Tim Worstall

I’ve been contacted by a very major investor type who wants to know more about thorium reactors. Before I go back to him with what I know (essentially, they work, but it’s a regulatory thing….that’s about as much as I know) I want to throw it out to you guys. Details and specifics of thorium [...]

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Il Papa reveals his leisure activities: And then we like to watch Don Camillo and Peppone [a series of 1950s films featuring a priest constantly at odds with the communist mayor, below]. I didn’t even know there were films of the stories but here they are. The books might be a better bet: certainly, that’s [...]

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At El Reg again. How to work out what will be said at a press conference by not going to the press conference. Read last year’s report! Actually, there is a more important point here: I would lay a goodly chunk of money that most reports about this, umm, report, in the papers tomorrow do [...]

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This is an odd thing for an economist to say: If houses could be bought relatively cheaply, it was because local councils once provided “social housing”. Council houses were sold off by Margaret Thatcher – leaving housing entirely to the market, Flogging off council houses increases the supply of houses that can be purchased. Other [...]

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Quite marvellous. So, our favourite retired accountant notes that crime is increasing in the Cayman Islands. OK. To Ritchie this is clearly to do with the fact that the whole place is simply a bunch of gangsters, Vampire Squids sticking a straw into the bloodstream of the global economy. Only occasionally, but persistently none the less, [...]

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At the ASI. Why the banning of incandescent light bulbs was a bad idea.

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Is believing two contradictory things before breakfast actually a requirement for being a Green? Ed Matthew, senior economics campaigner at Friends of the Earth “Cutting emissions must be at the heart of the pre-budget report – slashing energy waste, developing the UK’s vast renewable energy potential, ending fuel poverty and creating tens of thousands of [...]

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Not sure we’re going to take you all that seriously on this farming business old boy. If, as is possible, the price of oil surges during the next decade, then using nitrogen fertilisers, which are derived from oil, will become less feasible. They’re derived from natural gas actually, not oil.

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Yippee! The nef have done us proud and given us the Happy Planet Index 2.0. Whoo hoo! You’ll not be surprised to hear that they’ve changed their measurement techniques. Version 1.0 had Vanauatu as the top place on the planet. Clearly and obviously they couldn’t allow the likes of me to make cheap shots about [...]

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You know, I think he’s entirely and completely fucked. Entirely personal opinion of course, but something stinks very badly here. Update. Yup, he’s toast. Burnt toast.

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more animals

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Iain Dale worries that State employment is now higher than employment in the manufacturing sector. In both the US and the UK. Well, yes, but there’s two entirely different stories here. Divide the economy into three sectors (hell, why not?). Agriculture, manufacturing and services. Three-ish centuries ago just about everything was agriculture. Certainly just about [...]

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Asked by Richard Murphy. The English isn’t great: ignore that. The issue is this: do you believe anything said here? Is redomiciliation really a case of ‘moving up the scale of offshore administrations’? Or could it be something much more pernicious – the opportunity for a company to flee from one jurisdiction to another, lock, [...]

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Must, be, Richard Murphy tells me so. Our latest comment call and response: “. It is impossible to suppose that a man who can argue (as you did in the Guardian, very recently) that “Things in markets are worth what the markets say they are worth” is a true heir of Smith,” I fear that [...]

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Quite aside from the question of why she was even carrying a gun (to defend herself, she said, even though in Austin, a city of just under 750,000 people, there were just 30 murders last year, compared to, say, the London borough of Lambeth, population 273,000, where there were 23), at least she’d left it [...]

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Wish I’d actually gone ahead with some of these suggestions now. Oil back in April/May was around the $115-$120 mark. It’s now under $40. And I was looking for a put option at about $70. To put say £1,500 into. If I’d actually done it I’d be able to buy a pub by now I [...]

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Speccie. Drink crazed loons and daylight savings time.

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Scientists who examined research covering more than 600,000 women across the world found that for every pound heavier they were at birth, the risk of developing breast cancer increased by six per cent. Hmm. We also know that smoking during pregnancy reduces birth weight (I think it’s 1 cigarette per day reduces weight by 6 [...]

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Telling us to grow our own food. Hmm, mebbe, if that’s what you want to do. But there’s something of a political agenda here, don’t you think? Prof Lang, who advises the Government on the crisis, said that people who relied on the large supermarkets for their food did so at their peril. "Ultimately people [...]

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The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, condemned the financial traders who made millions by driving down the share price of leading banks as "bank robbers and asset strippers". In a powerful speech to City bankers on the effects of the credit crisis on Wednesday, he denounced the "Alice in Wonderland" world of global finance [...]

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