Skip to content

Tim Worstall

Less fractious than I’d thought

‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles

Normality for the Britih left is as with economists. More factions/opinions than there are people.

Snigger:

Even allies of Corbyn say the former Labour leader can be hard to pin down, with an aversion to open conflict and a tendency to, as one person involved in the project put it, “disappear to his allotment for 24 hours without his phone”.

“Jeremy can be a touch avoidant,”

Well, yes:

the difficulties in creating a party encompassing Sultana and Corbyn, along with the often more socially conservative electoral bases of the other independents.

Wimmins is speshul, see?

The number of women globally who commit violent crimes is very small – in 2021 they were responsible for just 10% of homicides. Indeed, women are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators. But when women do kill, in many cases the victim is a male partner or family member and there is a history of domestic abuse.

Data and research suggests the majority of women on death row around the world have been sentenced to death for the crime of murder, and that most of these were committed in the context of gender-based violence. Women kill to save themselves – only to face abuse and death again.

Therefore wimmins who kill a bloke should be let off, see?

Not that that’s quite said outloud but you know it’s meant.

Increasingly, research shows that women who kill their abusers are let down by criminal justice systems and are not getting fair trials. They are faced with lawyers who are not equipped to deal with survivors of abuse; justice systems that are patriarchal, rigid and old-fashioned; and a lack of understanding of how coercive control or domestic violence work and the resulting mental health impact.

See?

A study by Penal Reform International found that with few exceptions criminal justice systems are failing women by ignoring their trauma and the realities and dynamics of domestic violence. In most countries there is no separate basis in law for a history of abuse to be considered, and generally women must rely on existing legal defences, which tend to be ill-adapted to women who have experienced prolonged abuse.

Speshul.

Crypto Liquidity Provider – Role and Challenges

Liquidity is the lifeblood of any financial market, and in the digital asset space, its role becomes even more vital. Without strong liquidity in crypto markets, traders face unpredictable price movements, wide bid-ask spreads, and significant slippage during execution. This is where a crypto liquidity provider steps in — maintaining balance between buyers and sellers to ensure seamless trading and stable prices across multiple venues. Providers offering cryptocurrency liquidity services play a behind-the-scenes but indispensable role in keeping the market liquid, efficient, and investor-friendly.

The Importance of Liquidity in Crypto and the Role of Liquidity Providers

Liquidity defines how quickly and efficiently a digital asset can be bought or sold without heavily impacting its price. Adequate liquidity benefits everyone — from retail traders executing small orders to institutional desks managing million-dollar positions. Liquidity providers make this possible through a variety of mechanisms:

  • Maintaining deep order books. They continuously place buy and sell orders, narrowing bid-ask spreads and ensuring smoother price discovery.
  • Reducing slippage. By offering large volumes at multiple price levels, they enable traders to execute big positions at predictable prices.
  • Supporting token projects. Liquidity providers stabilize newly launched assets, making them tradable from day one and increasing investor confidence.
  • Cross-exchange liquidity solutions. They connect fragmented trading venues, aligning prices across exchanges or making price discrepancies minimal, and improving overall market efficiency.
  • Order book management. Through algorithmic trading systems, they keep trading volumes balanced and prevent sudden price dislocations.

A liquid market also attracts institutional players who rely on stable pricing and fair market conditions. Without these mechanisms, token projects would struggle to maintain consistent trading activity, and smaller traders would face chaotic market behavior.

Market Volatility and Other Challenges Liquidity Providers Face

Operating as a liquidity provider in crypto is not a risk-free job. The extreme market volatility of digital assets — where prices can swing 15% within hours — poses constant challenges to maintaining balanced positions. To stay afloat, providers often rely on market neutral strategies such as arbitrage and hedging to reduce exposure to unpredictable price moves.

High-frequency trading (HFT) algorithms help liquidity providers react instantly to market changes, but they require complex infrastructure and continuous monitoring. Moreover, fragmented liquidity across hundreds of exchanges demands cross-platform risk management and advanced connectivity tools.
Another challenge lies in maintaining profitability. Tight spreads mean limited margins, and competition among liquidity providers is fierce. On top of that, regulatory shifts, exchange downtimes, or network congestion can all interrupt liquidity provision. Balancing these variables while maintaining consistent execution quality remains one of the toughest tasks in the industry.

A crypto liquidity provider is not merely a market participant — it’s the invisible engine that powers efficient trading and price stability across the digital asset ecosystem. By offering cryptocurrency liquidity services, managing order books, and navigating extreme volatility, these providers make the crypto market more reliable and accessible to everyone.

Can’t even read a document

They don’t, of course. They pay nothing like that. The data is wrong because:

Indirect taxes are ignored: only direct taxes are taken into account, but as a percentage of income, those on the lowest earnings pay a much higher percentage of indirect taxes and those on high incomes a low one.

From Spud’s own reference document:

Within the tax system, the main taxes microsimulated in this
analysis generally include: Income Tax, employee and self-employed
National Insurance contributions, Council Tax, VAT, Insurance Premium
Tax, Fuel Duty, Alcohol Duty, Tobacco Duty, Stamp Duty Land Tax, and
Air Passenger Duty.

So, you know, no.

They do say they don’t include employers’ NI because they’re not sure of the distributional impact. But the others are as listed….

Oh dear

Shots of a different kind were fired when news emerged that as a young wife and mother Lindsay had been among several women competing for the affections of Andrew Parker Bowles, then a dashing brigadier, before he and Camilla Shand (now the Queen) married in 1973.

Parker Bowles was indeed very posh but he was not a Brigadier at 34. He was a Major of course.

Sigh.

Astonishing, innit?

