Tim Worstall

Army special forces units are operating in a republican dissident stronghold of Northern Ireland, it was alleged tonight.
Republican Sinn Féin, political allies of the Continuity IRA, have claimed masked undercover soldiers have been carrying out surveillance on two housing estates in Lurgan, County Armagh in recent weeks.
They claimed the [...]

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The Abbey Road recording studios could be listed within a week as part of a move by English Heritage to ensure that they are not turned into flats.
Currently the building has a value of x.
By listing the building so as to remove possible uses the value is now x minus something.
It must be x [...]

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It is impossible to understand why their lordships think that such a consideration should take precedence over diminishing a clear and present danger to national security.
Well, you know, actually, umm, it’s not impossible to understand.
The judges on the Supreme Court understand something which all too many seem to have [...]

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A Venezuelan cable television channel critical of President Hugo Chavez has been taken off the air after refusing to air footage of the president’s speeches.
Radio Caracas Television, an anti-Chavez channel known as RCTV disappeared from TV sets shortly after midnight after the government cited noncompliance with new regulations requiring that Mr [...]

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Why did we prosecute those Muslim protesters from Luton, who called returning British soldiers “murderers”? It may have been a singularly unpleasant thing to do, but shouting nasty things and holding up placards has only recently been seen as something which should be dragged before the courts. Racism is an overused [...]

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President Barack Obama is under fire over claims that the Christmas Day underwear bomber was “singing like a canary” until he was treated as an ordinary criminal and advised of his right to silence.
The complaint is that when the government appointed lawyer advised him of his right to silence then he went silent.
And?
Is he a [...]

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Portuguese MPs approve gay marriage
Portugal’s parliament on Friday approved plans to legalise gay marriage, less than three decades after revoking the country’s ban on homosexuality.
It went through with litte controversy. And this in a country which 35 years ago was still a Catholic Fascist (yes, both) dictatorship.
I don’t consider myself a deep student of the [...]

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Last refuge of scoundrels and all that:
Three Labour MPs being investigated for expenses fraud are arguing that they should not be prosecuted because their suspect claims are covered by parliamentary privilege.
The MPs have hired legal experts to assert that the 1689 Bill of Rights protects them from prosecution.
I really do hope that [...]

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The Chancellor suggested that biometric passports, which carry the same information as ID cards, would be sufficient.
In an interview in The Daily Telegraph today, he said there was “probably no need” to “go further” than the new passports, paving the way for ID cards to be [...]

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A judge has sentenced a businessman at the centre of a fraud case to 3½ years in jail despite admitting the existence of fresh evidence that casts doubt on the safety of his conviction.
Oh aye, so what happened?
Bowles was convicted by a jury in June of cheating the Revenue of £1.2 million in VAT but [...]

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Demos today launches a report arguing that the principle of national service, abolished in Britain in 1960, still has something to offer. A national civilian service — a sort of “civic corps” — would look very different from its military forebear: it would be flexible and tailored to people’s lives, not a one-size-fits-all compulsory scheme.
It [...]

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Aren’t we just so lucky to be protected by our own legal system?
The men were sentenced in their absence by the supreme court of Cyprus in 2008 to three years’ jail each. They were initially acquitted by a Cypriot court in February 2007, but that verdict was overturned by the higher court in January last [...]

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Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession … in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist [...]

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And some have the answer.
Simply enjoying the life of free people in a free land.
The important point being that of course Scott Burgess was always a free man, given the accident of his place of birth. But the land in which he is now free has not been, had not been, as a result of [...]

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In a free society, people should be at liberty to hold intolerant views if they wish. Our public order laws are meant to mark the boundary between free speech and a deliberate attempt to whip up violence;
Something that many seem to have missed the point of. Inside our heads we’re allowed to think absolutely anything [...]

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Gosh, wouldn’t the world be such a better place if those clever and selfless people who man the bureaucracy simply told us all what we may and may not do?
Oh, some would worry and bleat about those outmoded concepts of individual freedom and liberty but they can be ignored: consigned to the dustbin of history [...]

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Oh yeah?
Mrs Elliott, 42, had her details logged on the police national computer after she was wrongly accused by her estranged husband of signing his name on the form.
She was arrested but cleared within 24 hours, and checks at the school found no evidence of wrongdoing. [...]

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But here’s footage of the Pan European picnic: the first of the East Germans being able to leave Hungary for Austria.

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I date the exact moment to when one of the crowd turns to the senior border guard and says: “Don’t be stupid”.
From the moment that those who can arrest, imprison, shoot, are held in contempt, not fear, then liberty has won.

And from the Reichstag.

And don’t forget the Hungarians. If anyone can find it, I want [...]

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OK, so Melissa McEwan’s a little over the top here but she does make a good point.
There are certain things called “rights” which are not, or should not be, subject to the tyranny of the majority. In her example whether or not two same sex people can get married to each other is just such [...]

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