The point is, my suggestion would radically transform the availability of funds for investment in the UK economy, particularly if matched by the transformation that I propose with regard to ISAs, where I suggest that all new ISA savings (without exceptions) should, in my opinion, be invested in this way by providing the capital for a new British, green-oriented wealth fund, which would have the objective of creating permanent, secure employment in the UK dedicated to the construction of assets that will deliver long-term well-being for the people of this country.

We coiuld finish off HS2 and then perhaps build a tram in Leeds. Deffo make everyone lots richer that would.

The post What an excellent idea first appeared on Tim Worstall.

“If we all focus more on menstrual health, it actually unlocks the whole of a woman’s life course,” she points out. “Nothing affects any human more commonly than having 12 periods a year for 40 years of your life – so if they’re all debilitating and they mean you can’t go to school, that’s a massive problem.”

Umm, right. Now, agreed, only male and all that. But I’m pretty sure that periods match lunar months therefore 13 a year, not 12.

Dame Lesley Regan, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Imperial College London and consultant at St Mary’s Hospital in London

first Women’s Health Ambassador in 2022, a role she is due to depart in spring 2027. Being interviewed for the role by then-prime minister Boris Johnson, which coincided with the rollout of the inaugural Women’s Health Strategy,

But then what do I know?

The actual problem here is not that I am right or wrong. It’s that we’ve reached the stage of civilisation where that this lassie is a very senior professional and appointed by the government etc is not enough for me to believe her on a point of her own supposed professional expertise. Given how many of such bastards lie through their teeth at us this seems to me to be rational. Not to believe any one of them without independent confirmation.

Which is a problem, no?

The post Umm, yes first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Five days after his defeat in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election, leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spent almost 24 hours unable to boost his Instagram posts, while his opponent, far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, could.

Lula’s lawyers included the episode in a list of incidents that they submitted to the electoral court and international observers as “evidence” that Meta, Instagram’s owner, was actively trying to interfere in Brazil’s election in Bolsonaro’s favour.

Reports from Lula supporters saying their content had been removed or its reach restricted flooded social media in Brazil, while about a dozen watchdogs and research groups published reports describing what they called “indications” that Meta may have favoured the senator’s campaign.

If you wanted to get lots and lots of coverage then you’d try to see whether you could engineer a Striesand Effect for yourselve. Claim, say, that you’re being repressed, supporessed, and see social media light up with people saying you’re being repressed, suppressed.

Nasty, suspicious, mind, yes. But is it nastier, more suspiciously so, than that of a political operative faced with losing an election?

The post Nasty, suspicious, little mind that I have first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Americans, this is your chance to slap down the tech broligarchs
Rebecca Solnit
The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP’s alignment with tech overlords over the public they’re meant to serve

The restoration of the Democrats is based upon the idea that those who give the peeps what they want – free phone calls, cat pictures on demand, cheaper goods and delivery of all kinds, the entire database of civilisation available for $50 a month – are the enemy to be curbed and we’re just the people to do it.

Well, I guess it is a plan but whether it’s a good one is another matter.

The post So this is the plan, eh? Even, The Plan first appeared on Tim Worstall.

It may, in fact, be the moment when a UK government finally realises it has reached a point where it must ignore market pressures, even if supposedly backed by legal claims, and put the needs of people in this country first.

Really:

If a technical legal definition of being so, created by legislation that never anticipated a situation of this sort, has not been met, I would suggest that a wise Prime Minister would say, “So what?” The job of those in power is to deal with the situation they face, not a legal construct which has been untested in any court.

Political power beats the rule of law, eh?

Really:

First of all, I would make it clear that the nationalisation is of the assets and undertaking of Thames Water, and not of the company itself. This is an option always available in a takeover. Whenever one company takes over another, it can either buy the second company in its entirety, or it can take over its trade and selected assets and liabilities, leaving the existing owners to sort out the affairs of the company that once undertook that trade. Given the total financial mess Thames Water finds itself in, a takeover of the trade and undertaking is the only obvious route the government should take.

What the Act of Parliament should then provide is that the assets and trade being taken over must be valued at current fair value in the activity they are being used to undertake. Hypothetical alternative values should not be considered. On the other hand, all potential liabilities associated with the assets in question should be taken into consideration, including the cost of making them fit for purpose, and the cost of making them environmentally sustainable.

Fair not market value. Tutto stato etc.

Note what he’s also doing. The valuation of meeting enviro standards. You know, that £260 billion to build a second set of rainwater pipes for the entire country?

If some of the property in question has what are called legal charges, or, in more common parlance, mortgages, on them, the Act should make clear that these are not a reason to leave the assets outside nationalisation.

Ripping up security over assets as a basis for lending won’t have any knock on effects, no siree.

