Tim Worstall

Yet another loon over at Liberal Conspiracy. My response to him: “A single rate for the rest of the country is currently £7.20 per hour. The National Minimum Wage is £5.93 per hour (rising to £6.08 in October).” As I never tire of pointing out, the difference between that living wage and the minimum wage [...]

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You might not remember this, local authority finance being such a wonderfully interesting subject: Currently business rates are centrally collected and handed out according to need. Once keeping their own business taxes, the City of London gains £517m, Westminster and Chelsea gain £1.6m each while the great losers are Birmingham, cut by £175m, Hackney by [...]

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The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF), which I presently serve as president, Riiight….. In the US military, the chaplaincy is afforded great responsibility, access to service members, funding and senior positions within the chain of command. Oooooh Kaaaay….. Humanists wish to put forth chaplains, Ahhhh….. See how it’s done? The head humanist chaplain [...]

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Tsk George, Tsk: This programme seeks to model one of the most efficient and cost-effective health services in the world – the NHS – on one of the least: the US system. OECD figures show that healthcare in the US costs $7,500 per person per year. The OECD average is $4,500. In the UK it [...]

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A premiership footballer who has taken out a gagging order over his alleged affair with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas sought the injunction after she tried to blackmail him for £100,000, a court heard yesterday. This is all getting weirder and weirder, isn’t it?

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No bail for Our Boy: Washington had no extradition arrangement with Paris, he added. “If he went to France, we would have no legal mechanism to guarantee his return,” he said. And one can see why. Although I do find it remarkable that there’s no extradition agreement between France and the US. I know that [...]

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The fuel in reactors No 2 and 3 is suspected to have melted amid reports that the operators Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) failed to cool the plant in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The news came only days after it was confirmed for the first time that a meltdown had [...]

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From their new report: Top pay in the financial sector alone accounts for 30% of the top 0.1% of the income distribution scale and this pay has attracted the most public attention. Well, yes, it would, wouldn’t it? When the country’s playing host to the very tippy toppy part of a mobile, highly competitive and [...]

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Just as ordinary people the world over are abused by the higher prices commodity traders create, Eh? How does that work? A commodity trader is just a fancy form of wholesaler. Do we say that grain elevators, cash and carry supermarkets, cause higher prices for consumers? Higher prices for producers, possibly, but that is to producer’s benefit. [...]

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So I saw this Gibson Wallace bloke, inna kilt, near where he came from in the Highlands, eating a deep fried Mars bar, an Irn Bru turkish delight in the other hand ready for later, preparin’ to toss a caber. Tam o’shanter securely buckled, sporran pulled forward onto forehead, claymore reined and saddled beside him [...]

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You know, this idea that a country can and should develop by doing the picking winners behind high tariff barriers thing? As recommended by Christian Aid, War on Want, Action Aid, the Green Party, the BNP and just about every other fuckwit known to man? Sure worked well for Argentina, didn’t it? From 1890 to [...]

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn: who could succeed him? John Warboys?

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This is insane: The Energy Select Committee will argue in a report released on Monday that the Government is being “deeply irresponsible” by refusing to admit that households will be subsidising up to 10 new nuclear power stations as a result of the reforms. However, the committee believes that wind, tidal and solar power may [...]

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The State of the Nation report, by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, shows the planned reduction in public expenditure between 2010 and 2012 is lower in Britain than the average for other Euro countries. On average, EU countries are expected to reduce their public expenditure by 2.4 percentage points as a share of [...]

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Screwing the working classes whether the working classes want it or not. Allegedly.

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Australian subs are they.

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I was looking through the entries in Wikipedia for peeps from the old Alma Mater Minor (as you do) and have to admit to a certain surprise. From around and about my year there’s me (purely because someone started a section on British bloggers years ago), a couple of screen writers (one really rather famous, [...]

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There were not many ideas on offer at the Progressive Governance conference in Oslo at the end of last week – a gathering of the leaders of Europe’s centre-left and policy thinkers. Denial is the default position, because the left does not want to believe its own people could descend to hating immigrants with the [...]

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At the ASI. Optimal currency areas: is the US becoming less of one?

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So little Chrissy Huhne is going to push through the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change. Cabinet ministers have agreed a far-reaching, legally binding “green deal” that will commit the UK to two decades of drastic cuts in carbon emissions. The package will require sweeping changes to domestic life, transport and business and will [...]

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