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Tim Worstall

No

Now, where did Wes Streeting get this idea from? And where, come to that, did his estimate of the tax that it might raise come from?

It so happens that the £12 billion figure that he refers to is exactly the sum that I proposed might be raised as a result of the equalisation of income tax and capital gains tax rates in the Taxing Wealth Report.

Might it be that Wes Streeting’s advisers have been reading my work?

It’s from Advani and Summers at CenTax. Shitty, horrible, work but that’s the source.

Ah, the wowsers

Individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for their ill health in old age, according to a report aimed at challenging the belief that physical decline is either inevitable or primarily the responsibility of the state.

The report, launched at the Smart Ageing Summit in Oxford last week, argues that individuals have far greater control over their longevity than is commonly understood. The authors call on the government to take legislative action on alcohol comparable to restrictions on smoking.

Still, at least that will differentiate us from hte Americans. Here you’ll *only* be allowed to drink in the street.

Perhaps we should try to translate this

Rainwater harvesting, the use of grey water in homes and an urgent campaign to reduce water usage across society are vital to prevent water shortages of 5bn litres a day by 2055, the government has been told.

I assume, at least, that “rainwater harvesting” means “build some fucking reservoirs”.

Ah, no, silly me:

Changes to building regulations to require new homes to achieve a maximum water usage of 105 litres a person a day and accelerated grey water reuse.

We must all return to stinking as the peasants we are viewed to be.

Fuck ’em.

Perhaps there are just more whales?

But instead of simply passing offshore, increasing numbers are now diverting into San Francisco Bay and lingering for days or even weeks inside the crowded estuary – a shift scientists increasingly link to climate change. Warming temperatures and shifts in sea ice in the Arctic are disrupting the food web gray whales rely on during summer feeding months, according to a 2023 study in Science, leaving many malnourished during migration.

Well, mebbe. Perhaps it is the omnicause. Another view is possible. Given that I’ve between little and no knowledge in this field this is, of course, just rampant speculation from an ignorant.

But what if it’s just that there are more whales?

The effort comes amid an alarming rise in gray whale deaths in the bay. Last year, 21 dead gray whales were found in the wider Bay Area – the highest number in 25 years, according to the Marine Mammal Center – with at least 40% killed by ship strikes. At least 10 more have died in the Bay Area so far this year.

Scientists say those figures probably underestimate the true toll as many whale carcasses sink or are swept back out to sea before they are ever found or reported.

There are indeed many more whales than there used to be. This is good – I do not think that wiping species out is a good idea. But there’s not much natural predation upon live and adult whales. It’s not like wildebeest, where there’s always a lion or five ready to take the one that first stumbles. The natural end of a species without such predation is to die of illness or starvation – as happens to lions in fact, to polar bears. So, if there are more whales around there are more to be hit by ships, more to shelter in SF bay and, yes, we’d expect the marginal member of the species to be malnourished.

Yes, agreed, not hitting them with ships is probably a good idea. But the why there are so many more is because there are so many more.

Thjere is the more general observation that cetacean starndings seem to be rising in number. But then there are more cetaceans – this is good – in general too.

And?

That’s democracy, eh?

Elaine Roe, 61, a cafe worker, has no doubt what is the most important issue in this week’s byelection for Dublin’s north inner city. “The government is wrecking our country, they’re bringing in rapists and murderers and kidnappers. It’s a shame. I might vote Hutch, he seems a normal person.’

That would be Gerry “the monk” Hutch, a prominent gangland figure who is running as an independent in an election that is far from normal. The 63-year-old – who was jailed for robbery convictions in his youth – is a celebrity candidate in a contest for a parliamentary seat that has been dominated by xenophobia and immigration.

Voters in the Dublin Central constituency will cast ballots on Friday, with results on Saturday, but one outcome is already clear: hostility to newcomers, especially Black immigrants and Muslims, has entered Ireland’s political mainstream.

Wonder how long they’ll keep the system if people keep voting the wrong way, eh?

Spud on inflation

But that said, the index has fallen. I cannot deny that this is the reported data. However, I should draw attention to three things.

The first is that this is backwards-looking information. It records what has supposedly happened (and I use the word supposedly very wisely, because these things are subject to revision), and it does not imply what will happen.

So recorded past inflation is to be noted as recorded past inflation is it?

Well I never.

Could the “Anon” contact me please?

Your highly-regarded commentator ‘Anon’ had some very nice things to say about my Grandad’s war memoirs. I’d like to discuss further, but adding comments to a now 3-day-old article may not be very effective. Could you let him (or possibly her, but I’m betting it’s him 😊) have my email address.

Drop me a line to “timworstallATgmail.com” and I can pass on the email addy…..

