Shorter Tim, Energy Edition: Commodity prices always come down in the end; except when I really want the price of steel to stay at 2007 levels because it harms the economics of wind power. Further, supply of manufactured goods always responds to price signals except when I have a bizarre ideological opposition to some particular…
Read More Bonus Tim Worstall Stupidity WatchWe’ve blogged before about the NHS’s computer project. So I’m not at all happy about this remarkably silly post at Timmeh’s. He takes issue with a post of Richard Murphy’s about bank nationalisation: Yup, the people who brought you the NHS Spine are to be put in charge of developing all banking software in Britain.…
Read More is there anything stupid going on at Tim Worstall’s?This arse-awful gaggle of crap by Simon “Craven” Heffer has already been effectively fisked by Dave Osler among others, but I reckon there’s still some unexploited stupidity in there to be had. It’s actually even worse than this one. Basically, this article is an example of what Islamists would call takfiri thinking; takfiris are an…
Read More Tory TakfiriAs someone once said: ladies and gentlemen, we got him. It appears that – of all people – Boris Johnson gets the honour of dragging “Sir” Ian out of his spider hole. Of course, this raises all kinds of legal issues as to who, exactly, gets to hire’n’fire the commissioner of the Met. Is it…
Read More Mission accomplishedWhat have we here? Via Spencer Ackerman: David Wurmser, trying to sketch the wiring in his head on a really big piece of paper. The spider chart was meant “to create a strategic picture, and that strategic picture is the foundation of policy change,” Wurmser said. “It helped you visualize, because if you saw, say,…
Read More All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfyThe meeting. Two, three, four men who were not the ones you saw at podiums, behind Fox News desks. The man who’s pure evil. Hard men. Men who say ‘flip the switch’ or ‘push the button’ or ‘pull that lever.’ When they were younger, they might have done it themselves. They are the hidden men,…
Read More fear and loathing, on the campaign trailRecently, our dear duckspeaker Philip Hammond MP had his local talking points cache refreshed. He’s now constantly saying that the Government is causing “uncertainty” in the housing market because they haven’t decided whether or not to cut stamp duty, and that this is a problem. Both statements are of course completely vacuous at best, and…
Read More Hammond’s Sauce Works BandFinally, we have the best possible argument against the dire Counter-Terrorism Bill. Unfortunately, it’s one that by definition we couldn’t have had before last week’s pornographic nightmare of a vote. It’s a sort of recursive critique. Think about it – by far the worst feature of the damn thing is the awful “concession” that Parliament…
Read More I’m a worse bastard than the fucking shite that I am, and that’s saying somethingThis is hilarious, and depressing: you may find tech-libertarians annoying, but just think yourself lucky we got Paul “Van der” Staines, and not this guy. Dmitri Golubov, for it is he, was nailed in 2005 for running a massive credit-card phishing operation (in that case he was probably behind some percentage of the spamwave I…
Read More Hands across the sea continentMartin Kettle can fuck off with this: The bright Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Greg Clark asked recently why politicians are so ready to discuss antisocial behaviour but so poor at discussing its pro-social equivalent. Bright? Christ, we’re in a bad way. The first thing that needs discussing here is that “pro-social behaviour” is a…
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