Tim Worstall

Protestations that government is encouraging electric cars and needs more time to comply are rubbish. It’s not as if air pollution is hard to control or even expensive. Most comes from mass car use, so a national network of low emissions zones could be set up within months. Fewer vehicles could be allowed into city [...]

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To achieve a revival of manufacturing the Government needs urgently to establish an industry bank charged with making investment decisions on commercial grounds. How are you going to achieve this? How are you going to take the political meddling out of who gets a loan? Quite, you can’t can you?

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The problem is of course that such ignorant Frenchmen actually have some power over us as well: Michel Barnier, the EU markets commissioner, said he wanted to ban credit rating agencies from rating bonds from bailed-out countries. He told French radio that the agencies could lose the “right to rate certain countries for a certain [...]

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Lord Bell, who as Tim Bell was a key PR adviser to the Prime Minister throughout the 1980s, said: “I can’t be bothered to sensationalise this rubbish. “I can’t see the point of this film. Its only value is to make some money for Meryl Streep and whoever wrote it. “ That is the point [...]

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Snarling at the Enough Project and Global Witness for starving poor Congolese.

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The narrative across much of the Westminster media, who know little about economics …..

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Truth to it all the same: Prices clear markets. If there is a recession, something is wrong with prices.

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So, yes, house prices are very high. So, yes, we’d rather like to have lower house prices. In order to work out how to lower house prices we need to work out why house prices are high. The Murphmeister: There is no doubt at all that current house prices are massively over-inflated. That is because banks lent [...]

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The Chinese government has issued new regulations for journalists that require them to provide two sources for everything they print. Also rather the end of tabloid style reporting where there are generally no sources……

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Yet when you gather together the tribes of wellbeing, you hardly discover a lack of enterprise or innovation. The question is the nature of the “new” that’s being sought. The other spectre that haunts liberal economics – other than the lingering unhappiness that its happy-clappy consumerism generates – is the broaching of planetary boundaries for [...]

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Ai Weiwei has said his life is turning into a “Hollywood movie” as Chinese officials throw up fresh obstacles to his efforts to clear tax charges against his company. Hours before the deadline for paying the 15m yuan (£1.47m) fine, tax officials told the artist and human rights campaigner he could not use his mother’s [...]

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The courts were flexing their political muscles again last week – as they seem to every week. First, a High Court judge ruled that Sefton Council could not legally freeze the fees it pays private companies to look after old people needing care. Then, on Friday, the same court ruled that the Isle of Wight [...]

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Coming to a propagandist near you: In the three months to June, “write-offs of loans to non-financial corporations” almost tripled to £2.94bn, according to the Bank of England. The only time the level of losses had ever come close was in the fourth quarter of 2009, as Britain was emerging from recession, when write-offs were [...]

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Bastiat’s essence, therefore, was not that he wrote clearly, for audiences of non-economists, about economics.  It was not that he used humor frequently and effectively.  It was not that he was a master stylist.  No.  Bastiat’s distinguishing feature was his tireless effort to defend the case for free markets and free trade from the many [...]

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At the ASI.

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The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewal—and acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence. ……….. [...]

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Labour MP Valerie Vaz, who sits on the health select committee, said the revelation should prompt second thoughts by ministers: “It is difficult to comprehend how Circle can maintain a proper standard of healthcare while maximising profit; as a company they would have to make a profit, but that can only come if costs are [...]

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He should say that while it was right for Britain not to join the single currency as it was previously constructed, if Germany were to act responsibly, Britain would peg sterling to a reformed euro and in the long run even consider joining the regime. Moreover, Britain would do this either way, he could argue [...]

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The Treasury is to announce plans to bring together income tax and national insurance payments in one single “tax take” figure, to make it easier for businesses to administer tax and individuals to see how much they are paying. Yes, this is a good idea. Simplification is anyway and now that we’re moving to non-contributory [...]

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Because regulators don’t have the correct incentives. A 2009 report by the SEC’s internal watchdog called into question the conduct of 21 staff members for work related to Madoff. David Kotz, who wrote the report, had urged the SEC to act on an “employee-by-employee basis” to prevent a recurrence of mistakes that kept the agency [...]

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