Tim Worstall

At the ASI. Why economic planning ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

[Read more →]

Catherine Bennett: So if it is just money that’s stopping you, why not propose to the little woman on Valentine’s Day tomorrow and see her face light up? Including ceremony and certificate, it could still come in at around £100. Somebody really should make John Humphreys read this article. Mebbe not that coded actually. How [...]

[Read more →]

He believes, as I do, that there should be one consistent menu across the NHS which would be both nutritious and affordable. That’ll sort everything out, won’t it!

[Read more →]

So, should religious places be opened to the possibility of hosting civil partnerships*? When the Equality Bill was passed by the House of Lords last March, a spokesman for the government equalities office said the move paved the way to allow religious groups “to let civil partnership ceremonies take place in their churches, mosques, synagogues [...]

[Read more →]

But Lord Malloch-Brown, a former Labour foreign minister and former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, told The Sunday Telegraph: “When people are forced out of office, if they have money way beyond what they should have earned, then a country like Britain should freeze those assets pending a court action by the new government. [...]

[Read more →]

Should a foreign national, one who joined the Army and then pulled a knife on a corporal, was put in the glasshouse and then discharged, be given leave to stay in the UK? Put like that, no. Add in that he was wounded in Iraq, when recovered, went back and is said to be suffering [...]

[Read more →]

Geoffrey Lean manages to get the wrong end of the stick yet again. Yes, the MOX plant at Sellafield is grossly uneconomic, but it isn’t a potential cause of plutonium getting into the wrong hands: Things would be even worse if the plant were to succeed, because it would then be taking the raw material [...]

[Read more →]

Jervois is a junior Oz mining company. They’ve been touting a nickel laterite project for, ooooh, up to a decade I think. Given that scandium is now fashionable, they’re touting this project as a scandium project now. EMC Metals Corporation is a junior on the TSX. They’re linked with Jerfvois, in that they’re supposedly preparing [...]

[Read more →]

Let’s cut through that and state what really happened: when  Ben Ali was in power Switzerland held his money without question being asked or concern as to its reputation. Now he’s out of power they changed their tune. There’s a word for that and hypocrisy is not good enough. It’s an offshoot of sovereign immunity. When [...]

[Read more →]

At the ASI. It’s very difficult to increase the number of entrepreneurs: much easier to get them doing something productive rather than rent seeking.

[Read more →]

Yes, I know I go on about it but: New European regulations, currently going through Parliament, call for “separate waste collection”. The powerful group is seeking a judicial review to force the Government to implement a more strict interpretation of the rules so that all councils introduce separate waste collections. The government has interpreted this [...]

[Read more →]

There is just one extraordinary fact everyone needs to know. The cuts have fallen hardest on the most deprived councils, while the richest areas have suffered least. Whichever way the figures are construed, the highest percentage of cuts hit the poorest places hardest: Liverpool worst, followed by Manchester; Knowsley; Blackburn with Darwen; South Tyneside; Hackney; [...]

[Read more →]

The argument that Assange used the weight of his body to pin her down “describes what is usually termed the missionary position,” he said.

[Read more →]

On this thread. Murphy is also the guy who wrote these pieces in the Guardian here, here and here. The headline of the last piece “Act now to pay less tax” is a favorite. It is also well-known that the guy has engaged in systematic investment income shifting with his wife, a classic and none-too-subtle [...]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Good this new technology stuff, innit? I can find out when I’m being insulted. @tobybryans is he fuck he doesn’t even live in the UK plus he has a specific economic interest to promote. Economics is not neutral about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck in reply to tobybryans Reply Retweet @tobybryans LOL the man’s a [...]

[Read more →]

At El Reg. How people are getting this food speculation thing wrong.

[Read more →]

On maturity transformation: Getting back to investment, investment is not an end in itself. That is, there has to be some optimum total amount of investment in any country for a given state of technological development, etc. And herein lies the big flaw in MT: it destroys or degrades the market’s system for optimising the [...]

[Read more →]

At CiF: “He doesn’t say that moving things about isn’t wealth creation. He says that moving money about isn’t wealth creation.” Which is a blindingly stupid thing to say. Moving the short term deposits in our bank accounts (the little amounts that vary over the month in our current accounts for example) into long term [...]

[Read more →]

Comment at CiF: Dear God Almighty, such ignorance on display. So, the banks pay out £7 billion in bonuses. What happens next? Well, there’s income tax and employers’ national insurance to pay on that, isn’t there? Assume, just to make the maths easy, that they’re all paying top whack income tax. That’s 50%, add the [...]

[Read more →]