Tim Worstall

In September, the firms were making £65 annual profit per customer but that figure is now £97 on a typical household energy bill of £1,200. Well, yes, OK, but, umm. How much capital are they using? A quick peek at the Centrica accounts (which isn’t British Gas alone, I know, but using it as a [...]

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Pensioners will be hardest hit by rising inflation, with figures suggesting that those over 65 will lose more than £700 a year.. For, you see, pensioners as a whole have a lower poverty rate than the population as a whole. Thus we have the least poor part of the population taking a larger portion of [...]

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A lefty blog that understands, for at least one post, economics. Note please, I’m not saying that everything is right here: only that this is they economic way of thinking. Something all too rare in leftyland and welcome when it is found.

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The cat eats pizza.

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And more fundamentally, because of these changes, the NHS will morph from a directly managed system of healthcare into a regulated industry of competing providers. It is the difference between an army run from the centre and the government giving over the defence of the realm to a bunch of competing mercenaries. (Obviously they would [...]

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But even more alarming, hidden away in the voluminous operating framework is a brief clause that appeared without public announcement. It will blow apart the unified NHS as a service and turn it into a purchasing agency. Paragraph 5.43 says: “One new flexibility being introduced in 2011-12 is the opportunity for providers to offer services [...]

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This is what the head of a police unit set up to monitor domestic extremism said in 2009: “I’ve never said – and we don’t see – that any environmentalist is going to or has committed any violent acts.” That chimes with my experience. Two years ago I searched all the literature I could lay [...]

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In the Arctic Ocean as elsewhere, the full, destructive power of global warming appears unmistakable. Regional sea ice is retreating fast, threatening to raise global sea levels, Ice floats, remember?

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Just a little reminder: Her marriage to Dennis Prouse floundered and it was while working as a secretary at the Daily Mirror that she began an affair with Woods, then a swashbuckling star reporter. Crocombe was sacked for becoming pregnant and moved to be near her family in Southsea, Hants, before her son’s birth in [...]

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But the announcement means the Government has stopped short of setting a blanket minimum unit price for alcohol – such as 50p per unit – which would have pushed up the average price of all products. It is understood officials were concerned such a move would run in to legal difficulties. Similar proposals in Scotland [...]

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Financial support for this work from the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is gratefully acknowledged. Richard now gets grant money to read aloud his “reports” on YouTube? Blimey.

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Sirs, The flight I was supposed to be on this morning, from Faro to Gatwick, was cancelled by your good selves. I am now rebooked which is great. However, there seems to be a further stage under EU rules which needs to be raised. http://www.auc.org.uk/default.aspx?catid=306&pagetype=90&pageid=9367 From what I can see there the cancellation has led [...]

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First, as Ha Joon Chang argues in ‘23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism’, of all the groups whose interests should be put last { He means the shareholders-Tim} when considering the management of a company – after all they are, without doubt, the people with least loyalty to it in the case of [...]

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Fake Charities. Yes, they need volunteers. Go thou and do the Devil’s work.

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Via Twitter, the Conservative MEP Roger Helmer asks an “interesting” question: Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to “turn” a consenting homosexual?

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Ironically, global stockpiles of wheat are higher than they have been in years, despite the fact that the price has hit a record of more than £200 per tonne in London, having risen 90pc during last year. Err, why ironically? Why not thankfully? Or even “OMG isn’t that friggin’ fabulous”? This is straight Adam Smith [...]

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This type of donation makes up 40 per cent of contributions. The revised level of cash compensation could be raised to be in line with this – although some experts fear that raising the level too high could attract donors purely for financial reasons rather than for the public good. The HFEA is starting the [...]

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The Government began talks with the European Commission last year to introduce a pilot scheme to give a discount on fuel duty of up to 5p per litre on petrol and diesel in the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, and the Isles of Scilly…….Some petrol stations, notably those in the Northern Isles, are [...]

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So they say: Organic dairying standards prescribe a reliance on forage, especially grazing, and, in the absence of nitrogen fertiliser, tend to encourage swards of red and white clover, which have been shown to alter the fatty acid intake and composition of milk. But actually, it’s nothing at all to do with it being organic. [...]

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It’s long been noted that French labour productivity is higher than that in the US. For example, Paul Krugman from 2005: First things first: given all the bad-mouthing the French receive, you may be surprised that I describe their society as “productive.” Yet according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, productivity in France [...]

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