Tim Worstall

Something that hugely surprised me. The IMF seems to think that Greece will run a primary surplus in 2012. This rather changes things, if true. To explain: sure, we all expect Greece to be running a huge budget deficit next year. However, we’re now, with that country, in the territory of owing your bank manager [...]

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Chuka is the lad, isn’t he? Days after, Greece’s prime minister, Georgios Papandreou, launched a scathing attack on credit rating agencies, accusing them of ramping up pessimism about his country’s economy and, in so doing, “seeking to shape our destiny and determine the future of our children”. Recent developments in Portugal and Spain have further [...]

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When our laddie needs a bit of help in singing the national anthem, look what those complete bastard Yanks and septics do. ‘Elp ‘im out. What scum, eh? Oh aye, there’s some laughter there, but that passes. This land of the free stuff, home of the brave. Anyone think it will ever catch on?

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And fails: what did you expect? “There are businesses and households all round the country who borrow either to invest or because they are borrowing for a mortgage. What’s important, and anyone who’s got a mortgage will tell you this, is not the stock of the debt it’s your ability to pay it back. “And [...]

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At the ASI. What problem with UK manufacturing?

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Do we care about 300,000 more children in poverty? No, we don’t. For the definition Our Poll is using is not in fact poverty, it’s inequality. That is, it’s relative poverty. It’s about 300,000 children having less than some arbitrary number: it’s not even about 300,000 children actually having less in real terms. And we’ve [...]

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So, the GP in charge of looking over the NHS reform plans says: In an interview with the Guardian, Field says Lansley’s plan to make the NHS regulator Monitor’s primary duty to enforce competition between healthcare providers should be scrapped. Instead it should be obliged to do the opposite, by promoting co-operation and collaboration and [...]

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Most postmen bitten in Houston For of course most postmen don’t deliver in Houston, indeed, never go there. What they mean is that “Houston is the most dangerous city in America in which to be a postman, the US postal service has disclosed. ” Which they make clear in the article, just a bad headline.

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OK, so child care is too expensive. Agreed. In fact children are impossible to make money out of. Average nursery fees are £177 for a 50-hour week, which is £3.54 an hour per child. Ofsted regulations require a ratio of one adult per three children under two years old, but staff need a minimum of [...]

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The majority of the country’s woods, especially in lowland areas, are in private hands, and walkers are systematically excluded from most of those.There is no good reason why this should be so. The reason being this rather ancient English idea of “private property”. What’s mine is mine and I might and may decide to let [...]

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What could be wrong with having a thorough look at the overgrown regulatory forest and hacking back a few trees? Quite Mr. Kettle, quite. In the past, even Conservative governments have tended to see most regulatory frameworks as an accumulation of rules and sectoral improvements in which an occasional winnowing is necessary. This government turns [...]

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Maybe then, we could move into a future where we look at each other as human beings, instead of gender caricatures. Given Ms. Marcotte’s output over the years that’s either the best bit of irony ever or the greatest display of an entire lack of sefl knowledge I’ve ever seen. For that output is entirely [...]

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As Muhammad Yunus has found out: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus leaves microfinance bank Peace prize recipient leaves pioneering Grameen Bank following legal dispute with Bangladeshi government For if you go around successfully reducing poverty without the aid and assistance of politicians then why would the poor vote for politicians? And if you think that politicians [...]

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Last night Hugh guest-starred in Doctor Who, playing a pirate captain whose ship is in peril from a beautiful siren – an event that made the gossip columns. ‘Where can they have drawn inspiration for such a role?’ asked one writer. But then Hugh’s devotion to wife Lulu is so strong it is understood he [...]

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The Royal College of General Practitioners has warned that the government’s NHS plans jeopardise the principle of universal healthcare, saying that “we are moving headlong into an insurance-type model“. If there is any confusion about what an insurance-type model looks like, simply look across the pond to the United States. Or France, generally regarded as [...]

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Simon Heffer to leave Daily Telegraph Long-serving associate editor and style guide scourge to pursue role in journalism and broadcasting An amusing way to put it. That you leave a national broadsheet in order to pursue journalism.

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A minerals company says it could start processing scandium from a mine at Greenvale, west of Townsville in North Queensland, within three years. Metallica Minerals is completing a feasibility study into the mine, which could require up to $500 million in capital works. Two things. 1) They’re never going to raise that much capital. 2) [...]

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At The Register. Summat about cloud computing.

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Fuck off would you? No, really, just bugger off and leave us all alone. Yes, this does mean you, you rotund short arsed ponce. Please resume your career as a bag of spanners impersonator. Dear God, who knows enough about the rest of them to even care about thinking up an insult, let alone one [...]

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