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Why Tory Voters are going on social benefits
Freedom Week in Cambridge: Applications now open
Next Generation Fellows: You could be one!
But first...
In this week’s national news:
The Department of Work and Pensions has revealed that sickness benefit claims have risen by a third in Tory heartlands. (I knew that Tory supporters were sick of their Party, but I didn’t realise you could get a dole-out for it.)
New £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes featuring the image of King Charles III have been published. (I know the look of them might confuse you, but if you see one in the street, pick it up anyway — there might be something valuable underneath.)
Liz Truss has a new book out, Ten Years to Save the West. And Nigel Farage’s National Conservative meeting in Brussels was shut down by the Mayor of Brussels, claiming that this sort of politics should not be tolerated. (Which rather suggests that Liz’s horse has already bolted.)
A law firm headed by the ‘Diva of Divorce’ Ayesha Vardag has accidently dissolved the wrong couple’s marriage. (However, Ms Vardag says business has never been so good: she’s been inundated by calls from Remainers checking whether Brexit was a mistake too.)
A new Tobacco and Vapes Bill will mean that nobody born after 2009 will ever be able to buy cigarettes. (Like 150-odd rebel Tory MPs, I’m against such discrimination as a matter of principle. What we need is a complete ban. Not on cigarettes, but on MPs voting for daft laws.)
Yet I digress...
FREEDOM WEEK
Applications are open for our summer freedom boot camp, Freedom Week, held as usual in the charming city of Cambridge, where you can see academics idly punting down a river of public subsidies. 
From 19-23 August, we’re taking 30 students who are interested in classical liberal ideas to immerse themselves in the subject, inspired by some of the UK’s leading liberal thinkers. 
We’re already getting applications so if this is for you, better get yours in fast!
IN THE TANK
Revolving door
The New Zealand Housing Minister popped in to learn more about our research on the house price crisis. Of course, the solution is simple: build more houses. Unfortunately, getting to that solution is not so easy, given our antediluvian land planning controls. But we have cunning plans — and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were implemented and helping ease the housing crisis in New Zealand long before the UK government got round do anything.
We also welcomed students from Utrecht University as part of their ‘London Business Experience’. They might not exactly experience much business at ASI, but they were interested in what think-tanks do and in our ideas to boost business and growth more generally.
ASI on the Road
What a pity you weren’t in Tallinn last week. You could have come to the Free Market Road Show and seen me explaining to a large group of Business School students why F A Hayek is important. But scuttle off to Warsaw today and you still have the chance to catch Carolina (our new Chief of Staff) doing the Road Show there. I know you can’t be in two places in once, but I am doing my best next week with Free Market Road Show talks in Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Phew!
Become a Next Generation Fellow!
We are still on the look-out for people under 35 who want to help develop policies to improve the lot of the downtrodden minority that is — people under 35. My own generation will remember Harold Macmillan’s election slogan ‘You’ve never had it so good!’ But of course they never had it so good because they passed the bill to future generations. Anyway, you can register your interest in what to do about it on the Next Generation Centre website. 
Next Generation Meeting
Last month our young Westminster movers and shakers heard from Sascha O'Sullivan from Politico’s Westminster Insider podcast. Look out for our next event, our guest to be announced soon.
Gap Year Internship
Wanting to take a gap year before university? We will soon be opening our application portal [ [link removed] ] for bright young things to get the best start of their adult lives. Between September and June of 2024/5, our gap year students learn about policy, economics, comms, development, and politics in Britain's leading neoliberal think tank
Enlightenment Evenings
We recently hosted our first Enlightenment Evening, where our Chairman James Lawson will interview authors, academics and wonks on topics of interest. We’re started the series with our own Director of Research Maxwell to talk about our new knockout paper on private schools,  Short Term Thinking - analysing the effect of applying VAT to school fees.
