Tim Worstall

At the ASI. Big business and environmental regs.

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This is just terribly, terribly, amusing. Several people have already referred in comments to Simon Jenkins’ article in the Guardian on tax today – which is very good (everyone has their day). I recommend it. As he concludes: Property taxes cannot be evaded, and properly imposed are a fair generator of government revenue. Better, they are traditionally paid in [...]

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Private Eye is 50? – surely shome mistake It may feature old jokes and Andrew Neil in a vest every week, but its content is so well loved it makes £200,000 a year Erm, shurely shome mistake? A magazine that comes out every two weeks cannot feature something every week now, can it?

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Interesting source: However, in reality, VAT, like any other tax on a corporation, will be paid by some mixture of its customers, employees, suppliers, and shareholders. That’s the new economics foundation. Yup, when an idea has got into the sluggard brains of even those people I think we can fairly call it well established. Companies [...]

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The Guardian leader: In Britain, the price of rail travel is rising ahead of inflation: in a low carbon world, public transport would be so cheap that urban motorists would gladly abandon their cars. No, that’s not it at all. We do not want, in order to deal with climate change, to make everyone use [...]

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So she’s raging about how because “free schools” and academies and the like aren’t all the same, are not some grey, uniform, controlled by the bureaucrats monstrosity, this is a bad idea. And then she lets this slip out: Free schools and academies enjoy a range of greater freedoms that will help them to pull ahead [...]

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Trivial in and of itself, yes: Heinz, the American company which bought the famous British brand in 2005, has changed the celebrated concoction that includes tomatoes, malt vinegar, molasses, dates, tamarind and secret spices to reduce the salt content. The previous version of the brown sauce, which has become synonymous with fry-up breakfasts and bacon [...]

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You’re wandering along in foreign, thinking, well, we’re all peeps, you know? Not really foreign. Then something leaps out at you. Tomorrow, Saturday, they’re having a party at the bus station. Not just a quick blast of jazz, Mayor’s speech and a D. Uber Alles chorus. This is all day. 8 hours of it. Bands [...]

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Lisbon at 6 am is a lot blacker and fatter than it is at other times of day. But then, to be fair (unkind?) this is true of the serving classes in most cities. Berliners aren’t going to win any prizes in the “My God, they’re an attractive bunch” race. This is on average of [...]

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Off on business related travels for a few days. Late booked trip at a point when funds are low: not exactly a direct route I’m taking. May or may not be any stuff here for a few days. Be nice to each other while I’m away. What I’m trying to find out is “just where [...]

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But in that same world of uncertainty (which neoliberals do not think exists) there has also to be firm government action under the direction of politicians who know they have been elected to make decisions. I really don’t understand where he gets this idea that “neoliberals” think that uncertainty doesn’t exist. We’re the people who insist that it does exist: that’s [...]

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If an identifiable Jew from Israel wanders, unguarded, into any part of the Palestinian territories, he is a dead man. This is a fact of life, and everyone knows it. Leftist and Islamist rhetoric about Israeli “apartheid” masks a very big truth: that more than a million Muslim Arabs live, work, and move freely around [...]

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Man goes to working fishing harbour with his kids. Man and kids see dead fish in working fishing harbour. Man complains to harbourmaster. Sigh.

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The threat of paying millions in penalties each year means Britain urgently needs a new infrastructure to deal with its waste, according to a new report to be launched in Parliament on Tuesday. To deal with our waste efficiently an investment of £8bn will be needed by 2020, rising to £15bn by 2030, the Associate [...]

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Therefore there should be no choice in the NHS. You’ve got to admit the logic is delightfully pure and simple.

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It is frequently asserted that there is no money to finance investment. But the government can now borrow long-term funds at less than 2.5%, and returns on investing in affordable housing would be treble that. Similarly, the OECD has identified increased investment in higher education as a way to reduce the deficit, given the much [...]

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Sound advice to heed.

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In some areas, patients endured delays of 12 or 15 weeks after GPs decided they needed surgery, even though hospitals could have seen them sooner. The maximum permitted time between referral and treatment is 18 weeks. In one case a manager said the policy keeps patients in line as “short waiting times also create more [...]

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More than a third of EU population suffer mental health problems Europeans are plagued by mental and neurological illnesses, with almost 165 million people or 38 per cent of the population suffering each year from a brain disorder such as depression, anxiety, insomnia or dementia, according to a large new study. We’d better leave then, [...]

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But an interesting argument all the same. If we are to be truly utilitarian, the pleasure of a woman who is able to adopt a baby must be included in our calculations along with the relief of a woman who is able to abort one she doesn’t want.

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