Tim Worstall

Back Weds evening

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And quickly denied, of course. The identities of public figures who obtained draconian gagging orders to hide details of their extra-marital affairs and private lives was disclosed on Twitter. A minute later she added: “I have no super injunction and I had dinner with Jeremy and his wife last night. Twitter, Stop!” It claimed Miss [...]

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‘her writing is young, it is fresh, and it is exciting’ Oh sweet Jesus. It may be exciting for Michael to listen to this squawking fuckwit but most people here can identify a vile totalitarian hypocrite when they see one.

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At the ASI. If you think speculation causes price volatility, just have a look at what happens to price volatility when speculation is banned.

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It is for this reason, Hutton believes, that the rich have switched to customised services – the premier accounts offered by some banks promise that clients will have a single manager they can deal with. And bear in mind you are buying a service relationship, not being offered one. The result, experts say, has been [...]

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One way of looking at this is that it’s not about the SNP winning, nor the Lib Dems imploding (and the Tories are irrelevant outside the Borders anyway). Rather, the Labour strongholds, where they weigh the votes rather than count them for any old dead donkey with a red rosette, have revolted. The client state [...]

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As far as the Brits are concerned, intellectuals begin at Calais and gravitate to Paris, where the fact that they are lionised in its cafes and salons is seen as proof that the French, despite their cheese- and wine-making skills, are fundamentally unsound. Given this nasty linguistic undercurrent, a Martian anthropologist would be forgiven for [...]

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What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can’t help feeling that’s because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life. Fair point really. [...]

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Blimey, it’s amazing what these writer types manage to find out, isn’t it? In July 2001 sales of clothing and footwear in the UK were up on the previous year by 12%, the highest annual rate of growth since the mid-1970s. But in real terms the price of clothes had fallen dramatically. This is the [...]

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At the end of Mary Ellen Synon’s piece about the lock on power the EU has in Ireland: Or, last question: when will Ireland be a nation once again? Ouch, for there’s a certain resonance to that phrase over the St George’s Channel……..

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This is a doozy. Do, do, read it in full. And he’s quite right too.

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When the Coalition Government decided to get rid of the Sustainable Development Commission, I found it difficult to contain my anger. It was, quite simply, an act of ideological vandalism. He’s even written a report about how no one is listening to him anymore. The one true nuggett is this: That positioning (anti-regulation, hostile to [...]

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So this weekend there’s all sorts of hush hush meetings going on and rumours that Greece is thinking about leaving the euro. True or negotiating tactic? No, I dunno either. Although thinking personally, if Greece leaves I can’t imagine Portugal being far behind. Something which would be a bit of a mixed blessing: property owned [...]

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Harriet Walker: To my generation, Union Jack pashminas are still post-modern Clearly I’ve lived outside the UK for too long. I can’t actually imagine a woman bright enough to string a sentence together caring one way or the other about pashminas, let alone which flag they’re made of. Has some generation after mine had a [...]

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As is always the way, it’s the woman, Carole, who is seen as socially aspirational and pushy. Her girls, Catherine and Pippa, have been called “the wisteria sisters”, as they are adept in social climbing. It is a recurring motif from Austen to Osborne that women are the schemers who dream of an upwardly mobile escape. [...]

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The AV referendum result comes as a thundering blow. In an era when voters are in rebellion against the old two-party duopoly, a third refusing to vote for either of the old tribes, the chance to shape an electoral system that might reflect that mood by recording people’s true first choices has been cast away. [...]

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So says the scientific report into it all. And just look at the comments section: outright denial of reality all over the place. It’s weird how science gets used in certain quarters. It’s scientifically proven that we face resource constraints, scientifically proven that we’ve peak oil, scientifically proven that there’s climate change: but when it’s [...]

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For some it had the acrid smack of austerity, for others it was a delicious brew that tasted just right. Either way, coffee mixed with roasted peas is returning to Cuba. As they note, this is because despite Cuba being able to grow coffee domestically the incentives of state owned agriculture are such that they [...]

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Sounds like a good idea: Fast forward three months from Sanguinetti’s unfortunate remarks, and a movement that was born in riposte to his loose talk has now gone international. “SlutWalking” is attracting thousands of people to take to the streets to put an end to what they believe is a culture in which it is [...]

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It’s easy to paint a bad picture of posh kids, so what will a reality show make of today’s Chelsea brats? Dunno about a reality show but a quick shufti shows at least one pair of thighs that haven’t been slimmed down by an excess of Pony Club. Matriarchal almost.

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