Tim Worstall

At the ASI. How to have a properly local tax system. Nick Denmark’s.

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I do wonder you know. The current Dean (who Ritchie is accusing of selling out to the bankers for the money they donate), Graeme Knowles, used to be (until 2007) the Bishop of Sodor and Man. The Bishop of Sodor and Man is, ex officio, a member of the Legislative Council, the upper part of [...]

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Rents rose another 1.2% this month, taking nearly half of family incomes. You’ve been caught out by that Shelter survey, just like Dave Hill was. They are using earnings as their measure of income. This is income from wages. However, this is not the same as household income. For we’ve this thing called the welfare [...]

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Now we’ve a column about handbags! She really is the Germaine Greer de nos jours, isn’t she? Only another 40 years and she can have a gardening column in the Indy.

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Back in the 1970s, family planning was high on their and western political agendas, but in the 1980s countries such as Ghana were treated by the IMF and Britain as laboratories for enforced economic reforms and debt programmes. Contraception and family-planning programmes, just beginning to have an effect, were sidelined. The free market economy pushed on [...]

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Investors (and many others) don’t actually use company accounts in decisions about investing. Because an investment decision (as with a lending one and many others) is a forward looking one. We’ve many sources of forward looking information: announcements to markets (which the directors have to make about anything that might impact on the business), changes [...]

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He was joking, obviously – but if no one is laughing, perhaps that means his jokes aren’t working? “I refuse not to have a sense of humour.” Then why does he think Johnson gets away with his jokes, and he doesn’t? “Because his friends own and control the media.” It’s part and parcel of the mindset [...]

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The biggest risk to the survival of the tiger as a species (or if you prefer, a group of sub-species) is not, as is commonly claimed, the destruction of wild habitat. That’s the biggest threat to the survival of the species in the wild. No, the biggest threat to the survival of the species as [...]

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Did I ever tell you that Pops Worstall was in the Royal Navy? Firstly you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own regarding their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly you must hate a Frenchman as you [...]

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In what many took to be fodder for the capitalism-is-a-conspiracy theorists, boffins have claimed that about 150 companies, mostly banks, are controlling the majority of the economic power. Yup. They do. The paper itself. In network analysis terms it’s all no doubt terribly interesting for people who like network analysis. In economic or business terms [...]

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My word, this book is going to be interesting, isn’t it? The Courageous State, among other things, will: Support the broader goals of family, community and society and the achievement of purpose through identity; It’s not quite Kinde, Kuche und Kirchen but I can’t be the only person to find something vaguely fascist about it [...]

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Apparently the BEST stuff is out; Tamino has the story so I won’t bother. Summary: the global temperature record is just what we thought it was. Remind me again why they bothered to do this? Because science is the testing of data, hypotheses and theories.

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Yes, I am sufficiently geeky. Although $20 for a t-shirt? Has there been some inflation I’m unaware of?

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Adopted as a baby by a family in Silicon Valley, Jobs met his biological father – Abdulfattah “John” Jandali – several times in the 1980s without realising who he was, according to Isaacson. Jandali had been running a restaurant in the area at the time. But Jobs never got in touch with Jandali once he [...]

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Research conducted by the Resolution Foundation, and endorsed by Willetts, shows that the importance of having a degree has increased over time, in defiance of the assumption that the more highly educated people there are, the less valuable their qualifications. In the noughties, the fewer qualifications you had, the harder it was to maintain good [...]

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For, as the UK supreme court made clear in July, the right to know the case against you remains a fundamental common law principle – as Lord Kerr described it, “an elementary and essential prerequisite of fairness”. Ken Clarke and the security services can bugger off then, can’t they?

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“The truth is that European banks are in a worse state than American banks, that they never really recapitalized even though they said they would,” Mr Brown said. “They didn’t write off their toxic assets. They’re not lending, and they’ve been trying to disguise the extent of the problems they face.” The European banks just [...]

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A few weeks ago I began feeling unwell.  And you know when you feel unwell and it persists you seek medical help to find out what’s going on.  One thing led to another and wound up on Thursday with a cat scan A few weeks to a cat scan, eh? From feeling ill to getting [...]

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Lots of LOLcats stuff plays off the joke of washing a cat. OK, alright, some of it does. But, umm, who ever washes their cat? Dogs, yes, sure, but cats? They do that themselves just fine. Is this some Americanism or something, the washing of cats?

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