Tim Worstall

This is slightly cruel, as Sir Henry Leach had a more than distinguished career. However, he does illustrate the standard Navy doctrine of how to become an Admiral: Henry Leach married, in 1958, Mary McCall, daughter of Admiral Sir Henry McCall Marry the daughter of an Admiral.

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….but like other too-good-to-be-true patent remedies, the idea that tax cuts for business stimulate investment and growth just won’t die. Sure, the reason it won’t die is because it is true. From the OECD: The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and [...]

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Ms. Pisani sticks up for her ex husband. And yes, Reuters are being complete and total fools, prigs (but I repeat myself) over their firing of David Fox.

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I’ve no idea whether it’s a good theory of cancer but it’s certainly an interesting one: Together we developed the theory that cancer tumours are a type of atavism that appears in the adult form when something disrupts the silencing of ancestral genes. The reason that cancer deploys so many formidable survival traits in succession, [...]

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He confesses: Andrew Marr, the broadcaster, has admitted having an extramarital affair after deciding to abandon a controversial injunction banning the media from reporting it. Much of the story is now out therefore. Yes, Andrew Marr had an extramarital affair, thought he’d got his mistress pregnant, paid child support for 7 years and then a [...]

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Not Russian: In a rare interview on the eve of the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl on Monday, Col-Gen Nikolai Antoshkin said he was shocked at how poorly Japan had coped with its own nuclear disaster. “Look at advanced Japan,” he said. “People are housed in stadiums and are lying about on the floors of sports [...]

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Oil price reporting agencies Platts and Argus are under scrutiny over their governance and transparency as part of a G20 investigation into commodity speculation. Called killing the messenger. If oil prices are not to a politician’s liking it must be the people who report the oil prices at fault, eh?

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For university fees all seem to be at the high end of the indicated range, leading to: He predicts that there will be a slump in demand for the bottom-ranking 20 or 30 institutions, which will lead to them suffering “severe financial difficulties”. But that it to assume that this is either an unwelcome or [...]

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There’s both less and more to this than you might think. Cuts in carbon emissions by developed countries since 1990 have been cancelled out three times over by increases in imported goods from developing countries such as China, according to the most comprehensive global figures ever compiled. Previous studies have shown the significance of “outsourced” [...]

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No, really: But the point is clear: if you ask people who have no clue about an issue what they think, and then suggest that this should be the basis for policy you will actually simply base policy on prejudice. Better not ask the people about anything then, eh? Far better to just have it [...]

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So she’s got a piece in The Guardian about the ECGD: Umm, it’s not a government department. It’s a government agency. There is a difference and I’d hope that an MP knew that. “Caucuses” Caucasus The former is a method of selecting a candidate to run for office. The latter is an area of the [...]

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This is one area at least where Marx certainly knew what he was talking about. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Japan’s harbours threatening military force if Japan did not open its borders to free trade Yes, yes, I know Mark is supposed to have been some sort of prophet but the communist Manifesto [...]

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As ever, a “community group” is trying to shake down one of the supermarkets. In this case it’s one in DC, trying to extort from WalMart. Worth reading the whole list but these three stood out for me: Provide free shuttle transportation to and from the nearest Metro station to each D.C. store every 10 [...]

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If there’s one thing Canadians just simply won’t do it’s voting for an American.

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At the ASI. Can a technological monopoly actually last?

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Could this be David Walker? Senior figures at the Audit Commission, which polices spending at local authorities, NHS trusts and other government bodies, spent almost £20,000 of public money over the past two years on luxury goods and services. The credit card receipts disclose that Audit Commission executives enjoyed meals costing more than £600 at [...]

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Murray is not a supporter. “Women in the boardroom? Terrific,” he says. “Why not? Always welcome. But why make a special case out of it? Why tell everybody you’ve got to have X number of women in the boardroom? Women are quite as intelligent as men. They have a tendency not to be so involved [...]

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This isn’t correct at all: Alumina, the ore from which aluminium is extracted, is not rare. In fact, it makes up about 6pc of the world’s crust. The ore is bauxite. Which you then convert to alumina using the Bayer Process. OK, so you might not worry all that much about such a mistake in [...]

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No, not the europhilia (although that grates) but the Heresiarch has something about his religious faith: It makes people think I’m peculiar and lack intellectual fibres because I don’t have any doubts about my faith, but I’d be terrified to have doubts. Which is really a rather odd statement actually. For his faith is Catholic, [...]

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No, really, they don’t: A 30-year stock market excess return of approximately zero is a huge disappointment to the legions of “stocks at any price” long-term investors.But it’s not the first extended drought. From 1803to 1857, U.S. equities struggled; the stock investor would have received a third of the ending wealth of the bond investor. [...]

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