Tim Worstall

I can't say that I've ever really understood this idea that we must all eat only the things that have been grown in our own region. "Region" of course is a variable thing. It seems to depend on how deep the green of the fool recommending it is. Something from "the nation" to "your back yard" is the spectrum. But as I say, I've never really understood the point.

Tim Taylor has a nice piece about the extension of human lifespans. Mortality has, as we know, fallen dramatically (or lifespans have extended, same thing) since the hunter gatherer days. We all know they exercised regularly, had no chemicals, little pollution and ate organic food. And were all dead by 35. We have all of the chemicals, lots of pollution, eat polluted chemical muck and live into our late 70s. But here's the fascinating fact:

David Cameron is doing something very important at the United Nations. Well, as far as anything a politician ever does is important. He's talking about what is necessary to aid development in the poor countries. I thought it would be interesting to look at what a development expert thought about what Cameron was saying. Worth reading this in full if you're into this sort of thing.

It sounds rather odd really for no one really notes that anything does die from opportunity costs. But I think that it might well be possible that that's what does in the BBC in the end. I'm prompted in these thoughts by Bill Quango. He notes that it's becoming less unusual for people not to have a TV.

In his series of reasons to be cheerful (yes, he is indeed a Blockheads fan, why do you think he lets me hang around the place?) Madsen tells us this about copper and other mineral resources:

Today's example comes from Canada but I get hugely and vastly irritated by very much the same thing over here. Quite simply the blind refusal of many in the environmentalist movement to understand what it is that economists are trying to tell them. Mike Moffatt (both an economist and a Green, so something of an unusual mixture) tells of his experience here.

I suppose we'll just have to swallow hard and accept it, this award of the Peace Prize to the EU. That's after we've recovered from the fits of hysteria and laughter. Quite by chance the same day the news came though this was said about Owen Paterson:

Almost at random from my RSS feed two little bits of information that tell of the quite astonishing economic changes going on around us at present. The first, that the world is now pretty much wired:

According to new figures published by the International Telecommunications Union on Thursday, the global population has purchased 6 billion cellphone subscriptions.

To return to one of the great questions of our times. Why is it that people are paying any attention at all to people who seem not to know the first thing about the subject of their pontifications? Our example today comes from Lindsay Mackie who is something or other at the new economics foundation. You know, the place a current Lib Dem SpAd once christened "not economics frankly".

The current government has announced that no family will get more than median income in benefits each year. I'm afraid that they're still being hopelessly over-generous here. And I would call into evidence the Baron Skidelsky to prove it to them as well. No one should ever be able to garner benefits of more than £10,000 a year. For as the Noble Lord tells us: