Tim Worstall

Britain’s tax take from property is, in the round, absurdly low. Sigh. Low compared to what you fucking dingbat? Last time I looked domestic and business rates together were £50 billion and rising. Over 10% of the total tax take. Oooooh, look! The UK raises near 12% of total revenue from property taxation. That’s the [...]

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Harlequins 16 Bath 4: match report Eh? How do you score 4 points in rugby union?

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Privatising our roads will be a terrible deal – just as it was for the telecoms and water industries Report after report shows that the myth of greater private-sector efficiency in doing public works is just that: a myth That’s the headline and subhead. In the actual piece: Were I a true believer in bringing [...]

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Next, the gender gap that was narrowing is widening again fast; women lose more in public sector jobs, childcare, tax credits, benefits and homecare for the elderly as if their incomes and independence had been targeted deliberately. How can that actually be, given that we do not include benefits or tax credits in our calculations [...]

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The complicated tax structures set up by the firms, or by their parent companies, make use of corporate entities in the British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Jersey, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands, according to a report entitled An Unhealthy Business compiled by the website Corporate Watch and revealed today by the Observer. You mean like Guardian [...]

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Fifty teams rolled out their box carts ranging from giant eyeballs and Japanese WWII fighter jets….. What Japanese WWII jets? There were English and German ones in that war but Japanese? Don’t think so…..

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While UK growth stagnates, Obama’s US grows by 2.2%. While the UK economy has shrunk 3.9% since the crash, the US has recovered all it lost, and more. As our unemployment rises, theirs falls. Stimulus works, austerity sucks out the air. Umm, what’s the size of the budget deficit? £150 billion? 9% or so of [...]

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Apparently Hindu on Moslem sectarian violence in India is to be blamed on globalisation. Nothing to do with the burning to death of a train carriage full of Hindus immediately preceding the riots, nothing to do with the long simmering (some 500 years or so) arguments over the Ayodhya mosque/temple and nothing to do with [...]

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Compare and contrast. Apologies, I can’t remember who said it but the worst thing that Boris ever did to her wasn’t the shagging, the dumping, the driving for an abortion, it was publishing her.

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It’s as with the woman preacher. Polly Toynbee factchecks Shirley Williams. It’s not the way in which it is done, it’s that it is done at all that provokes the wonder. Factcheckingpollyanna.

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Just 11% of the planet’s land surface is suitable for agriculture, ….. Two billion extra souls will need somewhere to live, which means that precious farmland will disappear under pavement, or be quarried for minerals. Err, why not dig up and live on the other 89% of the land?

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You knew that he wasn’t going to get it quite right, obviously. Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Somewhere between 1917 and 1925 the existence of properous Russian families was extinguished. Rand was born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum (Russian: Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум) on February 2, 1905, to a [...]

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You’d think they could find a better example than this, wouldn’t you? My seven-year-old son always complains in tears about me not coming to drop or pick him up from school. But I have to be at work all day. My daily routine starts at 4 am. I wash up, then cook breakfast and lunch [...]

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Nationally, supermarket workforces are shrinking: 300,000 lost from retail in the past year (good reason to boycott self-checkouts). Facepalm. As Uncle Milt pointed out you can create jobs easily enough by replacing shovels with teaspoons.

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The state penalises women who are childless and unmarried: ‘I might be single, but I’m not a failure’ As new figures show that marriage is becoming more popular, women are persecuted for being solo and childless. Err, yes. I’d certainly say that the photographer has done her no favours at all. Or perhaps the picture [...]

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I’m not quite sure about the details of this story. But it could have interesting implications for the finances of The Guardian. Sources close to the company said Apax would not be able to recoup its investment in Inform, but is keen to sell the unit before its value falls further. Emap is understood to [...]

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Supermarkets have been blighting our land and lives for too long An inquiry into the pernicious power of these retail giants should be an urgent priority for the coalition Whooo! Gosh. Umm: Supermarkets emerge unscathed after third major inquiry in eight years Correct. We’ve been though this three times already uhnder the last, Labour, government. [...]

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VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, may be advised to switch on the spell check for its next multi-million pound campaign to promote Britain abroad. Err, yes. The people who fired the subs, subbed out the subbing and saw a very definite increase in typos as a result….

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Instead of a guild, practitioners are hired to do their masters’ bidding, even when that can mean spreading disinformation and disregarding evidence.

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Willy’s been one of those who has been insisting, for years, that Britain really must join the euro. It’s essential, must be done, tragedy will follow if we don’t. Today we get his analysis of what is wrong with the British economy. interacting with the devastating impact of a still overvalued exchange rate. Oh, so [...]

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