Tim Worstall

Britain is a deeply divided country. Inner London is the richest part of the entire European Union, while Cornwall and Wales benefit from the regional aid dispensed by Brussels. As John B often points out if you took London out of the picture then inequality in hte UK would be entirely normal. For, without London, [...]

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“the goddammed English got their heads up their ass”. It does rather explain the place, doesn’t it?

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Slam! That’s the sound of doors banging shut on my fantasies. I’d long dreamt of spending what I refer to euphemistically as “the next phase of my life” in a sun-splashed Mediterranean villa, feasting on a diet of olive oil, pasta and Campari, sending postcards to envious oldies stuck here. In this Somerset-Maugham-meets-The-Best-Exotic-Marigold-Hotel scenario, I [...]

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Something I noticed when living on the West Coast of your delightful land. Accents don’t really change very much over distance. It is indeed different in some of the urban areas of the east, but out west there’s not much change. The UK is somewhat different: Miss Ridley says her favourite saying is ‘now then’, [...]

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The data is likely to deepen concerns about the widening gulf between the capital’s “bubble” economy and the rest of the country. Between 2007 and 2011, London’s economy grew by 12.4pc, despite the painful impact of the financial crisis on the City. That rate compared to growth elsewhere which ranged between 2.3pc in the East [...]

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Queen forced to cancel trip to Swansea after being struck down with suspected gastroenteritis

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For the last 156 years the Britannia Coconut Dancers have blackened their faces and donned skirts for their annual dance through the Lancashire town of Bacup to ward off evil spirits in a tradition recalling the area’s mining history. … The Nutters’ dance traditionally takes place on Easter Saturday over a 12-hour period, taking in [...]

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This is an interesting obit. And it shows up one of the oft unappreciated details of the way that the “life in service” worked. It wasn’t actually a life at all. Florence Georgina Copeland was born on December 8 1912 in West Ham, London, the daughter of a Billingsgate fish porter who was killed in [...]

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In from our Antipodean evidence collection branch: The Dutch themselves regarded the whole thing with delighted astonishment. They marvelled that, at such a time, Heads of Departments and members of the Board of Admiralty should amuse themselves writing rhymes and deal with a serious matter in such an apparently frivolous way. One of the Dutch [...]

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After school tutors priced out the grasp of middle class parents Middle class parents who want to prepare their children for school entrance tests face being priced out of the market by the super-wealthy who are willing to do “almost anything” to secure the best tutors. I do tend to think that this sort of [...]

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Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of [...]

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Well using a British Council library you read what you can get. But I’ve been astonished by two points in Paxman’s book “The English”. He makes much of the way that  The English (and you can hear the double capitals in his tone) prefer a house with a garden to a flat. This is entirely [...]

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Office for National Statistics figures obtained by Mr de Bois show that in the ten years to 2011, a total of 3,599,000 people permanently left the UK. Contrary to the perception of the typical emigrants being older people retiring to a life in the sun, the figures show that 1,963,000 of those who left were [...]

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The Dude has a point here: The company of Dwarves isn’t the hand-picked band of mighty warriors that the Fellowship of the Ring was, but ordinary (if short) blokes united by faith and loyalty. This is a thread which runs through all Tolkein’s work: the idea that free people thrust into extraordinary situations will do [...]

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Interesting little number: a typical home in 1952, but at that time around two thirds of properties had no hot water. It’s around and about true, inflation adjusted, measured by GDP per capita, that the UK in 1952 was as rich as China is today. Those who say that it’s not got better over the [...]

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White Cliffs of Dover ‘saved for the nation’ after National Trust pays £1.2m to secure mile-long stretch from private owner What ignorant tosspottery is this? Anyone think the owner was going to pack it up and ship it to China or something?

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The City of London is planning to make a serious upgrade to the street lighting system in Westminster over the next four years. I don’t think so really, do you?

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Are you being served? The return of the British butler Traditional manservants are very much in demand – but not by the landed gentry Look, if you’re going to talk about the servants couldn’t you at least distinguish between the butler and the valet? The butler is the manager of the servants. The valet or [...]

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He is married to the daughter of Viscount Matthew Ridley, linking him both to eight generations of Tory MPs and the prominent climate change sceptic Matt Ridley, his brother-in-law. The Ridley’s are a little difficult as they all seem to be called Matthew White Ridley. But one is never “Viscount Matthew Ridley”. One might be [...]

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Compass Cardiff event- Plan B for Wales 6 Nations is next year, innit?

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