The Reserve Bank of Australia has lifted its key interest rate to 4.6%, its highest level since 2011, while warning of further hikes.

Did Australian mortgage holders need to be punished as a consequence of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu starting a profoundly unethical war in the Gulf, which they now do not know how to bring to a halt? The answer is obviously no.

Will increasing costs for Australian mortgage holders address the problems that the inflation in question is creating within the Australian economy? The answer is, again, no.

So, the Oz inflation target is already more like what Spud wants – he has indeed said that it should be higher than 2%:

Australia’s inflation target is to keep annual consumer price inflation between 2 and 3 per cent.

OK. And as to the effects of oil etc:

Key statistics
In the 12 months to July 2026:

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 3.5%, down from 3.8% in the 12 months to June 2026.
The largest contributors to annual inflation were Housing (+5.0%), Food and non-alcoholic beverages (+3.2%) and Recreation and culture (+2.6%).
Trimmed mean inflation was 3.6%, unchanged from 3.6% in the 12 months to June 2026.

Trimmed mean inflation is:

The trimmed mean Consumer Price Index (CPI) is Australia’s core inflation measure that calculates the weighted average price change after removing the most extreme 15% of price increases and 15% of price decreases.
How the Trimmed Mean Works
• Ranking changes: All expenditure classes are ordered by their seasonally adjusted price movement.
• Trimming extremes: The top 15% (largest price spikes) and bottom 15% (largest price drops) of weighted items are discarded.
• Middle calculation: The final rate is the weighted average of the remaining central 70% of price changes.
Why the RBA Uses It
• Removes noise: Strips out temporary or volatile shocks like sudden fuel or fruit price spikes.

They are already looking at prices without the oil rise. And inflation, by this non-oil measure, is well ahead of target. It’s also housing which seems to be a major driver. Yes, increasing interest rates to take some heat out of housing and so lower the inflation rate to target could be justified.

Is there no beginning to this man’s knowledge of economics?

The post If only Spud knew any economics first appeared on Tim Worstall.

New York Times exec ‘murdered by elderly in-laws’
Witness claims couple, both 77, took turns to shoot Jonathan McKinsey, 40, in California car park

No, not shooting the son in law, shooting NYT executives.

If it were The Guardian of course we’d not require that added spice of being related now, would we?

A witness claimed in an interview with local Fox News KTVU that the elderly couple, who are 5ft 8in and 5ft 2in respectively, took turns shooting their son-in-law.

Blimey, they were pissed.

BTW, the backstory seems to be that he was very much less than decent in taking care of their grandkiddy. So, warning there, do not piss off Asians ’bout their nippers.

The post We’ve all had this fantasy first appeared on Tim Worstall.

This balance, between personal freedom and the freedom of all others, is already precarious , but in the face of the global crises we face now, it is especially under strain. Liberalism cannot govern economic inequality or ecological disaster, except by pitting the individual freedom of future or far-away others against the freedom of the currently privileged. Without democratic pride in our collective ability to rule our shared fate, the resulting policies look like sacrifice with no upside – I lose the (however hypothetical) freedom to own a row of houses, or I lose the freedom to drive a car, but even if I got public housing or public transport in turn, that wouldn’t register as compensation. After all, I cannot do whatever I want with those.

Therefore liberalism it is and the left can fuck off and die. Simple enough.

That’s not the lesson this particular socialist in Berlin comes to but then she c’n ‘n’ all too……

The post Well, yes, OK first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Far-right marches led by the self-styled “Danny Tommo” should not be treated like normal protests, the communities secretary, Angela Rayner, has said, calling the marches “intimidation” that should not be permitted.

Rayner said the behaviour of some masked marchers – who have blocked roads and transport hubs – was not an acceptable form of protest.

I’m wholly cool with the idea that certain forms of protest shouldn’t be allowed. Right against publicly torturing kittens to protest fossil fuels, for example. But if it’s the who is protesting, about what, then that’s problematic. Problematic to the point of fuck off, Honey.

Yes, yes, we’re all aware that everyone has some group they’d rather not see making their point. But that’s rather the point of allowing all to do so, see?

The post Is it the what or the who? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

No, really:

The hunk shortage: where are England’s handsomest men hiding?

Sigh.

The post Oh, Guardian, don’t ever change first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Why should money earn interest simply because somebody owns it? We usually treat interest as a natural and inevitable part of the economy, but in this Understanding Economics video, I question whether that assumption is justified.

There’s a time value to money. That’s the interest rate.

And isn’t this fun?

I am not arguing that interest should be abolished. I am arguing that the basic interest rate on low-risk money should be close to zero in real terms, while genuine costs and risks should be identified and charged transparently.

Lending money to a bank is pretty risk free. Therefore deposit accounts at banks should pay zero interest. Hmm…..

The post Smurf on interest first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The vast majority of the UK’s essential foods, including cereals, potatoes, sugar and oil, are grown in areas of England rated as having a moderate to very high risk of drought.

A very high proportion – 81% – of England’s fresh produce is concentrated in parts of the country that are already experiencing water stress, according to the analysis by the nature-focused investment fund Rebalance Earth.

Three-quarters of England’s wheat (77%), barley (75%) and oilseed rape (74%) grow in parts of the country rated as being at a moderate to very high drought risk, along with 70% of sugar beet and 67% of potatoes, it found.

And?

You do not grow wheat in a swamp. You have never grown wheat in a swamp. Wheat is a dryland crop. Or, at least, drier land than a swamp. Thus wheat has always been grown on land more at risk of drought than things grown in swamps.

And?

What remains of my geography O Level seems to be reminding me that it’s the eastern – drier – part of England which does more of the wheat growing while the west does more of the dairy – reliant upon that wet living green grass. No?

The post Err, yes? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Sadiq Khan’s LTNs made me flee Britain, says millionaire philanthropist

Not a reason I’d choose – or did choose – to leave but fair enough. It’s also possible to think that traffic measures are possibly a bit shaky as a reason to leave a country but each to their own.

The post OK, fair enough first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Geothermal Engineering Limited (GEL) has said it will invest around £43m in the new lithium extraction facility. The investment will create nearly 50 direct jobs and support around 80 more across the supply chain, after receiving an offer in principle worth nearly £10m through the Government’s DRIVE35 Automotive Transformation Fund.

At current prices production will be worth c. £30 million a year. Perfectly sensible idea. And, yes, from within the weird metals industry the chemistry of this does work. That doesn’t mean it works economically, just that they’re not being weirdos in thinking it could do so.

Two obvious questions though. Given that it is a perfectly sensible idea then why is there that government subsidy? The second is that, well, geothermal mining suffers from the same earthquake problem as fracking. Reinjecting the used water basck down produces ‘quakes. So, why is this technology allowed and not fracking?

The post Perfectly fine idea first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The government has stepped up work on new laws to stop ticket touts fleecing fans, as the prime minister came under pressure from artists including the drummer from the Smiths, one of his favourite bands.

Keir Starmer said last year that the government would “stop fans from being ripped off” by outlawing the for-profit resale of tickets on sites such as Viagogo and StubHub, a pledge Labour first made in its 2024 election manifesto.

Look how hard it is for govt to stamp out an extant market. And I predict that, whatever they do, the market will continue to exist.

The post On markets necessarily requiring govt to exist first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Young people whose complex disabilities mean they have little prospect of getting a paid job should get fast-track access to disability benefits, an official review of youth employment will say.

The review, by the former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn, will say 16- to 24-year-olds with the most severe lifelong needs should be guaranteed swift and unconditional benefit support rather than having to prove they cannot work.

Currently, many disabled youngsters and their families have to endure repeated lengthy, adversarial and often distressing assessments to access personal independence payment (Pip) and universal credit health benefits.

There will be more young people with complex disabilities.

This is wholly aside from whether youngsters with such complex disabilities get support, lashings of it and fast – I’m generally in favour of that for some definition of “complex” – it’s simply an observation about humans. Clasiming complex will gain more money faster and easier, humans respond to incentives, there will be more claims of complex. QED.

The post Can we predict what will happen here? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Amazon’s Ring wants to replace local WhatsApp groups. It’s a recipe for curtain-twitching disaster
Imogen West-Knights

Here in 2026 we’re worrying about replacing that time honoured community spirit fostered by a company founded in 2009.

