Tim Worstall

Dear BBC Management, I was disturbed to read in yesterday’s Guardian that the Metropolitan police have made contact with BBC journalists to request unbroadcast footage of the protests in central London on March 26th. Mm, hmmm. It took a full week following the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests, for example, for the [...]

[Read more →]

It’s fairly standard practice that over time good little phrases, sayings, witticisms, get attributed to the wrong people. As who actually said what to whom disappears into the mists of history it’s as if there’s a form of gravitational force attracting the attribution of this or that to just one or two historical figures. Which [...]

[Read more →]

No one can create a job Eh? There’s around 30 million jobs in the UK economy and each and every one of them was created by someone. Why, I even created a job myself a month ago. Admittedly it’s in the Portuguese economy, but it was still a job created. It’s true that politicians don’t [...]

[Read more →]

Yes, this is the point: Campaigners’ fears are not about pace and scale but about the underlying intent of the proposed legislation. It is clear now that the endgame is to transform the NHS into a system that finances but does not provide healthcare – a national insurance system which pays the bills while care [...]

[Read more →]

Ended up at this wikipedia page. The last executions in England. The murder was on 7 April 1964. The executions were on 13 August 1964. Is there actually anything that works this quickly in our current legal system?

[Read more →]

Howard Reed’s just released a report claiming that remutualising Northern Rock is going to be just great for everyone. Kittens will happily gambol sort of stuff. We’re going to hear a great deal about this as Our Chuka tries to convince us all that giving it away rather than selling it is just dandy. We’ll [...]

[Read more →]

Even if solar cells like this are eventually built and put to work, they will still contribute to global warming. That is because they convert only a small fraction of the light that hits them, and absorb most of the rest, converting it to heat that spills into the environment. Sustainable solar energy may therefore [...]

[Read more →]

One of the basics is that you don’t believe what people tell you. You watch what they actually do as a guide to their desires, not what they’ll spout. In economics, revealed preferences. And one of the arguments going on at the moment is about how much Brits are prepared to pay in extra taxes. [...]

[Read more →]

No, really, he does. And it’s terribly evil of course. For twenty years NHS reforms have made the NHS less efficient, more bureaucratic, less patient focussed and more costly. There has been one explanation for this phenomenon: since the early 90s all NHS reform has tried to introduce two things into our health service. The [...]

[Read more →]

I think it is you know. It’s either that or we’re gearing up for a full blown Hitchens moment. Failing to provide sources, refuting data with anecdote, cherry-picking studies, scorning the scientific consensus, invoking a cover-up to explain it: all this is horribly familiar. These are the habits of climate-change deniers, against which the green [...]

[Read more →]

It’s too cheap. No, really, that is what she’s saying. Companies pay their CEOs lots of money but they’re still cheaper than “third sector” organisations that don’t. The bastards. Companies make profits yet they still underbid the charities. The bastards. It’s, umm, let’s be polite, something of a confused argument really.

[Read more →]

The co-host of the BBC’s Springwatch programme said that everyone must do their bit for the environment. “If I didn’t recycle and shop locally, I couldn’t see the point of being human,” he told the Radio Times. That’s Chris Packham. Art, religion, the beauty of a summer’s day. love, no, all are worth less than [...]

[Read more →]

Ahem: But as the Observer reported yesterday, US bank Wachovia, now parts of Wells Fargo, money laundered hundreds of billions for Mexican drug gangs in the USA. No, that’s not what happened. And you can find out what did happen simply by reading that very Observer report. “For the time period of 1 May 2004 [...]

[Read more →]

Two things follow. First it shows that Willetts does not undertsand the demand for education – which is a classic Giffin good because of this perverse incentive to buy it, whatever the price. You mean Giffen Good. And even then you’ve got it wrong. You’re intimating that demand for education is fixed, whatever the price. [...]

[Read more →]

Tsk, at The Guardian: The magnitude nine quake (one of the five most powerful ever recorded) and the 30m to 40m tsunami (the highest ever seen in Japan) I don’t think so. A 10 metre tsunami, a 30 to 40 foot tsunami…..but not a 30 to 40 metre tsunami. No, we’ve really not been talking [...]

[Read more →]

Fascinating stuff: People with “Norman” surnames like Darcy and Mandeville are still wealthier than the general population 1,000 years after their descendants conquered Britain, according to a study into social progress. The research is from Greg Clark (A Farewell to Alms) so cannot be dismissed. But I wonder how he’s separated out the two possible [...]

[Read more →]

Roads should be safer, eh? The Road Safety Foundation and RAC Foundation have urged the Government to spend “just a fraction” of the money lost to Britain because of crashes. The report ‘’Saving Lives, Saving Money: the costs and benefits of achieving safe roads’’ calls for an investment of £8 billion over the next decade. [...]

[Read more →]

Via, a decent court ruling. The case stated raised four questions for consideration by this court. Having analysed the issues, this court considers that the four questions in essence amount to one question: in a case of cash forfeiture does a customs officer have to show that the property seized was obtained through conduct of [...]

[Read more →]

(why the hell is it that we conservatives can usually see the unintended consequences of policies at a glance before we even finish reading their explanations, but the same feat just seems so very, very hard for the soap avoiders?) Because that’s why we’re conservatives, because we can see the unintended consequences….. Thus the disdain [...]

[Read more →]

At the ASI. We might not want to impose our views of intellectual property on poor countries.

[Read more →]