Tim Worstall

So, that’s back to the nonsense of CSR again. Thankfully, some companies realise that is not the way to go: But one in four companies said EU proposals requiring extractive industries to disclose details of tax payments should be broadened to other businesses. This is, of course, country-by-country reporting, the accounting concept I created ten [...]

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Is this a sensible idea? The main cost to LED’s is that they all have to have a transformer. LED’s run at low voltages, like 5v, so house current has to be stepped down at every bulb. LED’s in theory should run cool and be cheap, but they are expensive and run hot because of [...]

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People no longer trust one another, the state or any authority: only 35% trust others, compared with Sweden’s 70%. So which comes first? The trust that allows a high tax high benefit society? Or the high tax high benefit society that engenders the trust? It’s a fairly important question too. If it’s the first (which [...]

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The Guardian: won’t load in Firefox at all. But will in Chrome. Been like this for a few days now. Not actually important or anything, just puzzling.

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In its Financial Stability Report (FSR), the Bank revealed that the big four lenders – RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC – may need to take £15bn of extra provisions on consumer loans and European debt, “a further £4bn-£10bn” to cover fines and customer compensation, and “between £5bn and £35bn” to meet regulatory risk standards. You [...]

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But Ukip’s Jane Collins took 4,648 votes, nearly 22 per cent of those cast, with the Conservatives beaten into fifth place behind the British National Party and Respect, and the Liberal Democrats eighth. Yes, yes, I know, byelection, fostering row. But in three byelections on the same day in safe Labour seats UKIP came second, [...]

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This minimum alcohol pricing. It’ll add to inflation. Implementation of a minimum unit price at any level will increase prices and therefore inflation. As shown in Table 4 the impact of a 45p MUP is estimated to be a +0.2ppts, based on the weight of off-trade alcohol sold in the Consumer Prices Index. Benefits are [...]

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A former Cabinet minister tonight revealed urine has been pouring through the ceiling of his Commons office. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw took to Twitter to complain that his office ‘stinks’ after sewage from a toilets above his office seeped through Parliament’s crumbling walls.

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Just remembered this. OK, so Alan Bond’s lot are getting their engine to work. Excellent. Now someone needs to think about what to build the plane out of. No problems going up. But that wing and fuselage surface is going to take a beating coming down. You know, tiles on the Shuttle and all? To [...]

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Seems most odd: Turning the human body into a power station sounds like a zany plotline from the Matrix movies, but scientists are starting to take seriously the idea that one way to stem climate change might be to harvest tiny amounts of energy in the form of the body’s heat, movement, metabolism and vibrations. [...]

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Fiona McTaggart MP said in a debate on Google’s tax affairs on Channel 4 on Tuesday that she expected companies to pay their fair share of tax. Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute immediately jumped on her argument. “Who is to say what’s a fair rate of tax?” he demanded (or words to that [...]

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Figures published last night by the PAC, show that Amazon sales from the UK amounted to £3.35bn in 2011, with £2.9bn made up from sales of the company’s UK website, www.amazon.co.uk, and the remainder from subsidiary LOVEFiLM and “other business activity” outside of the website. The figures also showed the company made sales totalling £1.87bn [...]

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The European Commission has sent a nine-page legal opinion to the British Government warning that minimum prices are illegal – and that the Treasury should increase duty on alcoholic drinks if it wishes to raise the price. However, ministers appear to have decided to defy the legal warning and yesterday unveiled proposals to introduce a [...]

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Unfortunately for her, as I show, there was no Laffer effect at all. Far from income going down in 2010-11 as Laffer would predict, it actually went up once one of tax avoidance was adjusted for. If we ignore the things that people do to avoid taxes then we can show that people don’t avoid [...]

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Again. Alan Bond has been announcing UK to Oz in four hours by his new jet plane for some decades now. Every couple of years we get another flash of stories. Who knows, one day someone might actually build one of his designs.

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Payday loan companies, such as QuickQuid, Wonga and Payday UK, have drawn heavy criticism for charging annual interest rates of up to 4,000 per cent a year. The firms have been accused to pushing vulnerable people into debt. Lord Welby, the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, recently said that some payday loans are “usury” and claimed [...]

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A piece at CiF. OK, so they took off the last para in which I laughed at certain people (fairly enough really). But that steel plant closure in France. It’s all the fault of the hippies. Which it indeed is.

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It would be very interesting if they were accurate, wouldn’t it? Around two thirds of Britain’s highest earners deserted the UK after the 50p top rate of tax was introduced, according to figures. While some 16,000 workers declared an income in excess of £1million in the 2009/10 tax year to HM Revenue and Customs, that [...]

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It is commendable to strive for accurate, neutral reporting and “homophobia” or “Islamophobia” are not ideal, as they denote solely the fear motivating prejudice. But they are the best we have. While fear may not be the only force behind such attitudes, it is invariably a chief component. That’s an assertion, not a proof. Given [...]

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Afghanistan’s biggest private bank was a massive fraud scheme from its founding, with £540 million ($861 million) diverted to a clique of beneficiaries including the president’s brother, a British-funded audit has found. For example: Sources familiar with the audit told The Daily Telegraph that when the bank foundered, 92 per cent of its loan portfolio, [...]

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