Tim Worstall

But, err, WTF is it doing in The Guardian?

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This has been around for ages, the idea that gender equality means that using gender to discriminate in the provision of insurance or annuities should be outlawed. But the crunch is coming, with the ECJ ready to rule on March 1. Proposals for “gender equality” insurance have been around for years. But insurers have always [...]

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Next myth: there are growing legions of families where no one has ever worked, Shameless for generations. But here are the facts from the Office for National Statistics, well spotted by Channel 4 News. Long-term unemployment hasn’t risen – it has fallen tenfold over the last decade. In 2000 47,700 had claimed jobseeker’s allowance for [...]

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At the ASI. The solar feed in tariffs show that Westminster really ought to send every English village their idiot back.

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The whole philosophy of nursing changed between my schoolfriends’ boot-camp training at a teaching hospital and their daughters’ degree courses in nursing and public health management at major universities under the Project 2000 policy. Because someone, somewhere, still has to do that basic nursing care.

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There’s a question that really should be asked here: Barclays paid out just £113m in corporation tax in 2009, despite making a pre-tax profit of £11.6bn, according to chief executive Bob Diamond. The revelation came in a letter to Chuka Umunna MP, a member of the Treasury Select Committee (TSC), who put Mr Diamond under [...]

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So, a council diretor gets a very hefty pay off: The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Mr Dolan was handed £569,000 last year after taking “voluntary redundancy”. He received his normal salary of £157,000, including the notice period. He also collected a redundancy payment of £167,000, even though he had worked for the council for [...]

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With the greatest pf respect for Sean O’Grady who wrote this he’s wrong. It’s obvious he knows he is too. These places – all part of the UK and issuing UK passports – are not self governing any more than the Isle of Wight is. Turks and Caicos, Bermuda, Bahamas, Jersey, Isle of Man, Guernsey, [...]

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Civil society organizations Christian Aid, Eurodad, Global Financial Integrity, Global Witness, Transparency International, Tax Justice Network and Tax Research will be meeting with several Task Force government partners and representatives of non-partner governments who will be attending the FATF meetings next week. Kneel before me ye mighty and tremble in fear! Christian Aid, (which Ritchie [...]

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This is an interesting thought: And there is a third piece of information that I can now reveal. They had told me that the City Corporation owns about 20% of the property in the Square Mile, and they said 3. “The reference to the City Corporation owing approximately 20% of the property in the Square [...]

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Either that or he simply doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. Nick Shaxson has done more digging on the City of London. They tell him they’ve only got £3 billion of assets. That’s £3 billion they don’t need to promote banking and £3 billion we need to save libraries, and so much more. It’s so [...]

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I tend not to have a lot of time for Steve Sailer: the racism quotient is rather higher than I can stomach. But this is cute: “The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.” [...]

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This statement rather surprised me: But let’s step back a moment and look at how all this came to pass. The bishops owe their places in parliament to a serial killer. Henry VIII filled parliament with bishops because they were willing to give a religious seal of approval to him divorcing and murdering his wives [...]

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However separate figures that strip out teetotals (14.4 per cent of Britons) show that drinkers in Britain consume an average 15.6 litres of pure alcohol. Women drink 9.50 litres and men manage 21.5. On this calculation, however, Britain is out-drunk by about half the countries in the world including Muslim majority nations such as Egypt [...]

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I’m rapidly losing faith that the UK will see any ignorant banking reform after the Vickers Commission reports in September.

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Well, OK, possibly the best bacon cheeseburger in the world according to some bloke I’ve never heard of. However, if does actually look darn good and available only for a short time in East London. My problem would be how to have a bacon cheeseburger, the beef chili dog, fries and the onion rings all [...]

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We’re often told that median income in the US has stagnated. That all the growth of the past decades has been sucked up by the super rich, that Joe Six Pack just hasn’t gained at all. If we actually looked at the figures, we’d see this, plain as the nose on our face: Yeah, me [...]

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In Which The Friends of the Earth Acknowledge Worstall is Correct But there’s an element of it certainly.

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The government’s “responsibility” deal on alcohol looks likely to fall apart as health experts, angered by the limited concessions required of the drinks industry, consider walking away from the table. The deal, between the industry, the government and health experts – including the chiefs of groups such as Alcohol Concern and the British Liver Trust, [...]

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Why do women find Earl Spencer so irresistible? Err? On the death of his father on 29 March 1992, Charles, still only 27, succeeded as 9th Earl Spencer, 9th Viscount Althorp, 9th Viscount Spencer of Althorp, 9th Baron Spencer of Althorp and 4th Viscount Althorp. He also inherited Althorp, the family’s ancestral seat in Northamptonshire. [...]

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