Tim Worstall

At the ASI. Real, complete, government lunacy.

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Let’s give Northern Rock to the depositors, why not? Chuka, Two things: 1) Are they going to pay for it? The “good bank” part of NR has a value. Why should we the taxpayers make a gift of that value to the depositors who will then own it? So, how much are they going to [...]

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The lesson to learn here is that if your country is hit by a monster earthquake and tsunami, one of the safest places to be is at the local nuclear powerplant. Other Japanese nuclear powerplants in the quake-stricken area, in fact, are sheltering homeless refugees in their buildings – which are some of the few [...]

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The IEA asked me to write a little paper about what UKuncut are up to. A piece about it is here at Conservative Home and the actual paper is here. Before telling me I’ve got it all wrong do, of course, do what Ritchie didn’t, and read the paper itself.

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Ritchie asks or tells us perhaps: I think Strategist is right – Worstall’s great ability is to be negative And you have to conclude as a result with regard to all that he says “so what?” When did a cynic ever achieve a result? Or increase the sum of human well being? He certainly never [...]

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Interesting way of looking at it: If so, he would no doubt regard us as simpering cowards. We have just published an IPPR paper which argues, coincidentally, that a forecast of 1.5% growth or below is precisely the point at which the Treasury should draw back from deficit reduction to give the economy some breathing [...]

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One Telegraph headline: Tax rise looms for poor already paying higher rates than millionaires Yes, this is correct. Another Telegraph headline Poor families pay more tax than millionaires No, this is not correct. Marginal tax rates on the poor, when you combine income tax, NI and benefit withdrawal rates, are indeed higher than marginal tax [...]

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It is not alone in this, for nuclear operations around the world have poor records on public accountability. The three biggest nuclear accidents before this – Chernobyl, the 1957 Windscale Fire and a nuclear waste explosion in Chelyabinsk, Russia – were all initially kept secret. The Chelyabinsk explosion (also known as Kyshtym and I’ve driven [...]

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An investment manager of my aquaintance has been buying shares in the company that owns those nuclear plants in Japan. It is, of course, a bet, even if a well informed one, that the way the media have been reporting this is overblown. I think we’d all rather hope that he makes a lot of [...]

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One of the readers here would like you to know that it is his very own son tromboning here.

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Tsk Ritchie, tsk. You shouldn’t be basing your arguments upon the press release. You should, as I do with your reports, actually read the report. You would, for example, find answers to the question you pose: That’s why the UK Revenue were winning all the way through the courts was it? Because they were. No, [...]

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So, when I heard that the price of potassium iodide had soared on e-Bay as a result of idiots thinking that the light and very short lived radiation from Japan might soar over 7,000 miles of ocean and kill Californians dead in their beds, I tried to think through how I could make money out [...]

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THE TREASURY IS participating in the “economics of the playground” by cutting the budget of HM Revenue & Customs, the head of the tax inspector’s trade body has said. Blimey, where do they find these stories to put into the newspapers, eh? Trade union head says more money should be spent on trade unionists he’s head of. [...]

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Helen Mirren joins protest against ‘super sewer’ Helen Mirren is throwing her weight behind a campaign to save a 99-year old Thameside park from destruction. Might I suggest a little walk along a 150 year old sewer? You know, London’s previous “super sewer”? Such a terrible destruction of the environment, don’t you think?

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This is rather illustrative: While it won’t cost more to get an Oxbridge degree, some dons have made the compelling argument that if Oxford and Cambridge are serious about increasing their traditionally poor access to students from less affluent backgrounds, they would do well to charge less than other universities. Yes, that’s right, our English [...]

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That someone quite possibly being the picture editor at The Guardian. But Nathaniel D Hale, always an immaculate figure in his suit and trademark bowler hat, had his gangsta croon all over dozens of hit records. The picture used? Quite, one in which Nathaniel D Hale is wearing a trilby, not a bowler.

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A decent backgrounder on the Japanese nuclear situation. And it’s in The Guardian. “What happened at Chernobyl, which was a much more serious accident than this, was that the local Soviet authorities were in denial, they didn’t get people out of the area, they didn’t evacuate quickly enough, and they allowed children to continue to [...]

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The Low Carbon Kid touts himself as the one who knows about renewables and energy. Renewable energy is free You what? Given that Solar PV requires a 46 p per unit subsidy it’s very diffiult indeed to make any sense of such a drivellingly stupid statement. The rest of the piece is similarly filled with [...]

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Günther Oettinger, Europe’s energy commissioner, said: “There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen. Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come.” No, it’s not a particularly well chosen word. For we’re still, even now, at the stage [...]

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