Tim Worstall

I met Arianna Huffington last week. Thoroughly decent woman, I thought, and sharp as a tack. Like Ivana Trump with O levels.

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It’s amazing! He’s found it! Will Hutton has solved the eurocrisis! The nascent European Financial Stability Facility needs to be doubled in size and turned into a fund that can lend to EU governments and their banks. Err, what? They’ve been scratching around the world trying to find the money to fill the current sized [...]

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George Osborne was dragged deeper into the furore over the Murdoch empire’s links to government as it emerged that he entertained Rebekah Brooks for a weekend at his country residence as Rupert Murdoch was planning to take over BSkyB. ….the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators. No, of course I’m not [...]

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Just a thought: That, after all, is the point of this government. It exists to secure and enhance the position of the banks, the corporations and the rich. It exists to support the system of rentier capitalism – and the inherited wealth that arises from it – that made so many members of the cabinet [...]

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Now he stands wide-eyed with shock at the consequences, with eloquent pen to capture what he sees. The facts are neatly arrayed: chief executives’ pay in FTSE 100 companies rose from 45 times to 120 times more than the pay of average employees. Money didn’t trickle down, it was sucked upwards; the share of national [...]

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It’s a righteous old jeremiad as well. The evils of Cameron’s austerity, the joys of Hollande’s spending in a slump. One thought: the UK deficit as a percentage of GDP this year is expected to be 8.3%. That of France, 5.3%. It’s not immediately apparent who is doing the austerity here, is it?

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But here I am, poised at the gangway of a 36,000 ton, 642 ft ship that has docked in Lisbon. …. By the time we have docked at Cádiz, I am beginning to think that, while you don’t have to be obsessive to go on a cruise, it certainly helps. …. And as I gaze out [...]

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The banking regulators got it wrong. Therefore the banking regulators should have more power. The problem with his argument is not that it’s even right or wrong. It’s that it is irrelevant. The tools that were available for regulation were sufficient if anyone wanted to use them. Adding more tools for regulation wouldn’t change the [...]

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Additionally, the Commission has acted to cut the amount of money being spent on olive trees which have been criticised for being a waste of money. The cost of maintaining the shrubs, which dominate the MPs’ new offices in Portcullis House, has been around £44m a year. The Commission says it has negotiated the maintenance [...]

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If Murdoch were allowed to own all BSkyB, within a year or two he would package all his newspapers on subscription or online together with his movie and sports channels in offers consumers could hardly refuse, at loss-leading prices. Other news providers, including this one, would be driven out, or reduced to a husk. Erm [...]

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Miss Dorries should know that it isn’t where you come from, it’s where you are going. But then, perhaps that is the problem – sadly for Dorries, she is going nowhere, and sadly for us, she seems to be going nowhere very slowly. You might want to think about that Bryony…… Why one’s occupation should [...]

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I always love it when someone starts singing the priases of the mass trespass at Kinder Scout. Because this insisttence on open acess to a resource just shows that you cannot in fact have such mass open access to a resource: It’s interesting what the effect was: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/local-to-you/midlands/view-page/item727286/ “This iconic landscape welcomes hundreds of thousands [...]

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Cameron has already appointed 117 new peers, a third of the number in all Labour’s years. Half are former MPs or councillors, a further fifth special advisers or party staff. Yup. Because Cameron was PM when all those Labour MPs, SpAds, Ministers and Brown’s resignation list got their coronets. The end of a government always [...]

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Two Welsh men have been charged in Australia with stealing a fairy penguin called Dirk. Far more fun not to know what actually happened but to allow the imagination to try and construct the plot and story around those few details. It’s the sort of thing that would be the leaping off point for one [...]

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I want Britain to aim for the social and economic balance that thrives in Nordic nations. OK. Here: Unemployment insurance As opposed to all other forms of social security in Denmark, unemployment insurance is voluntary. Thus, you are not automatically insured against unemployment. An unemployment insurance policy is taken out from an unemployment insurance fund, [...]

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Worse, Wen may wring his hands over his mistakes, worrying that the government can no longer support loss-making infrastructure projects to deliver growth – rapidly falling away to its lowest for years. But he did nothing to change things largely because as matters stand nothing can be done. China needs to become a “normal” economy [...]

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The Economist refused to comment on the row. Well quite. The fuming Scottish First Minister took to the airwaves……His Scottish Nationalist ministers took to Twitter en masse…..and now the Telegraph has written about it. So what is the Economist supposed to say? Well, that’s £500,000 saved off our advertising budget for this year then? Job [...]

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Compare and contrast. Come along now mighty national investigative organ, do try to keep up.

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This is absurd! So the bankers whose excesses helped land Europe in this mess then get to sit round the big EU table, like any other government, and decide who should pay for it. And the answer, unsurprisingly, is: not them. The bigger question is: why finance has been granted such power? This isn’t the [...]

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Catherine Bennett: If the churchmen, with only historic precedent to justify their seats, can survive in a much smaller, reformed house, then a similar case can be made – and apparently is being made – for the continued existence of the Lords’ vast numbers of bumptious hereditaries, placemen, poltroons, soaks, spongers and, in a smaller [...]

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