Snigger

Starmer ‘destroyed public confidence in ID cards’
Policy rushed and poorly thought through, says home affairs committee

Maybe ID cards are just a fuckwit idea?

Sir Keir Starmer’s botched announcement of compulsory digital ID cards “destroyed” the public’s confidence in the idea, a committee of MPs has said.
The Prime Minister’s initial announcement was “rushed, poorly thought through and failed to make a convincing case” for mandatory ID cards, said the home affairs committee.
Dame Karen Bradley, the committee chairman, said the Government’s approach was “nothing short of a fiasco”, undermining public faith in what had been a “generally well-received” policy direction.

Apparently not, it’s presentation that went wrong.

Tumbrils at dawn.

On the subject of diet again

“Miss Owen had followed a vegan diet from 2016 stemming from her environmental concerns,” Ms Gray said. “Investigations were carried out to determine whether Miss Owen may have had a Vitamin B12 deficiency as a result of her vegan diet and whether, if that was the case, a Vitamin B12 deficiency could have caused her to have psychiatric manifestations in the period before her death.”
The deceased’s blood tests, analysed by three experts, were found to be “consistent with Vitamin B12 deficiency” and that “this likely resulted from Miss Owen’s vegan diet,” the coroner added.
Miss Owen had left a final note providing evidence of a possible mental illness, the coroner said.

This is B12, not B1 like the Japanese and Navy Curry. But still the perils of a purely vegan diet….

Ms Gray concluded that Miss Owen died “whilst on the balance of probabilities suffering delusional beliefs brought about by a Vitamin B12 deficiency developed as a direct result of her vegan diet.”

Sigh.

Behr’s not letting go, is he?

Britain can choose to be a partner in that project or accept a role as adjunct. National power could be boosted in an alliance of neighbours with broadly aligned global interests. Or it can be circumscribed by the Brexit cult of sovereignty that sees regulatory harmonisation with Europe as colonisation but welcomes subordination to US tech giants and industrial lobbies, which it calls free trade.

I’d call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome but BDS means something different these days, doesn’t it?

Oh, right

The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been on an exoneration tour, with stops including an interview with Mehdi Hasan and an appearance at the Oxford Union. Accused by a lawyer in his office of repeated sexual misconduct, which he denies, he claims that an internal review of the allegations has vindicated him but the situation is more complex than that.

It has been a year since Khan took a leave of absence while the claims against him were investigated as an internal employment matter. That absence has left the ICC under the control of his deputies, with important decisions to be taken in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Yet the ICC member states, which have ultimate authority over whether Khan stays or goes, have dawdled, acting as if they had all the time in the world. And the procedure that they relied on to resolve the matter turned out to be a travesty.

Who will watch the watchers and all that. So, the International Criminal Court cannot run its own affairs with what these internationally minded folk would call justice or even law. So, why in buggery bother with the court then?

Instead of making the credibility determinations needed to resolve this differing testimony, the OIOS delivered a 150-page “he said, she said” account.

That, in turn, was handed to a panel of three judges……The matter has now gone before the 21-member executive bureau of the Assembly of States Parties……The other option would be for the bureau to make its own credibility judgments, as reportedly 15 of the 21 bureau member states seem inclined to do……Some suggest that the complainant is acting at the behest of the Israeli government or its Mossad spy agency.

Oh, of course. The incredible efficiency of the international bureaucracy is all about The Jooos. Dust from orbit, it’s the only way.

Japanese Navy Curry

OK, so it’s a tradition, every Friday lunchtime in the Japanese Navy – curry.

Despite its south Asian origins, it’s no exaggeration to describe curry as Japan’s de facto national dish: a soupy, mild version beloved of schoolchildren and office workers, and generations of SDF personnel for whom kaigun kare – or navy curry – is a source of fierce pride as well as sustenance.

It’s deffo via us English. Deffo. But this, I wonder:

As Japan expanded its influence in Asia in the late 1800s, large numbers of soldiers fell ill or died from beriberi, a vitamin B1 deficiency linked to their diet, which largely comprised plain white rice.

The solution came in the form of curry powder thought to have been introduced by Anglo-Indian officers in the Royal Navy who were among the first westerners to come into contact with Japan after Commodore Perry’s “black ships” forced it to end centuries of sakoku “locked country” isolation in the 1850s.

Curry powder, it turned out, contained enough vitamin B1 to keep soldiers and sailors healthy. Beriberi cases plummeted, and military personnel quickly developed a taste for anglicised curry and rice, made with meat and vegetables and a flour-thickened sauce that was less likely to splash around in rough seas.

I knew about the beri-beri and polished white rice. But curry powder contains enough? Rilly? Or is it whatever else is put in with it?

