Lynne Featherstone: It’s an interesting question and a pressing one in the debate around equal civil marriage. It is owned by neither the state nor the church, as the former Archbishop Lord Carey rightly said. So it is owned by the people. The fierce debate over the past few weeks has shown people feel very  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall This is absurd! So the bankers whose excesses helped land Europe in this mess then get to sit round the big EU table, like any other government, and decide who should pay for it. And the answer, unsurprisingly, is: not them. The bigger question is: why finance has been granted such power? This  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall So, we’ve got the FSA report into why HBOS fell over. Fascinating stuff really. For there’s not a derivative, toxic or not, in there. There’s not even trading problems. It was a simple, classic, over-extension of credit to the property sector. It’s happened before, no doubt it will happen again. But do note that: it’s nothing  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall In a move that has astounded British MEPs, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the EC, announced that the levy could halve European Union members’ contributions. Mr Barroso has proposed that countries keep a third of the proceeds of the levy themselves and give two-thirds of it to Brussels. Europe’s budget would become “self  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall Having mutuals in the banking system might be a good idea for all sorts of reasons. But not perhaps for the reason that so many here claim. Which is, of course, that mutuals wouldn’t have gone so gung ho into excessive housing finance and thus wouldn’t have pumped up the bubble that led  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall No, Ed, this wasn’t the 30s’ mistake: “I fear what’s happening here is that the world is making the 1930s mistake and the ratings agencies are partly responsible for this. Even though it is clear in Greece, in Ireland, in other countries, in Britain too (that) this austerity isn’t working, the message is  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall So Rangers and Portsmouth go bust. Good. Because this is the way that capitalism deals with screw ups. We’ll have all sorts coming out of the woodwork claiming that this shows what is wrong with contemporary society etc. And they may well be right. But what they’ll be missing in their calls for  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall Fred Goodwin is shredded: former RBS boss stripped of knighthood… Fred Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood after a political campaign to see the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland punished for his role in the financial crisis.   Oh dear. Time was, as a country, we respected the rules. Whatever  [ Read More ]