: Assuming the UK pay is pro rata world pay total remuneration in the UK will be about £1.6 billion. But, as Robert Peston suggested yesterday, this is not split equally of course. It goes about 80 / 20 – i.e. 20% of staff get 80% of pay. So, that’s average pay for [...]

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This is amusing: And they do not need to do so, because the reality is that this inflation is being imported. Russian wheat shortages, imported gas and oil (and we are now a net importer), imported food and increases in the price of raw materials are what are causing this inflation, in addition to the [...]

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So, we have an innovative product–a mini-book that will sell for just $4–to tell us that we have stopped coming up with valuable innovative products.

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Such is the reality of Eric Pickles’s moronic insistence that councils can somehow do “more with less”. As a Unite rep from Hull told me, the reality is redundancies, skyrocketing contracting-out, and determined attacks on salaries, hours, sick pay and overtime Yup, that’s exactly what is needed. Less pay and more work from the public [...]

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The upper chamber of Spain‘s parliament has caused controversy by allowing senators to debate in five of the country’s languages, with interpreters employed to turn their words into a tongue they all speak perfectly: Castilian Spanish. Critics claim that allowing senators to speak Catalan, Galician, Valencian and the Basque language of Euskara has turned the [...]

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Bankers were accused of “sticking two fingers up to austerity Britain” after it was revealed that Goldman Sachs had handed its staff a £10bn payday as new figures showed unemployment among Britain’s young people had hit its highest level since modern records began. Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that one in five [...]

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An energy trader is suing BP for unpaid bonuses of $1.1m (£700,000), claiming that he made the oil giant more than $20m of profit in a single year. It isn’t just bankers who get the bonuses you see. In fact, it’s not even only bankers that play in the markets where bankers earn bonuses. So [...]

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Unions said a proposed review of primary and secondary school subjects would render the curriculum unfit for the needs of a modern education system. They insisted that a renewed focus on detailed subject knowledge was “elitist” Very strange use of that word there. It’s elitist to know things now, is it?

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I am increasingly aware that people are now asking whether we can do without the investment banks – which are the toxic element of the banking industry. And increasingly I think the answer is an unambiguous yes. Sure we can. Plenty of places don’t have investment banks: no one had them three hundred or so [...]

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And it really is a major problem. Here’s a piece about geothermal energy. OK, great, lovely, why not? We should indeed be looking at all possible sources. What’s the one really rather important thing that he doesn’t mention? Yup, that’s right: price. Sigh. There is no shortage of energy: there’s not even a shortage of [...]

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And ignorant to boot. UK UnCut claims that since Boots, bought out by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 2008, moved its headquarters to Switzerland, the tax it pays has dropped from 33% to 3%, saving £150m a year. It isn’t the move to Switzerland which has reduced Boots’ corporation tax bill. Not, at [...]

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Three people complained that the poster for Vitamin Water was misleading for using the word “nutritious” in the catchline, with one of them saying they believed each 500ml bottle contained more than 30g of sugar. Upholding the complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority said it thought consumers would understand the word “nutritious” as a claim that [...]

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The EBRD, which is headquartered in London, said it had lifted the immunity of four Russian officials following a request from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). In a statement, the EBRD said: “The purpose of lifting the immunity is to facilitate investigations by both UK police and by Russian authorities into alleged criminal [...]

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Edwards denied murder but accepted that he had committed manslaughter on the grounds of provocation. The jury returned a not guilty verdict to murder but guilty on the manslaughter charge. Mr Justice Andrew Nicol, sentencing, said the events of June 11 were “the proverbial straw which broke the camel’s back”. Jailing Edwards for five years, [...]

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