Tim Worstall

And while scientists are reasonably confident that about a fifth of vertebrates – including the charismatic panda, tiger and black rhino – are threatened, The panda and the rhino, yes. But the tiger? Last I heard there were something like 25,000 tigers in private hands (possibly not entirely le mot juste, adult tigers are as [...]

[Read more →]

Last night there were calls for urgent new safety rules to control the presence of the poisons in foods intended for young children. Researchers found feeding infants twice a day on the shop-bought baby foods such as rice porridge can increase their exposure to arsenic by up to fifty times when compared to breast feeding [...]

[Read more →]

“I cannot talk to you properly now,” an air traffic controller at Madrid’s Barajas Airport told The Sunday Telegraph in a half whisper, his voice quavering on his mobile. “There are civil guards here, with pistols. If we don’t start work now, we will be arrested. … Threatened with immediate imprisonment for sedition if they [...]

[Read more →]

Well, we know how this is going to get reported, don’t we? Staying late in the office or working overtime is bad for the heart, researchers warned yesterday. A large study of British civil servants found that those who regularly worked 10 or 11-hour days were up to 60 per cent more likely to suffer [...]

[Read more →]

Report out today telling us all how much smoking costs business. Smokers cost British companies more than £2bn ($3.2bn) last year, according to a study funded by the NHS and published on Friday. In the first estimate of the direct cost to companies of staff who smoke, the London School of Economics said businesses lost [...]

[Read more →]

You really do have to hand it to our MPs and Lords: knowing arses from elbows is clearly an advanced manouvre for them. All artificial colourings in food and soft drinks should be banned, a parliamentary committee urged yesterday in a report on the effect of diet on the brain. The associate parliamentary food and [...]

[Read more →]

More bansturbation! Motorists could be banned from smoking behind the wheel of their own cars while driving them as part of their job, it has emerged. Isn’t that wonderful? Your car, with no one else in it, becomes another place where you may not smoke. It gets better too: Prof Richard West, the Government’s leading [...]

[Read more →]

Almost 13 million adults are risking their health by drinking too much because of a failure to appreciate both the increasing strength of alcoholic drinks and the trend for larger measures, Government statisticians have revealed. No, not the fact they’re now  saying that as wine has got stronger astonishing, now we need to define a [...]

[Read more →]

Ok, this seems fair enough. Lollipop ladies wear reflective coats in order to be seen, so if they’re not wearing one then they shouldn’t be doing the lollipop job. I’m not saying I totally agree, but I can at least see the logic: A lollipop lady has been banned from wearing festive fancy dress because [...]

[Read more →]

A really rather wonderful scientific result: Bar staff have seen huge health benefits from the ban on smoking in public places, a study by the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre in Warwick – funded by Cancer Research UK – has found. Researchers tested the air quality in 40 pubs, bars and restaurants across the country and [...]

[Read more →]