Tim Worstall

Union leaders predict that up to 400,000 workers will be involved in a wave of demonstrations, fuelled by ministers making clear in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech that they are pressing ahead with their controversial reforms. Y’know, it was the day marked out to celebrate labour n’everything?

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If you want to live by the precautionary principle, then crawl up in a ball and live in a cave. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson.

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BBC programme makers agreed to pay the air fare of one of Britain’s most controversial far-Right campaigners, so that he could appear in a panel show on Sunday morning. Err, the BBC always pays your travel to get to a studio. They’ve paid me a tank of petrol to get to a studio in Faro, [...]

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This has been puzzling me for some time. Re the Danny Dorling question really: just what is a social geographer? Intensive pondering has allowed me to come to a conclusion. A social geographer is a geographer too stupid or politically biased to be able to teach sports.

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Umm, sorry, but what is this guy being accused of doing? Albert Hall debentures are a capital investment. The yield from them is the tickets. So what’s the problem?

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So here’s my advice: apply to be a trainee butler for the Queen. The starting salary of £15,000 a year for 45 hours’ work a week might not be much, but think of the perks. Board, food and bills are all gratis, you receive on-the-job training and, thanks to last week’s Budget, from next April [...]

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Animal sanctuaries closing under pressure from the RSPCA A growing number of animal sanctuaries are closing due to an inability to cope with an increase in abandoned pets and growing bureaucratic pressure from the RSPCA. It’s a classic problem. The RSPCA run a lot of animal centres/sanctuaries. The RSPCA inspect all the others too (I [...]

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Marriage is best for raising children, Government says It is better for children to be raised by two parents than one, and better still when those parents are married, the Government will declare today. We have a logical problem here. Is it that the sort of people who get married either when they have children [...]

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Just a little thought. The Jubilee is this year. So, err, they should have been thinking about buying a yacht some 3 or 4 years ago, shouldn’t they? They do take a certain amount of time to make after all…..

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Sting: Knighthoods are for the old Sting, the musician, says that only older people are awarded knighthoods. Yes, because you’ve got to show a bit of staying power and also reach the top of your profession. Things that, amazingly, tend to take a few decades.

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Supermarket thieves caught when getaway car has no fuel Two supermarket thieves were caught when they forgot to put petrol in their getaway car. Giggle worthy, isn’t it? But that’s not quite what happened. Rose Devlin, 59, and Denise Egan, 52, stole £400 of alcohol from Asda in Chadderton, Greater Manchester, and were all set [...]

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In these dark days of financial apocalypse and global unrest, here’s a cheering thought: red trousers are staging a comeback. Until recently, there was a danger that brightly coloured men’s trousering might go the way of the bowler hat: a once-great British institution killed off by the scorn of the young and hip. Only the [...]

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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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An unnamed actress is suing Amazon.com for more than $1 million (£630,000) for disclosing her age on its internet Movie Database website and refusing to remove the reference when asked. Sigh.

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Property developers are sitting on more than 300,000 plots with planning permission for new homes, undermining the case for controversial government planning reforms. Campaigners say that the “land banks” are enough for more than two years of house building, meaning there is no need to water down current planning laws. This really is cretinism. 1) [...]

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Hmm. Thereport by Unicef, the UN children’s agency, warns that materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain as parents “pointlessly” amass goods for their children to compensate for their long working hours. While parents said they felt compelled into buying more, the children themselves said spending time with their families made them happier. [...]

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Man goes to working fishing harbour with his kids. Man and kids see dead fish in working fishing harbour. Man complains to harbourmaster. Sigh.

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I wonder what attracted him to her? Entirely a mystery.

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Home ownership in the UK will slump to its lowest level since the mid-1980s over the next decade, leading to an “unprecedented crisis” in the housing market, the National Housing Federation (NHF) has warned. Now leave aside the fact that this report comes from the builders who are looking for handouts. The actual result is [...]

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Council workers could be forced to take a week’s unpaid leave each year as part of radical plans to minimise job losses, it emerged yesterday. They’ll whine about it at the same time as they praise Germany’s reaction to the recession: making lots of people work part time for less money. It’s exactly the same [...]

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