Tim Worstall

In other words, and allowing for inevitable rounding in all estimates of this sort and the fact that these ratios are bound to change a little from year to year, every single pension payment made in 2007/08, totalling £117.6 billion in all (if lump sums are ignored) was made at eventual direct cost to the [...]

[Read more →]

And for those who have never been to Geneva – I assure you, it is probably the most boring police on earth. Doesn’t that sound excellent? Having boring police is a mark of a very high level of civilisation in my book.

[Read more →]

“More than 140 staff at Barnet Council’s Regulatory Service’s Department will take industrial action, in a bid to remain directly employed by the council.” Proof perfect that the council workers know they are overpaid. If they thought they were being underpaid then of course they would be clamouring to be in the private sector, where [...]

[Read more →]

Governor Scott Walker emerges from Wisconsin, a state that invented Progressive Era Republican rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries under such exemplars as Robert LaFollette. Under their tenure, rent-seeking from the public domain and similar insider corruption were checked by a strong public sector anchored in integrity. The state’s long history of reforms [...]

[Read more →]

She doesn’t really seem to have the hang of it. Since Deng Xiaoping announced that “to get rich is glorious”, a minority – most of them in the Communist party – have grown very rich indeed. Millions more are better off. Erm, hundreds of millions possibly? Maybe even more than a billion? However, for the [...]

[Read more →]

If tobacco is poisonous and life-threatening, why is it on sale at all? ‘Coz it’s a free country, see, populated by free people. The definition of which is that we each, in our own very special way, get to plot our own path from the cradle to the grave as we wish. The righteous restrictions [...]

[Read more →]

“In a secret hearing this week Fred Goodwin has obtained a superinjunction preventing him being identified as a banker,” said Hemming, the MP for Birmingham Yardley. Partly it’s amusing that someone would go to such expense to avoid being identified as a banker. But there’s a deeper little giggle there as well. For of course [...]

[Read more →]

Or rather, why is this a story at all? Songs featured in the award-winning high school musical, which airs in the UK on Channel 4′s digital E4, have become fixtures in the charts and Paltrow’s take on the glam rock star’s 1973 hit Do You Wanna Touch Me was no different. The episode aired in [...]

[Read more →]

At The Guardian: But if these corporations really are part of Britain’s industrial fabric then it is time to press them into “greener” action, too: encourage BP to rebuild its UK carbon capture and storage interests Erm, you do know why BP gave up on those? They were going to take natural gas, strip out [...]

[Read more →]

Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget. For to take the opposite view today is to resemble a manufacturer who, [...]

[Read more →]

The brothers that is. From what I can see, there’s not all that much that needs explaining. If you’re playing in a rising market then leverage is the key. The more you can borrow then the greater the profits will be. Not necessarily beause great value has been added by your activities but because asset [...]

[Read more →]

see more funny videos, and check out our Insanity Wolf lols!

[Read more →]

and physical: the world will need more farmers, and quite possibly less mechanization. But, err, only if we have more peasants, pushing at the dirt with the wrong end of a shitty stick.

[Read more →]

Because they deliberately pushed down wages before the recession. So what does this tell us about what we should do now? Why, of course, we should push down wages so as to cut unemployment.

[Read more →]

Take the poll here.

[Read more →]

As the analysis below illustrates – and Murphy accepts – his methodology in relation to corporate tax avoidance produces an estimate which inevitably includes an element of ‘legitimate’ tax planning. Ever since his first report came out I have been shouting that he over estimates corporation tax avoidance/evasion/abuse because he doesn’t take account of the [...]

[Read more →]

And let’s stop all that nonsense about incidence Yes, let’s ignore reality, eh?

[Read more →]

The Redundant Public Servant, the one The Guardian has been running a blog about. You know, about how he’ll never work again, crumbling of dreams, be on the dole forever (as Ritchie says, there are no jobs out there for those turfed out of the public sector to go to)…. He’s got a new job. [...]

[Read more →]

Bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland has handed shares worth £28m to nine of its top executives in the latest round of multimillion pound bonus awards by the high street banks. The precise scale of the payouts at the loss-making bank, 83% owned by the state through £45bn of taxpayer funds, will become clearer next [...]

[Read more →]

On the Tobin (of FTT) Tax: MEPs were voting today on an own-initiative report by Greek Socialist Anni Podimata and backed by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. It was approved by 529 to 127, with 18 abstentions. However, as it was not introduced by the European Commission, it is of no legislative consequence. The [...]

[Read more →]