Again, however, the practical question that any wise Prime Minister must ask is, “So what?” A legal charge protects a creditor, but only to the value of the asset in question, and so the basis of the Act must be that value will be paid, but nothing more, with value taking into consideration the environmental and net zero obligations as well as net revenue generating potential in their current use, noted above. If, as a consequence, a payment of less than the sum secured on the asset is deemed appropriate, the payment of that reduced sum will be considered full and final settlement of the charge in question.

No effect on that wider economy at all.

It would be wise for all of these considerations to be included in any legislation if at all possible, and the drafting of appropriate schedules to achieve this goal could be done in a few hours, I suspect. If the government wants to give me a call about how to do this, my number is readily available, and I might delay work on my book for a day or two to help them out.

Nice of ‘im. Only take a few hours to wholly destroy the balance sheet of every creditor in the country. Every creditor to any- and every- one.

The post Isn’t this a lovely description of fascism? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Now official data has shown that couples in England and Wales are more likely to split after 20 years. According to Office for National Statistics figures, more than a quarter of all divorces between opposite-sex couples happened after 20 years or longer of marriage.

Obvious explanation is:

Divorce lawyers think the rise of the divorce after 20 years is due to couples staying together for the sake of their children. Lisa Pepper, a divorce lawyer at Osbornes Law, told the Sunday Times: “The largest percentage of cases I see are after a long marriage. Staying together for the sake of the children is true.”

Obvious is obvious.

It’s even possible to test this. Is there a different pattern in same sex couples, is there a difference across those who have children and those who do not?

More research needed, funds required!

The post Obvious explanation is obvious first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Public support for the NHS’s founding principles – that it is free to use, available to everyone and tax-funded – has fallen over the last five years, research has shown.

Backing for all three pillars dropped between 2021 and 2025 across the UK population, except for a small rise in millennials’ support for the NHS being funded from taxation.

Experts said the sharp rise in economic hardship and changes in attitudes towards migration during those years could help explain the drop in support.

Could even be that more people are realising how shit the NHS is. Doesn’t have to be hardship or migration at all, does it.

The post Could be that it’s just shit first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Maternity care in England is in a doom loop – how has it come to this?
Zoe Williams

We allowed the producer interest to dominate. The madwives took over and created a maternity service in their own image, built from their phantasies of natural birth, too posh to push and all the rest.

Simples.

The post The acshul answer first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Austerity was never necessary. It was a political choice, and Britain is still paying the price.

In 2010, George Osborne told Britain that the government had run out of money. Public spending had to be cut, he claimed, because there was no alternative. But was any of that true?

In this episode of Understanding Economics, I explain why the economic arguments used to justify austerity were fundamentally flawed.

There never was any austerity. Public spending has risen since 2007 in nominal, real and percentage of GDP terms.

What austerity?

The post Astonishing first appeared on Tim Worstall.

It was about the many more who took to the streets to say neoliberal France was failing them.

The reality is that, despite high levels of government spending as a proportion of GDP, France still cannot meet the expectations of its people.

How much will we each be allowed when the Curajus State of Care arrives?

The post 57% of everything is not enough first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Brian Monteith
Capital really is leaving Britain, whatever the Left says

We run a trade deficit. Therefore, by definition, more capital is arriving than leaving. Which type of capital and all that, owners of capital and all that, sure, those are interesting issues. But it is definitionally true that capital is arriving as long as we’re running as trade deficit.

The post Well, not so much first appeared on Tim Worstall.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. When Labour brought SWR into public ownership in May 2025 – the first operator to be taken in-house by the Labour Government – Heidi Alexander, the Secretary of State for Transport, promised a “cultural reset” for the railway, a “new dawn moving away from 30 years of inefficiency, delayed services and failing passengers, and moving confidently into a new era – the era of Great British Railways”.

As you may not be surprised to find out, it isn’t.

Nationalisation means less, worse, more expensively.

The post How that working out then? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Only about 10 of the 2,000 types of apples growing in Austria can be found in supermarkets among the polished, pristine fruit usually on display – a sad ratio according to fans of historic varieties being primed for a comeback.

One of the country’s biggest retail chains has embarked on a pilot rollout of unusual and long-forgotten apples enjoyed in previous centuries, riding an international trend of reviving heirloom fruit and vegetables.

Experiments are good. This is how we find out what works. Having found out we can do more of it.

Of course, there are always those who take things – possibly – that step too far:

In the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, gardener Jochen Bock has been cultivating his own private Eden for more than three decades.

It now boasts a single tree growing more than 100 apple varieties thanks to a sophisticated homespun grafting technique.

“I had a problem: we didn’t have enough space left in the garden, and I was determined to collect lots of apples, particularly historic ones,” Bock told local media this month. “So I started with regional varieties, and one thing led to another.”

More power to his grafting tools.

The post I approve first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Britain cannot deal effectively with geopolitical crises such as Russian aggression and political turmoil in the US without rejoining the EU, according to an influential thinktank.

