Tim Worstall

In a new book soon to be published, he argues: “UK oil and gas production has been steadily declining since 1999. The reason is that the UK government, unlike those of most other countries, has abandoned oil and gas production to the private sector and has failed to create attractive conditions [...]

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“During the negotiating process, we responded to union concerns by ensuring additional protection for lower paid staff. Those earning £30,000 or less – 80% of all staff – will still get up to between two and three years salary, while civil servants earning [...]

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Thousands of primary school children are being taught in supersized classes of more than 40 pupils, according to figures.
There are tens of thousands of qualified teachers (and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it were 100,000 or more) who already work for the education system but never actually do any educating.
They’re sitting in the [...]

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Yes, we all know it’s damn near impossible to get fired from it but:
Hiring someone in the prison service involves grinding through a gruelling 39 steps. The National Audit Office found that at HM Revenue & Customs it typically took 212 days to hire someone.
That’s absurd.

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Charlie Brooks insists that everyone not living in the country must pay for those who do.
High-speed broadband will soon be as basic a requirement for rural Britain as decent roads. There can be no better use of public money than investing in this infrastructure, and in the process helping to save the [...]

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BBC presenters earning more than the Prime Minister will be “named and shamed” within weeks if David Cameron wins the general election.
What is the obsession with what the Prime Minister earns? There’s an element of falling into the Statist trap here.n What the PM earns and the relationship between that and the earnings of [...]

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So, now we know how much it actually costs.
Immigrants with unpaid NHS bills could be excluded from Britain under proposals aimed at reducing foreign healthcare tourism.
The Department of Health is trying to recover £22 million from foreign nationals who have had NHS treatment in the past two years and not paid their [...]

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No, really:
The Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, has told senior colleagues that he backs plans for a state-run investment bank that would use public funds and private capital to back small business and large-scale UK infrastructure projects.
Gosh!
The new bank would be modelled on the KfW Bank in Germany, which provides funding for banks [...]

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Richard does find them:
Apparently a qualified physician, he is no longer wasting his time treating patients. Instead, he is now working with renal units “to look at existing approaches that aim to reduce carbon emissions, and to develop sustainable models of kidney care,” busily “undertaking carbon modelling of clinical pathways.”
The cost of this one-year project, [...]

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As you will know, you well informed people you, the government provides different levels of subsidy for different renewable/non CO2 polluting technologies. What you might not realise is that they are cretins for doing so:
Ms Thompson said: “We are not confident that the [subsidy] regime for what is one of the cheapest forms of renewable [...]

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Google and ICI are not, as far as we know, conducting headhunter sorties on town halls for badly needed directors of diversity stakeholder inclusion.
Andrew Gilligan

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Err, no:
If the next stage of the purchase process seems onerous — the islanders have to raise £1.4million by the end of May to meet the price — the generous support of the Scottish government means there is little doubt they will achieve their goal.
Bute islanders vote for me and you to [...]

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A new fund allowing the Government to pay people who notify authorities about benefit cheats would be created under proposals being examined by Labour’s manifesto team.
I see the point: there might be nothing better than to use the petty jealousies and gee them up with a bit of cash to get people informing about who [...]

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Well, it’s not quite Dover, just the port, but sure, flog it off:
The Port of Dover is being recommended by Government advisers for sale to the French authorities.
It’s not like they’re going to try and pack it up and take it home now, is it? The value of a port lies in, umm, where that [...]

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Gas and electricity could be sold to consumers via a state-controlled body under radical reforms, proposed by the regulator Ofgem, which acknowledge that the decade-old free market approach to energy is no longer working.
Ofgem has also proposed setting minimum supply obligations on energy companies to make sure the lights don’t go out, in moves reminiscent [...]

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The number of Army generals, Royal Navy admirals and Royal Air Force air marshals will be cut under new plans unveiled today.
Not, on the face of it, a bad idea. But people have been struggling with this for generations.
Government insiders say cuts are justified because the number of senior officers has risen [...]

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Just read it properly:
My God it’s a pile of foetid dingo kidneys.
They seem to go out of their way to deliberately make every comparison as awful as possible.

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Motorists and air passengers face higher “green taxes” under Conservative plans to fund tax breaks for married couples
OK, so they’ve at least got part of it right. That if you raise green taxes you should reduce other taxes elsewhere.
But the green taxes they’re talking about, fuel duty and Air Passenger Duty, already more than cover [...]

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Oh dearie me:
THE Labour peer Baroness Uddin may face a fresh fraud inquiry following the discovery of a second “home” address which she used to claim £91,000 expenses.
Uddin claimed the home of her brother and his family in the Essex resort of Frinton-on-Sea was her main residence. Last week his wife said she could “not [...]

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A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always [...]

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