How glorious

Trump’s attack on the ICC is really an attack on the rule of law
Posted on May 19 2026

The Financial Times has reported that during discussions with Xi Jinping, Donald Trump suggested that the US, China and Russia should effectively collaborate against the International Criminal Court (ICC). As the paper put it:

During his summit with Xi, Trump also suggested that the US, China and Russia should join forces to combat the ICC, saying their interests were aligned, according to the people familiar with the talks.

The same report noted that the Trump administration has described the ICC as engaging in “politicisation”, “abuse of power”, “disregard for US national sovereignty” and “illegitimate judicial over-reach”.

Whether or not Trump actually intended these comments to become public is almost beside the point. What matters is what they reveal about the worldview now shaping much of global politics. The hostility here is not simply towards one court. It is towards the idea that there should be laws capable of constraining power, whether exercised by politicians, states, corporations or military alliances.

Spud then chunters on about all of this and it’s terrible, break of international whatever and so on.

Without actually noting that the US, China nd Russia are not party to the ICC anyway. While they signed the relevant treatry they’ve since withdrawn or in the US casae the Senate never ratified it.

Sigh.

Tsk, Subs!

He was called up for the Lions tour to Australia in 1989, playing in nine of the 11 games; his centre partnership with England’s Jeremy Guscott was a big part of the Lions’ 2-1 Test series victory, and one of the highlights was Hastings’s try-saving tackle on the great David Campese in the third and decisive Test, which ended 19-18 to the Scots.

That last word should be Lions, of course.

A last taste of the west, eh?

Pork sausages were served to passengers on a deportation flight from Ireland to Pakistan, it has emerged.
The men, from the Muslim-majority country, were offered a traditional Irish breakfast on the flight from Dublin to Islamabad last year, which was described as “inappropriate” in a human rights monitor’s report.

If only we could believe that this was intentional.

Erm?

Channel 4 has pulled all episodes of Married at First Sight UK (MAFS) after two women claimed they were raped by their on-screen husbands during filming.
A third woman claimed she had an abortion following a non-consensual sex act by her partner on the reality television show.
The three former contestants said they were not adequately protected by the show, in which single people agree to marry strangers after meeting for the first time at their mock weddings.

Is there some lack of knowledge here, an information gap, about what marriage entails or summat? Or is the claim that new hubby beat ‘er around the head and shagged while she shrieked no, no?

Charlotte Proudman, Lizzie’s barrister,

Ahhhh, now, that does bias me, yes it does.

A third contestant Shona Manderson, who has waived her anonymity, alleged that Bradley Skelly, her on-screen husband, engaged in a non-consensual sex act by ejaculating inside her without permission.

So it’s not, not quite, as Whoopi said then…..

Hoarding, eh?

The billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality.

It’s the buzzword du jour, hoarding is. And, of course, if we take more of their money off them then they’ll have less of this technological influence to hoard, right?

an extreme version of a pattern that has repeated itself since industrialization: technological power concentrating in the hands of a few, which is eroding democracy.

Oh, and that appeal to the ultimate virtue, democracy. Got your buzzword bingo cards ready, Lads?

Tech giants use the force of their largely unregulated social media networks

Oh yes, so we should have censorship in order to preserve democracy.

“[Social meda] activity is profitable, and sometimes you generate activity by creating falsehoods, which are not good for democracy,”

We must control what is said in order to eliminate falsehoods.

“We want capitalism to support democracy. Capitalism has to become more humane. It has to be more regulated. And in democracy, we don’t leave anybody behind,” he said.

Heavily regulated, publicly contrrolled, capitalism. Whjy is it all these people who insist we must fight fascism end up designing fascism all over again?

Owen’s demands!

Public control must mean democratic public ownership of our utilities.

I never do understand why here. Better control? Well, OK. But this demand that it must be public, democratic…don’t get it.

Anyway:

But the left is a force that must be listened to, rather than swindled all over again.

No, swindle ’em. Then stomp ’em, obviously.

The AI doesn’t grasp Spud’s views

Few topics in contemporary British economic debate attract more sustained criticism from Richard Murphy than fiscal rules. For the better part of three decades, successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have reached for these self-imposed constraints as proof of their financial seriousness. Richard Murphy’s view is simple and consistent: fiscal rules are not laws of economics. They are political inventions, dressed up as economic necessities, and they have caused serious and ongoing harm to public services, living standards, and democratic accountability.

Hmmm

A defensible fiscal framework would also accept the monetary reality: that a sovereign government issuing its own currency is not revenue-constrained in the way a household or local authority is. It is resource-constrained. The question is not whether the government can afford to spend, but whether the real economy has the capacity to absorb that spending without generating inflation. That is the discipline that matters. Everything else is theatre.

That is, of course, a fiscal rule. When inflation appears either stop the spending or increase taxes. A fiscal rule.