Tim Worstall

At the ASI. Solar power is getting cheap, fast. So now’s the time to cut out all the subsidies.

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Sigh: How hard it is to explain the banks’ effortless escape from any painful punishment or real reform to prevent them crashing the world economy again. Today’s Financial Times reported the banks have escaped the modest Basel III requirement to hold 7% reserves against their lending. Instead they use risky “hybrid capital and other debt-like [...]

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“Men in Malta are often happier having a mistress than a wife.” This is limited to Malta, is it?

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Very cute, yes, but didn’t newspapers have the ads on the front pages back then?

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So far, its two 24-gear rickshaws have carried 80,000 passengers within a three-mile radius of the city centre: a “driver” can expect to take home £100 for an evening’s work. The firm also delivers for about 400 local businesses, carrying some 300,000 items a year on six cargo bikes. An international courier service uses it [...]

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He also has some quieter virtues: this is a man, after all, who just won a 70% pay hike at the Bank of Israel for his successor. He felt the higher pay was necessary to attract good future candidates for the job, but thought it would be bad form if he himself accepted it.

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Martin Kettle that is: Morality and the rule of law should apply on the internet as elsewhere in human conduct. This is absolutely true. What needs to be acknowledged, however, is that Sarkozy is right about the principle. The internet cannot exist in some undiscussable and untouchable dimension of human activity. It is a human [...]

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It’s often difficult to tell which is which, for the behaviour of firms in either will often be the same. The Cartel Office found no evidence of deliberate collusion but said the companies were quickly following each other in raising prices above the level they should be. Everyone raising their prices at the same time [...]

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Yes, it’s anecdotal, from an aggrieved relative. However: Her daughter, whose complaint prompted a damning report by the health watchdog on Thursday, believes the problem was the attitude of nurses who do not want to provide basic support to frail pensioners who need help eating, drinking, washing or going to the lavatory. “What they’ve got [...]

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Diplomatic sources last night disclosed that recent intelligence suggested the Libyan dictator was “paranoid” and “on the run” from Nato’s escalating attacks on his regime. For there really are the Air Forces of several nations attempting to blow him into small pieces. Being worried about this, taking action to avoid it, is not paranoia. It’s [...]

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Oliver James and Julie Bindel on sex and gender. The Guardian’s really pushed to boat out there to get difereing views, hasn’t it?

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But you simply cannot call yourself “pro-choice” and then bar people who do not agree with you from expressing their opposing view. It’s an oxymoronic position. People who defend such regressive behaviour, simply mirror that of the dictatorial hardliners they supposedly stand against. Then they wonder why they get called “feminazis”. Quite.

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Yes, seems sensible enough that parachute allowances should only be paid to those likely to parachute. I think I’m right in saying that flying allowances are only paid to those who are current to fly?

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90% of the world will have no idea what peeps are going on about. The other 10% will, as in the comments here, be serving up some of the best comic scenes ever written. The radio show was better than the TV one and possibly better than the novels. As for the movie…..yurk.

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As The Guardian tells us: Now, I love Adele. But that doesn’t exactly endear you to her, does it? Let’s look at it again. “I’m mortified to have to pay 50%!” The Beatles had to pay 95% – as did all the highest earners under two successive governments (Wilson and Heath) in the mid-60s. George [...]

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Hooh Hah! The justice department is to accuse Edwards, once a rising star of the Democratic party as its 2004 vice-presidential candidate, of accepting substantial donations to his 2008 campaign from two wealthy supporters in order to cover up the relationship with his campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter, and the fact that they had a child [...]

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So we get this description of Ms. Trimingham: All changed when Vicky learned that her husband was having an affair with Carina Trimingham, his sometime press aide and a Doc-Martens-wearing former lesbian. Oh, Chris, Chris. Hell is a rather cosy, cheerful place compared to the wrath of a wife whose man runs off with a [...]

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Suez Environnement, the owner of Sita UK, is trying out the new horse-drawn bin lorries in cities across France – saving petrol money and therefore carbon dioxide emissions. Anyone actually have access to a decent calculation on this? My starting assumption would be that 1 horsepower from a horse very definitely emits more CO2-e than [...]

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Expect the usual outrage here: The Vatican has renewed its criticism of the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, saying they made the problem worse by promoting a false sense of security. But do note that they are actually on to something. Written by Matthew Hanley, a US public health expert who [...]

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That’s the conclusion to be drawn from this report The controversial Girls Gone Wild franchise – in which young women, often intoxicated, are encouraged to strip and perform sex acts on camera – is planning to hit Britain and it is feared the party loving North East is firmly in its sights. So concerned are [...]

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