Tim Worstall

There must be something to this Gov. Perry guy. He’s causing a near random spraying of allegations: Thanks to Perry, some Texas school children must pay to ride a bus to class, and when challenged about his (proposed) budget cuts to Medicaid that would shock a state already ranked ninth in the union for the [...]

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Long story but…..I’d be interested in buying a few cases of sun cream (various factors, kiddies and adults) if anyone could tell me where to get some no name but acceptable quality stuff. I can see the Nivea’s etc all over the place in the UK for £10 a bottle…..I’m hoping that there’s some no [...]

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This really is quite lovely: I will state the obvious fact that this should not give rise to a right to preferential tax treatment – but it does. Discrimination on the basis of national origin in this way is wrong. So why does the government do it? So, today, discrimination in taxation on the basis [...]

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I try to claim that I was friends with the genius Richard Feynman. He came to our show a few times and was very complimentary, and I had dinner with him a couple times, and we chatted on the phone several times. I’d call him to get quick tutoring on physics so I could pretend [...]

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No, don’t laugh, this is the opportunity for some really great social science research. Telecom Corp., a team sponsor, planned to launch an advertising campaign calling on fans to “Abstain for the All Blacks” next week to generate publicity ahead of the September-October tournament, the New Zealand Herald reported. It said fans would be given [...]

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As is now traditional, the newspapers illustrate the arrival of A Level results with pictures of toothsome young ladies leaping in the air in delight at hearing that they really have got into the University of Lower Neasden to study Needlework. It’s even said that certain schools tout themselves as having particularly toothsome young ladies [...]

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What makes Cambridge a model cycling city? Because it’s flat. Remarkably, our author, a cyclist, doesn’t mention this fairly important fact. You could, for example, have all of the same infrastructure in Bath and you’d end up with the same three mad people you have now on bicycles. Because the place is built on a [...]

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The more I read about what people are doing about the euro the more I become convinced that it’s going to crash and burn. Warner and Ambrose for example. Yes, yes, I know, I’ve been saying for near a decade now (that, at least, is how long I can prove I’ve been saying it) that [...]

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We’ve known this for a long time. For every aid dollar that flows south, ten dollars flows northwards through illicit channels. The odds are stacked against sustainable development. G20 leaders meet this autumn to discuss the world economy. The prospects don’t look encouraging, but this is exactly the moment when they should take action against [...]

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So Doris Day has a new album out. One most ungallant gentleman once quipped that he was so old that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin. I’ll let the older readers explain that one to the younger……

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Nice set of pictures of the anti-Gorbachov coup 20 years ago. Bernard Levin, all those years ago, called it exactly, to the moment, when the Soviet system came tumbling down. At one point, the crowd defending the White House was called upon to disperse. Along the lines of “This is the KGB, we order you [...]

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EHRC: Women must wait 70 years for fair share of top jobs Nope, not an ounce of truth in the assertion. More than 5,400 women are “missing” from the country’s 26,000 most powerful jobs in business, the law, politics and the arts, according to a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The study [...]

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The men became the first to be sentenced by crown court judges for their involvement in the mass civil disobedience that swept England. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were jailed for four years each for inciting the disorder on Facebook despite both being of previous good character. Blackshaw created an event on the [...]

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Just wanted to repeat these phrases: The cause of my demand is their latest nonsense on the Robin Hood Tax. You know the one, that Richard Curtis thing where if we just took pennies off every financial transaction then we’d have hundreds of billions to make kittens fart rainbows stuff? The IMF has just released [...]

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But energy policies brought in by George W Bush which set production quota to encourage the use of biofuels allowed the industry to take off. By last year, nearly 40% of US corn was going to produce ethanol. It’s going to take some time, not least because Iowa is where the presidential election races start, [...]

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This story brought a chuckle: With cash-strapped councils cutting subsidies, companies are dropping unprofitable services across the country. Now, as an alternative, passengers are being “invited” to contribute towards the cost of their journey if they hold a bus pass which would normally give them free off peak bus travel. You can declare that something [...]

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The sentences being given to those who have looted are offensive. I’m delighted so many are saying so. I do, of course, agree that crime must be punished, but what we’re seeing is a rash of sentencing that reflects what might be called ‘moral outrage’ – and very candidly, politically directed moral outrage at that. But it’s [...]

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Nixon called time on the Bretton Woods system of fixed but adjustable exchange rates, under which countries could use capital controls in order to stimulate their economies without fear of a run on their currency. No, this is arse about tit. It was the system of fixed exchange rates which prevented stimulus. If you went [...]

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The cry of the bureaucracy down the ages. In response, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, announced last month that civil servants would be forced to publish all spending. However, it emerged yesterday that the final publication scheme being devised will mean that many items of spending will remain secret. Coalition sources say that senior [...]

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Research by The Daily Telegraph shows a sharp rise in the number of students aged 17 and 18 directly applying to leading companies after leaving school and college. Employers such as Network Rail, Marks & Spencer, Laing O’Rourke, the engineering firm, and the accountancy firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Grant Thornton are reporting huge rises in applications [...]

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