Tim Worstall

Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 150 miles north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant. Sounds terribly scary, doesn’t it? And in 8 days it will [...]

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Friggin’ morons. Fortnum’s is owned by a charity, dingbats. The Trustees would therefore be looking to make grants of around £40 million as usual during the next financial year. The grants made, as usual, support a wide range of charitable activities, but the largest overall grants in terms of value were made in the Art [...]

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Bad news for UKuncut and the marchers: the majority support the cuts. It’s actually quite amusing looking at these two headlines on the Guardian’s front page right now. Anti-cuts march swells to 400,000 OK, 400,000 out on the streets. The next story but one is: Voters back cuts but cool on coalition – poll Guardian/ICM [...]

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The Daily Mail, in an appalling diatribe this morning, argues that because in real terms public spending in 2014 will be at the same level as 2008 there is nothing for anyone to protest about. The numbers are correct of course: The headline numbers are right. But there is still a problem with them: But [...]

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At El Reg. Budget stuff.

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At the ASI. If recycling is being done to save the planet then full marks to people who are going to evaluate recycling by how much it saves the planet. My suspicion though is that the measurement system will be quietly dropped when they realise how much recycling actually damages the planet they are trying [...]

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The Guardian’s Rantocreator seems to have loaded the wrong script this morning. Today’s march is a challenge to the rule of money How do we escape a system that’s tearing up the world? We say ‘no’, and do things differently No, I don’t think we can describe a march demanding more of other peoples’ money [...]

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Among mammals females do most of the childcare. Such an unexpected and shocking finding, isn’t it?

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Predicted turn out is 300,000. So, that makes it smaller than the Countryside Alliance march. The cuts are less important than fox hunting then. And of course the ban on fox hunting remains imposed, largely by those very people who will be marching today. Sorry Bubbas, you didn’t listen to your fellow citizens protecting their [...]

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Already, the minister adds, “green technology and services” account for an estimated nine per cent of Welsh GDP. I’m not sure whether to believe it or not. I’m equally not sure what to think about it if it is true. Green stuff is twice the proportion of the Welsh economy than The City is for [...]

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Japan crisis: nuclear workers exposed to 10,000 times more radiation than normal Ooooh, my, how terrible! Are they OK? The three injured workers now brings to 17 the total number of workers exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation at the plant, an annual exposure level considered the lowest at which any increase in [...]

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About this Algarve Golf thing. Printing a half page which is the pure and undiluted press release. Not exactly a great photo (squinting into the sun) but God Bless local newspapers, eh?

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As is proved by these two: The building used to be a students’ union but was closed last year due to financial problems and a lack of support from university management – an early victim of the age of austerity in higher education. It lay empty and unused until on 1 February students re-opened it [...]

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A US soldier who pleaded guilty to the murders of three Afghan civilians has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after saying “the plan was to kill people” in a conspiracy with four fellow soldiers. The military judge said he initially intended to sentence Jeremy Morlock to life in prison with possibility of parole [...]

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Duncan tried to tell us that high January income tax figures showed that the 50p tax rate was raising revenue. Now we’ve got the OBR saying that there was indeed a surge of income tax. From people paying themselves early to dodge the 50 p income tax rate. The Office for Budget Responsibility revealed on [...]

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The start of Elizabeth Taylor’s funeral has been delayed after the film star left instructions requesting that her coffin should arrive 15 minutes late. Always a diva.

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Professors should be able to manage logic, yes? Professor Tim Lang, the Government’s top food tsar, said prices are likely to rise even further, up to ten per cent, as oil prices go up and demand for basic commodities like wheat increases. In the last 20 years the amount of food imported into the UK [...]

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We’ll let one of Ritchie’s commenters do the heavy lifting here: Gauke isn’t in conflict with his boss, you’re confusing some of the figures: Assume the tax gap is £42bn, as stated. That’s close enough to Gauke’s £40bn if £84bn is “close enough” to your estimate of £95bn. George Osborne referred to £14bn being the [...]

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Just perfect: “Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant after 72 attempts.” The subsequent unraveling of the mystery revealed that the hired friend was sterile and in fact not the biological father of his two children.

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