Tim Worstall

Makes me glad I’m a liberal really. Do note the little judo trick in there though. The scientific paper shows that racism and homophobia are associated with low intelligence. That these are conservative ideas is then sorta assumed (yes, there really is left wing racism, left wing homophobia). And then the leap…..thus all conservative ideas [...]

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On the other hand he might just be an arrogant jerk with an ego complex the size of Texas, who accused the BBC of Nazi tactics because he had lost the argument and was making a fool of himself. Tricky one that.

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Ed Miliband will make the case for keeping Scotland as part of the United Kingdom in a speech in Glasgow on Monday. Miliband is expected to describe the “progressive” argument for rejecting independence in what the party billed as a major speech on the constitution. He’s not listed there as telling them the truth. That [...]

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Sir Christopher said party donations should be capped at £10,000 and state funding increased to remove the taint of corruption. This after wibble about how large donations are seen to be for preferential access. Look, maybe donations do buy influence. Maybe the unions’ money gets them Labour MPs as lapdogs, just as hedge fund money [...]

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The Budapest protests must be heeded in a region walking a line between budding democracy and revisionist nationalism. Could anyone parse that sentence for me? I’m not in favour of what Fidesz is doing myself but what on earth does what they’ve said there mean? For example, what is the conflict between democracy and revisionist? [...]

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Yet government is nothing if it is not asserting moral imperatives and if it is not trying to act in a moral way Government is a method of working out who empties the rubbish bins not a form of moral imposition. As long as it’s consenting adults and they’re not frightening the horses the morals [...]

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Politicians are complete fuckwits, incapable of ordering paper clips. Therefore we must have much more government. It’s the “therefore” that grates so much.

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Creasy said: “This isn’t broken Britain, but broke Britain – and it is being bled dry by the legal loan shark industry and their interest rates of 1,700% or more. R3 highlight how in the next six months alone, a whopping 3.5 million Britons expect to take out a payday loan. Sixty-seven per cent say [...]

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Place your choice for the Dogbert characvter in real life……

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The latest playground insult for adults? You’re so ‘leftwing’ David Cameron seems to be hoping ‘leftwing’ will stick as an insult – much like the way ‘liberal’ is thrown about in the US Ignorant, counter-productive, these aren’t insults either but they are usefully descriptive of much of the British left wing. Yes, I know, I’m [...]

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REMOVED: Ron Paul labels Newt and Mitt muppets 30 Nov 2011:REMOVED: Ron Paul labels Newt and Mitt muppets Did anyone see the original? I assume the estate of Jim Henson complained about the libellous comparison of interesting, articulate and intelligent puppets with Mssrs. Gingrich and Romney.  

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The documents call for more  ‘short-term political expediency’ to boost their popularity The Lib Dems….more short term political expediency? Sirsly?

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There are many things I can do in life, but making Polly happy is not one of them, I’m afraid.”

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So it was with a feeling of groundhog day like despair that I read this morning that the government has decided to ACT on the housing crisis in the UK. Of course there is not a housing crisis in the UK yet, but on current trends there will be a problem soon, unless there is [...]

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The Prime Minister and his deputy, Nick Clegg, will unveil proposals to help first-time buyers of new homes by carrying part of the risk of their mortgages. This has been done before. In the US. The people who did it, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, went gloriously bust in doing it too. And the FHA, [...]

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Lord Bell, who as Tim Bell was a key PR adviser to the Prime Minister throughout the 1980s, said: “I can’t be bothered to sensationalise this rubbish. “I can’t see the point of this film. Its only value is to make some money for Meryl Streep and whoever wrote it. “ That is the point [...]

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And I’m beginning to realise why that first instinctive prejudice was correct. The big mistake made by libertarians is to assume that economic and social liberalism go together. Liberal capitalism requires social conservatism. Apparently the buying and selling of apples and pears in a market requires that adult men must not stick their cocks up [...]

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Arthur C once pointed out something along the lines of “when an elderly and distinguished scientists says something is possible, he’s usually right, when he says something is impossible he’s usually wrong”. Best my memory can do on the quote. But how should we reformulate that for politics? The leaders of Italy and Greece have [...]

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The fundamentalism of the policies being pushed by the Tories, and echoed in police tactics, is rooted in desperation of the material collapse of global capitalism – and the scope of reform runs much further than the darkest years of Thatcherism. The coalition’s marketisation of education and health; its criminalisation of squatting; its dismantling of [...]

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A huge increase in state funding of political parties, worth up to £100m over a five-year parliament, is being proposed by a government-commissioned inquiry. No, no more of our money for you lot. Bugger off. One little wrinkle: The draft report is proposing that parties receive funding worth £3 per vote they receive. That makes [...]

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