Tim Worstall

Sounds like an interesting new author:

Midnight’s Children is up for a third honour as Irish Murdoch, William Golding and Kingsley Amis are left off the list.

Philosophical and academic novels set in Limerick slums perhaps?

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You know this argument that she regularly trots out? That we’re all rabid lefties really, concerned with equality, relative poverty, egalitarianism and the rest, we’re just mislead by those rapacious press barons who thrust vilely right wing opinions down our throats?
That PollyLand is what we really desire, we’re just suffering from false consciousness brought on […]

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So, we get a barnstorming column from Jackie Ashley (Mrs. Andrew Marr) about how appallingly the Pentagon manipulated the press over the Iraq war.

If business correspondents want star access, they have to mind their language and treat the City barons with deference and respect. They, not the military or the Ministry of Defence, are the […]

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Will Hutton discovers that raw Anglo-Saxon capitalism actually works.
Don’t worry though, by next week he’ll have forgotten all about that and be arguing that we need less of it, not more.

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In a fascinating essay in the book Ecopsychology, Mary Gomes and Alan Kanner probe the relevance of our sense of self to the environmental crisis, focusing on the early development of the child.

Not quite the way I would use the word fascinating but…

But separation is behovely. The child’s ego must be allowed to develop. Language, […]

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There exists no commercial, political or social problem that meddling by the European Union cannot make worse. Those who doubt this assertion might care to look at what’s happened to the United Kingdom’s mail system and post office network since the EU Directives of 1997 and 2002, which set out to improve the quality of […]

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On cricket bats:

Until now, less space in the Laws of Cricket was dedicated to Law 6 (the bat) than to the timing of the tea interval. The old Law 6 was not merely succinct. It was also durable. Its stipulations concerning bat length (not more than 38 inches), width (a maximum of 4¼ inches) and […]

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If someone were to produce a mash-up of Dowd and Polly Toynbee, leavened with a dollop of George Monbiot we might have the world’s most compellingly-appalling columnist.

Anything but that.

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Where do they get these idiots from?*

Fellow participant Wal-Mart, savagely opposed to trade unions, has built its global empire on relentless cutting of costs in retail stores and supply chains, including ever-lower wages for factory workers in China and Bangladesh. This downwards pressure on earnings prevents people from working their way out of poverty, in […]

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Rather than rewrite this, here’s the comment left on Maddy Bunting’s this morning.

My God, why did you bother to sit on a Committee if you weren’t going to take any notice of the information in front of you?
"Many poor families may now have an earner, but it has not got them out of poverty: the […]

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While the government has consulted and dithered, low-paid, insecure work has flourished like some rapacious mould.

Mould? What, people are forced into it?

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Outsourced to Dean Baker.
My God that is clueless.

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Will Hutton discovers the interaction of globalisation and superstar economics.
Gosh, there’s rich people out there! How dare people who handle the retirement investments of tens of millions make money? How appalling that the man who has revolutionised the global steel industry gets stinking rich!
How absolutely ghastly it is that a public intellectual, one married to […]

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This is all very amusing indeed. Following on from the Guardian’s original allegations and the subsequent writ for libel, The G has now published two pieces explaining the whole situation. Here and here. And a leader here.

The complex tax avoidance structures erected by Tesco were not about avoiding corporation tax, as we thought and claimed, […]

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What more can I do to save money, I fretted, as I drove off. Compared to the nouveau pauvres who have started cluttering the aisles at Lidl to experience hot flushes of retail excitement over cheap frozen lobsters, I’m an old hand. Virtually nothing enters our house - apart from the children’s friends - which […]

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From the New York Times book review section, a header:

The Chinese writer Mo Yan’s wildly visionary and creative new novel covers almost the entire span of his country’s revolutionary experience, from 1950 until 2000.

Cretins. The revolutionary span here starts (at the very least) in 1911 with the Republic.

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Yes, I know it’s a loan phrase into English from some Johnny Foreigner lingo:

Any handouts came from a spirit of noblesse oblige, a kind of enlightened paternalism, rather than from any sense of obligation or entitlement.

But reallly….what in hell does she think the noblesse bit means if not a sense of obligation?

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I hear he’’s doing much better now:

The fact that Laidlaw, a generous philanthropist, has recently recovered from prostrate cancer and a heart attack only makes his sexual zeal all the more admirable.

Knocked him flat that illness did, good to see he’s recovering.

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Well, I could climb all over this but it’s all been done for me (and you) in the comments.
Comparting the Standard’s circulation with that of the Guardian, quoting Boris on Polly, no, not all suburbs are rich and white, all dealth with there. Just two further things for me to add really:
His congestion charge made […]

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So, in writing an article about internet fads and micro-celebrities, The Guardian decided to illustrate it with an image from Icanhascheezburger.com.
Fair enough.
Its a good one, too. Here.
It was also on the front page yesterday.
Amazing how deep their research is, isn’t it?

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