I guess this must be true for that’s what we are being told. Having 1/28th of the votes is more power than 100%.

The post Is this so? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Andy Burnham’s pledge to take public control of water companies risks unleashing a fresh debt crisis for struggling suppliers.

Moody’s, the ratings agency, has warned that the Prime Minister’s plans for state ownership threaten to trigger a new cash crunch in an industry already under acute financial strain.

It said the backdrop of “persistent political scrutiny” of the sector under Mr Burnham “may weaken investor confidence and increase the cost of attracting capital needed to support substantial investment programmes”.

If you don’t know who you’re lending to, don;t know the conditions under whichk they will operate, then of couirse you are going to be wary of lending to them. And wary means higher rates charged for any lending that does happen.

Just what happens. One of the reasons why political control of business is so damaging – who knows what politics is going to come up with next?

The post Obviously, clearly first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The BBC has been accused of breaching impartiality rules after civil servants embedded in the broadcaster were tasked with writing articles and fact-checking contentious issues, The Telegraph can reveal.

Civil Service fast-stream graduates and managers are being seconded to the BBC newsroom to produce news and analysis on “high-impact, sensitive topics” such as small boat crossings and coverage of the Covid pandemic.

Articles and blog posts published on the BBC website, and seen by The Telegraph, show that they have been bylined and credited as members of “BBC News” and “BBC Verify”.

That is very independent from the State for the State Broadcaster, isn’t it?

Really, very.

The civil servants’ salaries are paid by their parent department during their time at the BBC,

Umm, yes.

The civil servant also said he had been tasked with “fact-checking claims about crime rates among different nationalities that were dominating news cycles”, for which he “drafted an explainer piece which went online and copy for my boss who went on the radio to provide this much needed context for audiences”.

The civil servant, who now works in the Ministry of Justice, said he had spent his secondment “fact-checking claims in real time” and providing advice to journalists on “interpreting and presenting figures in their pieces”.

“I would work with them to ensure accuracy and clarity,” he said.

To accord with the government line, of course. Note, government, not the political party nominally in office.

Up the Propaganda, Comrades!

The post The independence of the state broadcaster first appeared on Tim Worstall.

In a week when the football regulator’s first report found that the majority of clubs live on the brink of financial disaster, an even more damning one on working conditions in the women’s game has shown that 49% of female footballers are ­considering leaving the game early for reasons that include financial challenges and psychological stress.
Fifpro, the worldwide trade union for professional footballers, surveyed 800 players for its latest global employment report for women’s football, which highlighted how varied experiences of playing the game professionally can be.
For example, only 24% of players in Africa have full-time contracts that are paid throughout the year, compared to 86% of players in central and western Europe. Salaries also vary widely, with players in eastern Europe earning on average below their national minimum wage.

Conditions in a minority sport are different from those in a majority one, are they?

Shocker.

The post Oh Aye? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A tax on bank account financial flows could replace National Insurance.

Which is fun as the economist who got the Nobel for looking at optimal taxation systems, Jimmy Mirrlees, was a Scot. And SNP supporter even.

And a major lesson from the study of optimal taxation systems is do not tax transactions.

So well read is our Potato, just so well read.

The post He’s reviving this idea for Scotland first appeared on Tim Worstall.

“In volatile market conditions, it’s important that suppliers can continue to secure the energy their customers need without taking unsustainable risks.”

Under the mechanism, the MSC would be triggered if wholesale prices fall more than 10%. At that point, suppliers who win customers by being able to then offer cheap deals would have to compensate rivals 85% of the drop in wholesale rates.

“When wholesale prices fall sharply, suppliers that have bought energy in advance for customers on default tariffs can face losses if large numbers of customers switch to cheaper fixed deals,” Ofgem said.

Hedging forward – or not hedging forward – is a standard commercial decision. Which does, of course, affect competitiveness. Those who get it right are competitive, those who don’t are not. Those who are not competitive go bust. That’s how markets work.

The bureaucrats are deciding to have markets, with all their costs, and not to have markets with all their benefits. Because going bust is indeed how markets work.

Morons.

The post These people are absurd first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A “well-known individual” is trying to secure a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to prevent them from publishing details of serious allegations made against him.

At a high court hearing on Friday, the claimant’s legal team said there was a serious risk that he could harm himself should the allegations be made public.

They have told the court publishing the claims would breach articles two and three of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), the former of which relates to the right to life.

A trial is due to take place later this month to examine whether an injunction preventing reporting of the allegations should be made.

I won’t like it if it is revealed that Meghan pegs me while calling me baldy* does seem a pretty weak reason for free speech to be restricted.

*Wholly invented but it does have a ring** to it, no?

** See what I did there?

The post Seems a weak case here first appeared on Tim Worstall.