Tim Worstall

There’s something of a problem with this EAW you see: In another case, Andrew Symeou was extradited to Greece in July 2009 to face charges in connection with the death of a young man on a Greek island. He spent a year in custody before being granted bail but could not leave Greece. He was [...]

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But perhaps the biggest sin of the lot was effectively to render all credit default swaps (a form of insurance against default) on sovereign debt essentially worthless, or void, by making the Greek default “voluntary”. This has made it impossible to hedge against eurozone sovereign debt purchases, and thereby destroyed the market. Worse, it’s made [...]

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The courts were flexing their political muscles again last week – as they seem to every week. First, a High Court judge ruled that Sefton Council could not legally freeze the fees it pays private companies to look after old people needing care. Then, on Friday, the same court ruled that the Isle of Wight [...]

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A long term reader sends me a piece from the NYT which includes this line: ClientEarth, a nonprofit law firm with offices in Brussels, Law firms are partnerships: in the technical sense there is no profit, ever. Just incomes for the partners. Who would like to bet that as ClientEarth gets more business, the partners [...]

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The Brighton UK Uncut peeps are in court at present. Something to do with superglueing themselves to hte windows of TopShop I think. Our favourite retired accountant gave evidence for the defence yesterday and Caroline Lucas is doing so today. So, onto something I don’t know. Is it possible to find out what evidence they [...]

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Hey, go for it folks. But those who wanted football to carry on here acted admirably quickly, and launched the new Chester FC as a “phoenix club”. Crucially, it’s a mutual: owned by its supporters, who can pay a minimum of £5 a season to become active shareholders. And it is not alone: the night [...]

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“I thee with my dosh endow” seems to be slightly going by the wayside doesn’t it? A wife is not entitled to a £7 million share of her husband’s £24 million fortune after 25 years of marriage because he inherited it from his father, a divorce judge has ruled. I seem to remember that Scottish [...]

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Which side will win in the end I’ve no idea but I don’t think much of the arguments being pout forward by one side: The 11th Circuit decision, penned by Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull, found that “the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power.” “What Congress [...]

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Government sources said options for change include increasing magistrates’ powers to jail offenders. Under current rules, magistrates can jail offenders for a maximum of six months. That could double to a year, sources said. What scum they are. If you want to take away someone’s liberty for more than 6 months then have the cojones [...]

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He said: “We need to do more to improve the supply side of the economy. This means taking on difficult vested interests.” But of course it’s not just the unions and the planning system that need that reform. The whole damn system of regulation needs to be shaken up. Just as an example, it is [...]

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Just Thinking makes an interesting point. Few to none have been charged with riot: as I’ve been saying, this might well mean that there wasn’t in fact a riot and thus the rozzers not having to pay for the damage caused in those not riots. What slightly worries me is that Frank Dobson thinks this [...]

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I’ve posted this before yet asinine MSM reporters continue to make statements on air such as ‘leaving businesses with a big bill’. So any journalists reading please pay close attention. Look at your insurance policy; go the exclusions and find the word that occurs between ‘radioactivity’ and ‘terrorism’. Yep. Riot. All that damage – if [...]

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As has been pointed out, those of us who don’t trust the State to run libraries aren’t really the poster children for the idea that the State will successfully identify those who should be killed. But this argument ends up in stupidity: It is a similar picture for cop killers, the public understands that the [...]

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Steve Hilton, one of David Cameron’s most senior advisers, has suggested that Britain should abolish maternity leave And why not? The newspaper quoted a source close to Mr Hilton suggesting that he thought that maternity leave rights were “the biggest obstacle to woman finding work”. This is true, it’s also one of the leading causes [...]

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I am interested in Mr Miliband’s radical idea that we might need tighter rules on media ownership and market shares. It will be interesting to see how he defines unacceptable levels of control, as it appears  that the BBC has the largest share of the TV and radio market, and also has a very powerful [...]

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Hang the bastards and hang them high. Currently, section 16 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 gives courts the power to award costs that are “reasonably sufficient to compensate the defendant for any expenses which he has properly incurred in the proceedings”. The last government wanted to introduce a scheme that limited these costs [...]

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I bang on and on here about the necessity of the rule of law. We cannot, if we are to retain any shred of liberty, be ruled by whims and opinions, it must be written down, in advance, what we may and may not do. However, finance is different: Giving evidence to the Treasury Select [...]

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Much outrage from the usual quarters at this statement: The credit rating agency said on Monday that allowing a debt rollover would amount to a “selective default” by Greece, undermining eurozone politicians’ efforts to avoid such an outcome. How dare a private company undo the hard work of so many politicians etc. Thing is though, [...]

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As a result, the Government says that it can’t wait for the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling: it wants to legislate immediately. The trouble is, when governments legislate in haste, they usually end up with something that has worse consequences than the problem they meant to correct. From dangerous dogs to the prevention of [...]

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It sounds like a scene from Come Fly With Me: a badly disabled young boy, excited about what is likely to be the last foreign holiday of his life, is prevented from going because the budget airline from which his parents have bought tickets decides his wheelchair is too heavy to put on the plane. [...]

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