Tim Worstall

This is interesting, eh? One of the most prominent claims made by proponents of a Tobin tax is that the incidence of the tax would be extremely progressive, primarily affecting wealthy institutions and individuals (Tax Research LLP 2010; Kapoor 2010). However, such analyses make the common error of confusing who would actually pay the tax [...]

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For far too long it has been suggested that people pay tax out of their own incomes and assets but that’s not true.

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With a stroke, DECC has undermined the competitiveness of the UK solar industry in the export market. How for fuck’s sake? The UK doesn’t have any silicon fabs, never will do. We don’t friggin’ make solar cells, we’re never going to, so how can anything any government do bugger up the export market for something [...]

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A highlight: she’d have to install a pasteurizer even though she made her yogurt from milk that was already pasteurized. What’s more, California law makes it illegal to pasteurize milk twice, Hang them, hang them all.

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So, this bird: Leonie Greene is head of external affairs at the Renewable Energy Association and the Solar Trade Association Comes along and says that the government are very naughty boys and girls for changing the feed in tariffs for solar. In the comments: As a matter of fact I am feeling a pang of [...]

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Really big questions over critical issues such as privatisation still remain unanswered: just how will the government prevent “cherry-picking”? Experience of independent sector treatment centres shows that they cherry-picked patients with the least complex operations and left the NHS to deal with patients suffering multiple complications. How will the government stop private health companies from [...]

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Someone really needs to have a word with these people: We’ve overfished the “Big Five” – cod, haddock, tuna, salmon and prawns – and now supermarkets and marine conservationists are hoping to steer us towards more sustainable seafood. Like the megrim. Both salmon and prawns are now farmed. As are tilapia, sturgeon, catfish and so [...]

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A second supposedly leading lesbian blogger was exposed as a man masquerading as a gay woman, a day after the Gay Girl in Damascus blog was revealed to be the fictional creation of a married male student from Edinburgh. Paula Brooks, who claimed to be the executive editor of a US-based lesbian site LezGetReal.com, told [...]

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Sceptics argue that there have always been droughts and floods, freak weather, heatwaves and temperature extremes, but what concerns most climate scientists and observers is that the extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, their intensity is growing and the trends all suggest long-term change as greenhouse gases steadily build in the atmosphere. So what [...]

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But on the whole, because a barrister’s performance in court is so open to scrutiny and objective judgement, the good, male or female, will succeed. So, err, none then. Or at least none specific to women. So what’s the point of the whole article other than to plug Ms. Jacob’s novel? One wonders which executive, [...]

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Slippery slope arguments are a logical fallacy: just because there is a slippery slope does not mean that the next stage is inevitable, only that it’s possible. Yet those (like myself) who are opposed to euthanasia on those slippery slope arguments might have something here: Euthanasia now accounts for two per cent of all deaths [...]

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In the end, whether or not a public sector union “wins” a strike or not depends upon what the public think of the reasons for striking. Mr Prentis said planned changes to pensions would lead to public sector workers paying in more, receiving less in retirement and working longer. True, but you probably don’t what [...]

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Adml Sir Mark Stanhope said the campaign would have been more effective without the Government’s defence cuts. The aircraft carrier and the Harrier jump-jets scrapped under last year’s strategic defence review would have made the mission more effective, faster and cheaper, he said. Running an air power campaign from sea to shore is easier if [...]

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At El Reg: The economy is, as is being gleefully pointed out to us, gathering speed as it swirls its way towards the U-bend. No or little economic growth, unemployment still monstrously high.

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You know, normally, using the law to insist that other conform to your sexual preferences is considered naughty. “When a group of activists proposed banning circumcision in San Francisco last fall, many people simply brushed them aside. Even in that liberal seaside city, it seemed implausible that thousands of people would support an effort to [...]

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Lordy be, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. I demonstrated how the banks have usurped the state as the principal creators of money, despite this fact being either unknown to or deliberately obscured by the financial and political communities and I argued that the banks’ money-creation process constituted in effect a hidden fraud upon [...]

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I took an elderly relative out for the afternoon to Bristol, and on the way in this morning thought I’d call in at the shops in Bath. It was chucking it down. The centre of town gave the impression that a massive wet t-shirt competition had just finished – most impressive. Turned out to be [...]

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Research has consistently shown that black children, and especially black Caribbean pupils, are disadvantaged when teachers decide who should be entered for the top exams. Black children are most likely to be placed in lower teaching groups and denied the most sought after subjects regardless of their achievements, their social class and their gender. These findings have [...]

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It would be awful, wouldn’t it? No new laws, no solving of the grave national problems that afflict the citizenry. They can also enjoy waffles, another Belgian staple, and one which is aptly suited to the current national condition. Thanks to epic political waffling, Belgium on Monday will have been without a government for a [...]

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These attacks by the government: Heavy shelling and gunfire has rocked the Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour, two days into a military assault that has caused more than 5,000 refugees to flee into neighbouring Turkey. The continued assault suggests some groups in the town are resisting the armed forces as the regime tries to crush [...]

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