Tim Worstall

How much a gold bar is worth is really down to whatever a buyer and seller agree it’s worth. Now all we have to do to get them up to speed is to point out that this applies to everything, not just gold.

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I get quite a few press releases these days. Obviously been added to a couple of media databases. But some of them do slightly confuse me. And not just the tech ones: a company I’ve never heard of releases something that does something I don’t understand on equipment I never knew existed. One just arrived. [...]

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The tragic upshot has been the steep erosion of wages for the powerless bottom half, as income, wealth and property is sucked up to the top. I’m afraid that this just has not happened. Wages and incomes simply have not fallen. It is true that of the growth in general more has gone to the [...]

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For all those confused by Private Eye references, their glossary in each issue can be found on page 94.

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To read it again is to breathe in the spirit of optimism and dispel today’s fatalism that says very little can ever change, whoever is in power. National debt then was more than 200% of GDP, dwarfing today’s 73%, yet all this was done in a ravaged nation. And they ran budget surpluses as they [...]

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Would it not be fairer to tax foreign deposit holders? They could then be compensated by the Russian government, which sits on over half a billion dollars of foreign exchange reserves. Half a trillion subs…..half a trillion.

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In fact, in the first few words of his first sentence. The first ever non-European pope takes over at the Vatican Difficult to take seriously anyone commenting upon the Papacy, Catholicism or even the long run of history who seems not to have heard of St. Peter. Which is a little odd, given that the [...]

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Detectives are examining an estimated 600 fresh allegations of phone-hacking incidents at Rupert Murdoch’s now closed News of the World on the back of fresh evidence obtained by the Metropolitan police from a suspect turned supergrass. Just astonishing that this surfaces the day after half the Mirror is arrested for the same offence. For we [...]

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Such wondrous logic about the Falklands. Self-determination requires a recognised and viably independent people,…….(…)….But since the Falklands war, its legacy has entrenched an unsustainable £75m-a-year Ruritanian absurdity in the south Atlantic…..(….)…..the future of the islands is put in the hands of the tiny British settler population, most of whom weren’t born there but are subsidised [...]

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We cap benefits but not bonuses. How on earth are we ‘all in this together’? Benefits are paisd from taxation. Bonuses are paid from the income of a private company. Benefits are paid from the money forcibly removed from the pockets of the populace through State power. Bonuses are freely given by shareholders to their [...]

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No, not Vicky, Stephen. The message from the headmaster of an independent school announcing a teacher’s imminent retirement appeared, at first glance, to be innocent enough — even if the second sentence did start a little clumsily. “It is with mixed feelings that I announce the retirement of Mr Roger Clark at the end of [...]

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Today it’s all about the property market. About how houses are too expensive and Something Must Be Done! At which point he entirely fails to mention, even to dismiss it, the simple fact that cheaper housing will only come about through a relaxtion of the planning system. If, as is indeed true, 50% or more [...]

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Laurie Lee’s daughter, Jessy. Of course, the profile’s because she’s Laurie Lee’s daughter, not because she was the barmaid at the pub I frequented when I lived in Cheltenham. But still, slightly odd to read it. Despite having written for the papers on and off for a bit now I still rather have this idea [...]

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Westminster expects 5,000 families to be evicted by housing benefit cuts – and it’s happening almost everywhere. Councils have no choice as they frantically search for cheap housing, often hundreds of miles away. In Hull the bedroom tax hits 4,700 families with a spare room, and only 73 small properties free. Well, you know, I’m [...]

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The British are now the fattest people in western Europe. America is ahead of us, and the rest of Europe is not far behind in the march to ever greater obesity, with all the attendant problems of poor health and shortened life expectancy it brings in its train. Yet average lifespans keep increasing.

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Court papers show she is seeking a R70-million (49m GBP) house, R3 million to furnish it, a new R1 million car every five years and monthly maintenance of R150,000 (10,000 GBP). Without looking it up I don’t know whether the Rand is 15 to one (R150,000 being 10,000 GBP) or more like 1.5 to one [...]

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Athens-born Pryce said she met Huhne in 1982, a year after her first marriage ended, and, despite her having “second thoughts” and breaking off their engagement, they married a year later. At that time he was a journalist at the Guardian, she said, with aspirations in politics. Forcing wives into an abortion, perverting the course [...]

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Researchers forecast that every British adult will knock back about 53m fewer litres of wine and spirits by 2016, the equivalent of at least a bottle every year. Don’t these people have editors etc etc. As it happens, or at least so I’m told, The Telegraph doesn’t any longer have subeditors who are the types [...]

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Why can’t we British make patriotic films like Spielberg’s blockbuster? Lincoln is an unembarrassed hymn to America, says MAX HASTINGS OK, if you say so Max. The next story is: Bond leads the way in UK box office bonanza: Skyfall and War Horse help make 2012 a bumper year for British cinema It appears that [...]

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British mothers have one of the lowest employment rates in the OECD because we have the third most expensive childcare, sometimes of mediocre calibre. Hmm. One of the lowest, eh? Here’s the OECD numbers on maternal employment. We seem to be right in the middle of the pack actually. Number 20 in a list of [...]

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