Tim Worstall

So, CEO pay has rebounded after a year of decline followed by a year of stagnation. But with median increases in remuneration of the order of 35 to 40%, the real question is: were the increases justified by performance? In order to determine this – and take the long view – I looked at pay [...]

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Strange: Clegg’s announcement, ironically, came shortly after local government secretary Eric Pickles made clear that, after two years of a council tax freeze in England, he will intervene if authorities approve rises above 3.5% next year. Using new legislation, he will order local referendums to get approval from electors for any increase above this level. [...]

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This column is complete and total garbage. I’ve lost count of the number of rows I’ve had about that, many in public, one live on telly, during which the broadcaster Jonathan Maitland said this was a problem of education: if she knew how to shop better she would have been able to afford a more [...]

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Bryony Gordon: A ‘Big Man’ chucked a teenager off a ScotRail train, but perhaps the real problem was the ticket inspector. It’s the train company’s fault, petty bureaucracy gone mad. Julie Bindel: The ‘big man’, the fare-dodger and the right time to intervene Intervening is community in action except when it’s vigilantes. Still, I know [...]

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Fancy that. Three in four women believe there is no such thing as the perfect man So only 25% of British women are entirely deluded then. For, being human, there is no such thing as perfection. And we’ll leave aside whether there is in fact such a thing as the perfect woman. It is rather [...]

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This is unsurprising. Switzerland deliberately created banking secrecy in 1934 to assist those evading tax in their home jurisdictions. Whether or not this was acceptable in 1934 does not matter: it is wholly unacceptable now. That’s right. The world is entirely free of thieving governments who would murder people for their money, isn’t it? Not [...]

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The second was as personally important, and I am aware that at least some others shared it, which was that it was so encouraging to take part in a research seminar where no one was asking you to justify why you thought offshore was so important. It remains the case that  far too few academics, [...]

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I complained about what they are doing here. We do have, the way that they are counting, an increase in admissions related to alcohol. This is partly because of the following effect: there has been a rise in admissions. Actually, there’s been a 40% or so rise in admissions over the decade. And, if you [...]

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Living standards were 21pc higher in the UK compared with the average in the EU, the statistics office Eurostat said. In Luxembourg standards were 50pc higher. Germany took third place, followed by the Netherlands and Austria. Individual consumption was used as the measure, often cited because it includes all goods and services that a household [...]

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About booze: Each year, alcohol causes the admission of over a million people to hospital, No, it does not. The measurement is actually the number of admissions, not the number of people admitted. Let us assume that we’ve got an alcoholic, one who tumbles over regularly when pissed. How many admissions will he have in [...]

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Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s third richest man, to challenge Putin Nickel magnate appeals to angry middle class for presidency – but some claim he is merely a Kremlin stooge For sale only to close friends of V Putin.

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The eurozone will introduce a financial transaction tax that will hurt the City and we will be powerless to halt it. If they introduce a tax on themselves and we do not introduce the same tax on ourselves, how does this hurt us? Quite. What will actually happen is wehat happened in the 50s and [...]

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Ah, but what about lending? After all, this is why we have banks in the first place: to channel money to productive industries. The Cresc team looked at Bank of England figures on bank and building society loans and found that at the height of the bubble in 2007, around 40% or more of all [...]

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John Harris: Support for the anti-EU lobby in Britain has risen from 19% to half the population in 10 years. Labour ministers feel trapped Memo to John Harris (OK, Guardian subs). What friggin’ Labour Ministers? Recall that “election” thing?

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Given that I’ve lost it somewhere, very rarely use it when I haven’t lost it and certainly don’t understand how to retrieve voicemails given that it’s all in Portuguese, it would actually be useful if someone would. Plus I cuold do with a couple of hundred grand. Promise not to leave my family for the [...]

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I’m confused. Why are the Occupy people trying to close down the West Coast ports? What’s actually the point of this?

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However MPs have complained that the new system is too bureaucratic as they object to having to account for every penny of taxpayer–funded expenditure. Everybody else who gets cash off the taxpayers has to account for each and every penny. Aged pensioners, those who battled the Nazis, strangled Japs in foetid jungles, have to wade [...]

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instant dismissal with no pension for any Civil Servant who has unauthorised dealings with European bureaucrats or politicians And “unauthorised” should be expanded to anyone who even says good morning to one without the necessary appendage “you hateful foreign person you”. Or would that be going just a tad too far? Maybe we could relax [...]

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On the whole, the French media, even those hostile to Sarkozy, welcome the Brussels results. Throughout the euro crisis they have given him credit for keeping the German chancellor on the European track, pressing her for faster action and defending the French view that political will is more important than rules. That’s why Britain simply [...]

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The evidence coming from Mr. Mba on the Goldman Sachs, Harnett “deal“. Mr Hartnett is Britain’s leading taxman but faced a political storm in October when HMRC confirmed it struck a deal with Goldman on waiving interest of “smaller than £10m” on a £30m tax bill. The tax was on bankers’ bonuses paid through an [...]

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