What are they smoking?

Now I'm a libertarian sort, classical liberal, you want to get off your head in the comfort of your own home, well, that's nothing to do with me. Now I also agree that many others don't think the same way. OK, that's fine as well, society would be so boring if we all thought the same way (we really don't want the whole country to be like the Labour Party now, do we?).

But there really is something about these drugs things that turns people into gibbering maniacs.

Illegal drug use is in decline in England and Wales with...

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The call for cuts

The pressure on the Bank of England to slash interest rates is mounting - if, indeed, pressure can be exerted on an independent body.  The list of politicians who have near-enough called for a dramatic reduction in rates includes Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and George Osborne.  And today, in a persuasive article for the FT, Martin Wolf also states the case for a hefty cut.  The whole thing's worth reading, but here's the crux of Wolf's argument:

"So what is to be done? The starting point has to be monetary policy. My increasingly

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I like this story

We all remember curvy cucumbers, bent bananas and forked carrots, yes? Those euromyths, that we've been told really aren't true?

Well, not so much told aren't true, but told that retailers and suppliers went on bended knee to the eurocracy, begging that it be made a criminal offence to sell bananas of excessive curvature?

No, really, that's what they've said.

It should not be forgotten that all these norms have been demanded and requested for years by the industry and by the retailers.

So it's a bit of a surprise to see this today.
Sainsbury's...

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Political corruption

I'm really rather looking forward to this. Using the techniques of forensic economics (yes, this does involve our hero staring moodily into the camera, a la CSI, although with better acting and he gets the girls less often) we find that people have been making money out of predicting, or perhaps knowing, where the next CIA sponsored coup is going to be.

By tracking the stock prices of UFC and other politically vulnerable firms in the months leading up to CIA-staged coups in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, and Iran, the researchers provide evidence that someone—perhaps one of the Dulleses, Cabots,...

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Darling demands cheaper petrol

The government's demands that oil companies cut petrol prices are now getting beyond parody.  Alistair Darling repeated them on GMTV this morning - blithely ingnoring the fact that fuel taxes account for well over half the cost of petrol at the pumps.  Fern Britton, for one, wouldn't have let him get away with it.

The question hovering over all this is whether the Treasury will go ahead with a planned 2p rise in fuel duty.  There's always the chance that Brown 'n' Darling could try and gain...

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