Nowt so conservative as a lefty, eh?

The post Short of copy over there, eh? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Poland is racing ahead with military spending – but will it help or damage its economic growth story?

Are they spending enough to be able to defend the country?

But there is some fun here. It’s a standard lefty claim that Roosevelt’s spending on WWII is what dragged the US up out of Depression. And, well, maybe. It’s certainly used as the justification for an increased govt spend. But there’s also that standard lefty shout about spend on people, not bombs. And, well, maybe. But there’s a certain tension between the two, no?

The post Is this quite the point? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

At its core, the message is that AI euphoria is so mad that it is now not just infecting US stock exchanges, whilst massively distorting the allocation of capital resources within the US economy towards a purpose which appears to have no useful human goal

And, well, if AI’s only use was to increase Spud’s output then, well. But isn’t his lack of self-knowledge here wondrous?

The post How super first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Earth microbes survive simulated conditions of Saturn moon’s ocean
Experiment suggests organisms could live in harsh environment under Enceladus’s icy crust, strengthening possibility moon could support life

OK, yes, an interesting question that we’re happy to know the answer to. Given where life does survive here on Earth not unexpected, of course.

But what we really want to know is one of three things.

1) There is no other life out there, just us and our Earth buddies.

2) There is other life out there of some different type. At which point the Drake Equation and Fermi Paradeox cfome into play.

3) The Panspermia idea, that there is other life out there but we’re all of the same descent. Drake and Fermi again.

That our life can survive there is indeed interesting. But not really the grand question.

The post This isn’t, quite, the point we want the answer to first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Of course you can be English if you’re not white. So why can’t the right leave the question alone?
Jason Okundaye

Even Jacob Rees-Mogg pushes back on defining Englishness in exclusively ethnic terms. But the endurance of this discourse is still deeply troubling

OK, so, great about skin colour and Englishness. But there’s still a fun thing here. Apparently diversity is our strength, multicultural is better than unicultural. OK, assertions and all that.

B~ut the assertion itself assumes some uniculture that exists, some standard from which diversity aids us. So, what is that standard, that uniculture? The English?

The post There’s a fun question here all the same first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The secrets of thousands of online casinos have been laid bare in a vast leak of data that could have seismic consequences for offshore gambling firms, including some accused of illegally targeting consumers around the world.

The Casino Secrets leak reveals tens of thousands of previously confidential files stored by the gambling regulator on the Caribbean island of Curaçao.

That’s why the State should have all the information on everything, eh?

The post Governments are so secure, eh? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Government interest payments become somebody else’s income. They flow to the owners of government bonds and other savings, including pension funds, investment funds, banks and other financial institutions. But because financial wealth is distributed very unevenly in the UK, the benefits of those payments are also unevenly distributed.

I argue that this means higher government interest payments can contribute to wealth inequality. Those who already own substantial financial assets receive additional income, while households with little or no financial wealth receive very little direct benefit.

Is it the richer or poorer who save with government, buy gilts and NS&I etc?

The post Erm, yes, well…. first appeared on Tim Worstall.

His argument is straightforward. Hargreaves apparently paid £210 million in tax last year. He says that if only a handful of people like him leave the UK, the resulting tax loss might run to £1 billion a year.

Second, as both Hargewaves and the FT appear not to know (which is worrying in both cases), the government’s capacity to spend is not constrained by its ability to raise tax. The household analogy on which this argument relies is just bunkum, but both subscribe to it, or this story would not have been published.

But MMT says the same thing.

The govt is constrained by the appearance of inflation. At which point is must reduce spending or increase taxation – run a budget surplus in order to destroy the excess money causing inflation. If the rich folk leave the country and so cannot be taxed that means that other people must be taxed in order to reduce that excess money supply.

We get to exactly the same place, no?

The post This is bollocks because of course it is first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The number of reported assaults on Great Britain’s railways has risen by a fifth to a record high of almost 25,000 incidents in a year.

Perilous thing, nationalisation

The post Nationalisation, see, nationalisation first appeared on Tim Worstall.