Tim Worstall

A change in the method by which we select those who govern us is considered important enough to have a referendum on. Well, sometimes. But why only sometimes?

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Hmm. I suspect it’s not a coincidence that the countries which are best at equality overall (e.g. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands) also tend to be monarchies. The monarch is a permanent symbol that life is unfair, and that if you take credit for your own success – rather than accepting that it’s primarily down [...]

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Yes, this is the point: The same market philosophy which impacted upon my constituents 20 years ago is at the heart of the health and social care bill. Its proposals are driven by an ideology totally alien to a health service whose success has been rooted in co-operation and collectivism. The way forward isn’t, as Glover [...]

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Because they’re certainly very good at it. This long piece in The Guardian today for example. That there is trafficking, in the proper sense of people being kidnapped and then being held as sex slaves, I have no doubt of. It’s vile, illegal and should and must be clamped down upon, of course. However, we [...]

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Today’s interesting little example: Perhaps the most surprising tip about growing quality grass in 2011 is that fields may need the added nutrient of sulphur, since winter fallout from the burning of sulphurous coal is no longer available. It’s perhaps not a very important trade off, or we could regard it as one that we’re [...]

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German energy developer juwi Solar is considering implementing 60MW of solar installations in the UK over the next two years. Amiram Roth-Deblon, head of business development of juwi Solar, said the proposed FiT rate “does not reflect the market price … especially if the rates are compared to the German tariff, which is a mature [...]

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Another of those Nordic words we need in English. The first is of course the quite lovely Norwegian word, “outepils” (spelling uncertain). The literal translation is “outside beer” and what it really means is that first, gorgeous, spring day, the first one of the year when you can sit outside and have a beer. Or [...]

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The inclusion of environmental legislation has alarmed green groups. John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, said: “We don’t yet know if this is cock-up or conspiracy. If it’s a cock-up, David Cameron needs to come out and say the Climate Change Act, central to the push for a clean technology revolution, is safe from the axe. [...]

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Much better than nuclear, oh yes:

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A mention of a minor problem being faced by Glencore in the run up to the float: It is also facing a multi-million dollar claim relating to the leak of hazardous substances from an alumina refinery in the US Virgin Islands. I think I know what that’s likely to be. And yes, it is. The [...]

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Jesse Jackson Jr: Clearly needs to brush up on his “creative destruction” stuff.

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At the ASI. The richer the society, the closer to the technological boundary we are, the more we need to be using markets.

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They’re better at it basically. Among the phenomena he examined were the relentless trivialisation implicit in soundbite politics, the obsessive insistence that every political issue – no matter how complex – has only two sides and the tendency to treat every political controversy as if it were a football game and every election a horse [...]

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Somewhere up around 110%, don’t you think? A growing chorus of voices is urging the Greek government to restructure its debt as fears grow that a €110bn bailout has failed to rescue the country from the financial abyss and is forcing ordinary people into an era of futile austerity. “It’s better to have a restructuring [...]

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We just know that there’s going to some patns wetting over this release of radioactive water from Fukushima. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. released a total of 10,393 tons of radioactive water April 4 to 10, according to the report published Friday evening local time by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, made up [...]

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We will of course continue to publish online at AccountancyAge.com and AccountancyAgeJobs.com, offering the full range of articles and jobs currently found in print, as well as new, specialist digital material. Currently over 120,000 individuals visit AccountancyAge.com each month. To which he adds: Second, they only just beat me in terms of number of visits. [...]

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I suspect that for people who haven’t read the book, the result is incomprehensible.  What remains is a bunch of self-impressed windbags boring each other over drinks.  I live in Washington DC.  At least around here, that sort of thing is a live event, not movie material. From Jane Galt’s* review of the Atlas Shrugged [...]

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At the ASI. In which I am beaten to the point, again, by Hayek.

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The only way out is to militate for an alternate interlinkage: between global anticapitalist political contestation and a renascent environmental movement with opposition to nuclear power at its heart. A political ecology up to the task would embrace the human-nature hybridity, in all its complexity, but toward a new alliance designed to step outside the [...]

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So should Greece and Ireland: Upon closer inspection, however, none of these benefits materialise. In Greece and Ireland, bailouts did not stabilise markets, did not encourage economic growth, and did not inspire a change of heart about credit. If anything, these cases suggest that, within the straitjacket of a monetary union, the bailout mix does [...]

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