Tim Worstall

Rum lot really:
In postwar London, Beauclerk worked for the Central Office of Information until 1964, when he succeeded his second cousin, “Obby”, as 13th Duke of St Albans. He had been no less than ninth in line at the time of his birth (fewer [...]

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Just a little musing on this.
We know that there is such a thing as the resource curse. We also know that such curse is worse the more dysfunctional the State that the resource is adminstered by.
Yes, the resource curse can indeed actually make things worse, not better, for the general population despite the influx of [...]

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This will cause outrage:
The loss is down from £24.3bn in 2008 – a record for a UK company. Despite the loss, RBS said it will be paying out bonuses to reward staff for a record year for its investment banking business. Stephen Hester, RBS’s chief [...]

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The BBC has broken with a 565-year tradition by insisting that a male Blue Peter presenter take part in a pancake race previously reserved for women.
Contestants in a pancake race poured scorn on health and safety advisers after they were banned from running due to fears they would slip over in the rain.
That banging sound [...]

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Who are these cleanliness freaks?

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We are sometimes told that Britain remains a fundamentally social ­democratic country.
I’ve said it before and will no doubt have to say it again. I simply don’t think that Britain is fundamentally a social democratic society. It might be possible to persuade me that the Celtic fringes are, but not I think England.
We simply don’t [...]

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Go vote.

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I present to you perhaps the most fun available on four wheels: The 2010 Lotus Evora. No, not fun. Joy. Inexpressible, diamond-showering, running-naked-through-a-field-of-virgins ecstasy. Handling perfection. This is transit gloria, and it is sick.
In my career as an automotive journalist, I’ve never written these words: I am going to buy one.
….A ruptured fire hydrant of [...]

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Tories seen increasingly as upper class, but lead over Labour widens to 11 points
The English, after all, do love a toff ruling them rather than some ghastly little arriviste…..

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MOTORISTS desperate for sand to spread over icy and snow-covered roads have been raiding beaches.
You know, make do and mend, get on with things without waiting for the government to “help”.

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MORE than 1,000 sheep are being kept in British prisons, shock figures have revealed.
I didn’t know we catered to the Welsh quite that much.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said the creatures are kept for job training purposes and to help reduce self-harming.
Bit odd to claim that self-abuse is the same as [...]

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The English character is not always attractive. The preference for irony over honesty is wearisome, while the occasional escapes from repression into drunkenness justifiably appal foreigners. Worse than both, however, is English puritanism, whose first priority has always been to prevent pleasure rather than relieve pain.
Nick Cohen.

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A USian friend has emailed in perplexity about my use earlier of the phrase “whippet flange mills“.
Bless.
He tried to look it up on Google. Along with Ecky Bah Thump as a comestible and flat cap emporiums.
I told him to think Jeff Foxworthy on rednecks to get an idea of the meanings.
Anyone do better as definitions?

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HOUSE-hunting millionaires should head North for more than four times better value, according to the Halifax.
A prestige property on the dearest street in the South costs more than £5million but a similar deal in the North is just over £1million.
This is of course to ignore the point continually made by the (us?) land value taxers.
The [...]

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“The funny thing is I’m not actually all that bright. I think I’m just good at seeing things that fairly obviously need to be done – and getting on with doing them.”
Sir John Crofton, creator of the Edinburgh Method of TB treatment.

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To live in a country like this!
Bernard Levin once write a cracker of a column about what a joy it was to live in a country where the Advertising Standards Commission adjudicated upon the crispiness of Walker’s crisps (sorry, at this distance it might have been of Smith’s, but you get the point).
We’ve clearly cracked [...]

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There may even have been a whiff of revolution in the air, not least because the Tsar – or T’sar as he was known in Yorkshire –

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So Paul McCartney is using the Millenium Dome to rehearse. Loudly. Local complains:
He was forced to turn down the volume after a local resident complained about the “din”. Eric Pemperton, 67, said at the time: “I called the council. They told me, ‘It’s Paul McCartney.’ I said, ‘So what? [...]

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Today is the day that we celebrate the joy of being French.
Hurrah!

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British backpackers holidaying in Australia are returning home with much more than a suntan, as a result of having unprotected sexual intercourse with multiple partners and helping to spread sexually transmitted diseases around the country, a study has found.
That’s, err, the point of going on holiday, isn’t it?

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