Tim Worstall

Powerful unions backed by militants who have successfully disrupted past privatisation plans have vowed to step up opposition. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, a leftist alliance, and a vocal opponent, has already warned of the need for a referendum. “What government has the right to give away our land?” he railed in parliament recently. [...]

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Glory be: RichardJMurphy: RT @nils_gilman: Does the Modigliani-Miller theorem apply to black markets? ANSWER: No, it’s never applied anywhere . http://t.co/Ei4taFZ And that link is to here. Where they discuss the way in which Somali pirate attacks are financed by syndicates. Stump up some of the cash necessary to get a raiding operation going, get [...]

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Or summat’ like that?

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Now, as we all know, the efficient markets hypothesis does not say that all markets all the time markets is efficient. It most certainly does not say that defence of the realm should be organised market stylee: nor does it exclude a welfare safety net (nor even a welfare state). Not even that justice sold [...]

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Sigh: Is it any wonder that St Patrick enjoys such popularity in comparison? He’s a local boy made good, a saint the Irish can really take to their collective bosom. Paddy wasn’t in fact Irish. A Romano-Brit, almost certainly Welsh, who was carried off by Irish slavers. Came home again, then got the bug to [...]

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A leading campaigner for the Alternative Vote is the latest public figure to secure a gagging order from the courts preventing the disclosure of details of his sex life. Could be anyone really. Well, it won’t be John Hemming for he’s quite open about his quite interesting family arrangements. Won’t be Clegg for he’s already [...]

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So who does get invited to the royal wedding and who doesn’t? The royal wedding has suffered its first major controversy after it was confirmed that neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown had been invited to Friday’s ceremony. Why’s that then? By contrast, both their Conservative predecessors, Sir John Major and Baroness Thatcher, received invitations. [...]

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At the ASI. Why public sector unions?

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Would really love a copy of this paper: Metallurgical processes for scandium recovery from various resources: A review Purchase $ 41.95 // var dd = ‘http://www.deepdyve.com/rental-link’; dd += ‘?docId=’ + doi; dd += ‘&journal=’ + issn; dd += ‘&fieldName=journal_doi’; dd += ‘&affiliateId=elsevier&format=jsonp&callback=?’; $.getJSON(dd, function(data) { if (data.status === ‘ok’) { if (prices[data.price]) { $(“#dd_img”).attr(“src”,prices[data.price]); $(“#dd_href”).attr(“href”,data.url); [...]

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At the ASI. Yet another way of explaining why top down planning doesn’t work.

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the UN has more agencies working in developing countries than there are developing countries

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Yes, ’tis our day. Not that many of us take much notice mind. Unlike the Celts who make so much of their national days. They have to, poor dears, while we do not, for as Cecil Rhodes pointed out, to be born an Englishman is to have won the lottery of life.

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Not a great surprise in the Church of England of course: Dr Williams said the Bible made clear it was the duty of the powerful to ensure ordinary people were “treasured and looked after”, particularly those without the resources to look after themselves. “What about having a new law that made all Cabinet members and [...]

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But there the similarities with papa seem to end. While the marquess, also known as the “Loins of Longleat”, keeps an estimated 75 “wifelets”, the viscount remains unmarried (though perhaps for appearance’s sake he has been accused, wrongly it now transpires, of fathering a daughter out of wedlock). Not just because he’s the Marquess of [...]

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Sent in by a reader: What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central [...]

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Apparently not: As the chart below shows, in his short tenure as Prime Minister, David Cameron has already created 117 new Lords. Indeed, David Cameron is creating peers at a rate ten times faster than his predecessor, Gordon Brown, and three times faster than Tony Blair. Well Will, let’s have a look at what the report [...]

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Yes, apparently, the Labour Party, the historic party of the organised working class, frequent party of government, creator of the welfare state, and the outright poll leader du jour, needs the ordure, the fascist, semi-fascist and pre-fascist residues, the most outright reactionary, thuggish and ignorant shit in the country. Without appeasing the scum, it seems, [...]

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At the ASI. We have proof of the efficient markets hypothesis.

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Excellent piece here. What do you do with alcoholics who don’t want to be cured? Get them off the streets of course, out of the emergency rooms, stop arrresting and jailing them. Put them in a “wet house”. Just like sheltered living for addicts who want to get off the juice, but let them drink [...]

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