How a brave, new, breakthrough, properly democratic and so socialist political parrty then turns to shit:

Inside the rise and fall of Podemos: ‘We believed we had a stake in the future’
The leftist party exploded out of Spain’s anti-austerity protests in 2011 and upended Spain’s entrenched two-party system. I was instantly captivated – and for the next decade, I worked for the party. But I ended up quitting politics in disappointment. What happened?

Turns out politics is always done by politicians therefore that’s what happens.

Equality is all, no?

Up to a million women worldwide are facing sexual violence and forced labour in prisons, where they are overlooked and forgotten, in what is being called a growing global crisis.

The number of incarcerated women is rising much faster than men and is expected to surpass one million on current trends. While on average women account for between 2% and 9% of national prison populations, since 2000 the number imprisoned has grown by 57%, compared with a 22% increase in the men’s prison population.

“We are facing a global crisis,” said Olivia Rope, executive director at Penal Reform International. “If you look at the rate of growth compared to men in prison, it is really alarming. Women are often an afterthought, and they face very harsh, difficult conditions where their needs are unmet in most cases.”

In fact, equity demands equal outcomes according to the modern interpretation. So, we have too few women in prison…..

Distinctly sensible

A transgender athlete has been stripped of her world strongwoman title after allegedly failing to tell competition organisers that she was a “biological male”.

Jammie Booker, an American competitor, was crowned the world’s strongest woman at the Official Strongman Games in Texas, beating British lifter and former champion Andrea Thompson by a single point on Sunday.

Fuck off, Matey

Nope, really, fuck off:

Jury trials for all except the most serious crimes such as rape, murder and manslaughter are set to be scrapped under radical proposals drawn up by David Lammy.

Do one.

As it happens, from yesterday:

And so it is with many another crime. It’s the jury that protects us from the insanity of our rulers. Because it’s the jury that subjects everything our rulers want to do to us to the “No, we’ll not be having with that” test of a grouping of average and normal people.

Which is why our rulers hate juries because they hate the idea that their impositions can be rejected by the mere people themselves. Thus my headline.

Juries are our ability to tell the politicians to Fuck Off, Twatface. Which is why they’re both so valuable and also so hated. After all, if we weren’t allowed to tell the Twatfaces to Fuck Off we’d have to hang them instead, right?

Hooo, Boy

Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama’s so-called Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is one of the most influential ideas in modern finance. It claims that markets instantly incorporate all available information and therefore price assets correctly at all times. According to Fama, there are no mispricings to exploit, no bubbles to inflate, no systemic distortions that experts can foresee. Markets, in this view, are not just efficient; they are omniscient.

That’s putting it pretty strongly but, OK.

Hence, the Eugene Fama Question: If the theory that financial markets are perfectly rational collapses every time reality intrudes, why do we still allow it to shape the policies, products and institutions that govern our economic lives?

Rationality and efficiency are not the same assumption. But of course Spud knows too little economics to know that.

We might lose. So, change the voting system, Stat!

However, note the Labour figure. Governments have done worse, but very few have come close to a popularity collapse on this scale.

Three thoughts.

First, Labour is currently empowering the far-right in the UK.

Second, the number of people who believe Labour has anything to offer is declining by the day.

Third, if Labour had any sense of duty to the people of this country – and even its own supporters – it would deliver PR now.

It’s is gresy little grossness, isn’t it? If we’re going to lose then let’s change the rules of the game.

No no, of course this isn’t censorship

How could you suggest such a thing?

Ofcom has ordered social media companies to combat online misogyny by changing the algorithms that push hateful content to users.

The regulator has moved to crack down on the “manosphere” and violence against women as part of its mission to make Britain the safest place to be online.

It’s telling people what they may see or hear, not censorship.

Tsk.

So, you ladies and getlemen from Natural England

If you’d just like to line up over here?

More than £700 million is being spent at Hinkley Point C nuclear power station on measures expected to save 0.083 salmon and 0.028 sea trout per year.

The plant in Somerset will have more “fish protection measures” than any other power station in the world when it opens because of strict planning conditions agreed by ministers.

Yes, you’re right, it is a long queue and no, there’re no refreshements. But then you’ll not need them. Might take a day or two but we will get there in the end, you all will have your personal appointment with the hangman.

It’s just so lovely

This flawed deal might have been all that was possible, given the geopolitical headwinds – a US president who shunned the talks and is wedded to oil and coal, the rising tide of rightwing populism, conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, intolerable levels of inequality, and global economic uncertainty.

Inequality has to be in there, somewhere, right? But how does this lead to climate change?

Further, given that inequality is falling – and on a global level, falling fast – that would be a good thing, no?

It’s a view, certainly

Yanis Varoufakis, the firebrand economist who rose to fame at the height of Greece’s debt drama, was not only egotistical but ultimately more interested in testing out his game theories on the nation than winning its battle to keep afloat.

So writes the former prime minister Alexis Tsipras in his newly released memoir, Ithaki, as the once radical leftwing leader, sparing no punches, seeks, 10 years later, to put the record straight.

“He was, in reality, more of a celebrity and less of an economist,” recalled the 51-year-old, who described handpicking the maverick as his finance minister because of his international reputation and “extremely attractive” skills as a public orator.

“I wanted to send the message of hard negotiation, but I underestimated the human factor. Very quickly, Varoufakis turned from being an asset into a negative protagonist. Not only could our potential allies not stand him, neither could his own colleagues.”

TBH I’ver never seen much in Varoufakis’ economic policies or ideas other than “to be against”. Everyone’s doing it all wrong but with that absence of any concrete ideas for doing it otherise.

Can you help support The Blog? If you can spare a few pounds you can donate to our fundraising campaign below. All donations are greatly appreciated and go towards our server, security and software costs. 25,000 people per day read our sites and every penny goes towards our fight against for independent journalism. We don't take a wage and do what we do because we enjoy it and hope our readers enjoy it too.