Tim Worstall

And leaves me very confused: This is a constant and universal process but revolution can only come to the fore, let alone be successful, when both the objective material conditions and the subjective political conditions are ripe for it. This, then, was how Marx saw his theory of history as scientific, driven as it was [...]

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We’ve the usual screams about homophobia over this change to the blood donation rules. Liberal Conspiracy had one, The Guardian has one today. You know, “Iz it ‘cos I’m Gay?” sort of stuff. And as it is, isn’t that a condemnation of the state of our society, the hatred of the other….cont. pg 94. Umm, [...]

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The American civil war battles go on 150 years after the US conflict started, history still divides those who would commemorate it No so much as you might think really. From the piece: In 1961 an official US commission oversaw thousands of events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American civil war. All 50 [...]

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Not all that much of a surprise, I know. David Cameron branded Oxford University “disgraceful” after claiming that the institution admitted only one black student in the last academic year. For of course Oxford did not admit only one black student in the last academic year. Senior officials at the university described the figure as [...]

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Whining about the banking system report they say: – The reforms set out by Vickers fail the acid-test, they are not sufficient to prevent further collapse. Radical reform is not optional, it is necessary. Installing a firewall between retail and investment banking is welcome, but banks must be broken up to a size where their [...]

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Out there in Singapore there’re students studying development economics, a course of study in which they are asked to consider one of my arguments: W4 Group 4 Homework 9: Trade and FDI April 11th, 2011 Article 1: Putting the Free in Free Trade Arguments against free trade: Mark Thomas: Free Trade does not result in [...]

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Cocaine usage is up: Cocaine is the second most popular drug in Britain, after cannabis, with its use increasing markedly in the past decade from 0.6% of 16- to 59-year-olds reporting use to the British Crime Survey to 2.4% in 2009-10. This is equivalent to nearly 800,000 people reporting that they have used it within [...]

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The middle aged brain is better than the youthful one! She argues that on a range of cognitive skills, the middle-aged brain (roughly aged 40-68) outperforms all other age groups. There are a few tricks we lose – for example, retrieval of information such as names and a slight slowing down – but that is [...]

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Isn’t this a surprise? The minister was speaking before the Energy and Climate Change Committee, which is headed by Tim Yeo. Mr Yeo criticised the secrecy surrounding government research into the impact of shale gas operations. “The suspicion in the United States of the environmental impacts of shale gas has been greatly increased by the [...]

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Bollocks. Jeebus, who writes these things? The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said soaring inflation coupled with low pay rises means household peacetime disposable income is at its lowest since 1921. No friggin’ way. Don’t these people understand how damn rich we are compared to 1921? Rising food, clothing and energy prices mean [...]

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Regulation of the City screwing up that is: He focused on the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which he established in a surprise move on his first day as chancellor in 1997. It was widely criticised during the financial crisis for failing to predict and manage the turmoil. Mr Brown said: “We set up the FSA [...]

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This is going to sound very conspiratorial so it’s an observation, not an insistence that this is some new found truth. On Friday evening, as another great economic conference got under way here to debate the current crisis in the international economy, organised by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which has liberal hedge fund [...]

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If elected, he will campaign for the creation of an education system that “no longer has an academic, vocational divide”. He said: “It’s actually a class divide that starts at school, is reinforced at college and reinforced again at university. I want middle-class families to be OK with their young people coming home and saying, [...]

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Last night there were calls for urgent new safety rules to control the presence of the poisons in foods intended for young children. Researchers found feeding infants twice a day on the shop-bought baby foods such as rice porridge can increase their exposure to arsenic by up to fifty times when compared to breast feeding [...]

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At the ASI. We should slash the State for the sake of the children.

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From 1929 to 1932  federal spending increased by 50% in nominal terms, doubled in real terms, tripled relative to national income. Judged by that measure, Herbert Hoover makes Barack Obama look like a fiscal conservative. No, this doesn’t show that fiscal expansion doesn’t work in all cases. But it does put to rest the lie [...]

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Remind you of anyone?

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It started with Jon Cruddas and I going down to the Guildhall in the City of London with the Billingsgate porters, all dressed in their whites and boots, to protest against the fact that the Corporation of London was taking away their civic inheritance. The court of common council was voting to abolish “the fellowship [...]

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At the ASI. Fatties and smokers save the NHS cash.

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The sums of money spent in furthering Koch (pronounced like the drink coke, no matter how tempting it is to rhyme it with rock) interests and power are staggering. But what is most disturbing is how rapidly they are growing. In 2004, the CPI found, the Kochs spent a “mere” $857,000 on lobbying. In 2008, [...]

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