Tim Worstall

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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According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), 11.2 per cent of all shops on high streets and in shopping centres are vacant. Isn’t that a surprising statistic? Based on ONS experimental Internet sales series, the non-seasonally adjusted average weekly value of Internet retail sales in July 2011 was £523.4 million which was approximately 9.1 per [...]

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No, put aside all of the wibble about root causes and listen to me. Any society, every society of 58 million, contains within it a few tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands who will happily riot given half a chance. You can call them feral rats if you like, chavs, the lumpenproletariat, whatever, but [...]

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The reason, I’ll warrant, is that the male distribution of ego has a right tail that stretches far into the horizon.

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Entrepreneur Joe Cohen explains why he’s backing Devcamp, a series of summer workshops designed to give East London students from disadvantaged backgrounds the skills to compete in a digital economy. Can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work and plenty of reasons why it should. We’re talking about exactly the same recruiting ground that The [...]

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Reports of looters queuing? If nothing else, we’ve been able to teach them that part of Britishness.

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The report is that the bullet that lodged in the police officer’s radio was actually a police issue bullet. Well, sorta. From what I’ve seen it’s a hollow point. Which is indeed what is police issue. And yes, it is illegal for most of us to get ahold of such ammunition. Except if you happen [...]

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J K Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter novels and one of Britain’s most famous lone parents, has discovered she comes from a long line of single mothers while taking part in the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?. Recall that what actually happened with eugenics was that those birds who [...]

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Norwegian killer probably insane, his lawyer says There’s a certain obvious truth to the claim, too. “Your client claims he murdered 90 people because he’s one of the new Knights Templar?” “Correct M’Lud”. “I take it that “raving nutter” is not a medical diagnosis?” “Not normally M’Lud, no, however….”

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