New ASI Senior Fellow
We are pleased to welcome Charles White-Thomson [ [link removed] ] as a Senior Fellow of the Institute. He’s a noted business and thought leader, markets veteran, commentator and writer who you can read in places like CityAM, and former CEO of Saxo UK.
ENLIGHTENMENT ESSAY COMPETITION
Don’t forget to enter our Enlightenment Essay Competition, with prizes of £8,000 (first place), £4,000 (second) and £2,000 (third). 
We’ll be looking further afield in our search for excellent essays. We are asking students, from undergraduate to post-doctoral, to answer the question: “How can the ideas of the Enlightenment become embedded in the Arab World?”
The deadline is 30th August. To apply, you have to be an undergraduate, postgraduate or doctoral and post-doctoral student. We are asking for up to 5,000 words including any footnotes, Chicago citation, British English. Submissions to [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] ].
More information here. [ [link removed] ] Good luck! 
NEW IDEAS
On our superblog…
A great piece on rent controls [ [link removed] ] by our talented gap-year intern Sam Bailey. He points out now new controls in Scotland have depressed the availability of rented property by 20% and raised new tenancy rates by 14%. Duh! It’s not exactly the first time. The incentive to invest in property is now so low that I doubt young Sam will ever be able to afford a roof over his head. All donations welcome! 
We argue that Scotland’s terrible new Hate Crime Act [ [link removed] ] [ [link removed] ]is demonstrative of why the UK needs its own Free Speech Act, modelled on America’s First Amendment, to stop this sort of thing from happening. Our Senior Fellow Preston J Byrne first suggested that in a policy paper [ [link removed] ] for us back in 2020.
On the 12th April, we celebrated the anniversary of [ [link removed] ]The Theory of Moral Sentiments. [ [link removed] ] I wrote about Smith’s ground-breaking approach to morality and ethics.
And there’s much more sharp thought on [link removed] [ [link removed] ]
New report: Short-Term Thinking
Can these title puns get any worse? Still, the content’s interesting: Our Research Director, Maxwell Marlow, critiques the IFS’s view that 15% VAT on school fees would see a 3-7% drop in attendance. Their faulty assumptions, he says, means that the drop would be much greater. Which will leave the state system with a lot of young people to take on — and pay for.
EVENTS
David Friedman lecture. Libertarian thinker, legal specialist and scion of the great monetary economist, David Friedman, joins us for a special lecture. His theme: A [ [link removed] ]rguments Libertarians Shouldn't Make [ [link removed] ]. It’s on 25th April in Westminster, venue to be announced soon.
On the 23rd April, our Next Generation Centre Director Sam Bidwell is taking part in the NextGenTories’ Big Housing Debate. Four think tanks will give set out their pitches of what the government’s housing policy should look like - you get to grill them and pick the winner.
We’re excited to be launching a new Next Generation Centre paper: On the Rocks: London's Nightlife in Crisis, featuring remarks from the Rt Hon. Robert Jenrick MP, and taking place at the fabulous setting of Mr Fogg’s Tavern near Liverpool Street.
London has long had a global reputation as one of the greatest cities to eat, drink and make merry. But now its nightlife scene is in crisis, and our hospitality sector is stifled by puritanical licensing laws and sky-high operating costs.
Our new paper will show how we can help our pubs, restaurants and great cultural institutions to flourish, and how we can truly make London a 24 hour city.
This event is primarily invitation-only, but we have opened up a ballot for a limited number of spots to our wider network of supporters.
Sign up to to find out by Friday 26th Apri [ [link removed] ]l if you have received a place.
MEDIA
Director of Government Relations James Price has been giving his take on what’s been going on in the world of policy in his weekly CityAM column. You can read his op-eds on the illiberalism of the smoking ban [ [link removed] ], why we need a Free Speech Act [ [link removed] ], why we need more business people in parliament, [ [link removed] ] and what the modellers don’t- and can’t- tell you about taxing independent school fees. [ [link removed] ]
He was also in the Telegraph [ [link removed] ] bemoaning that even the King isn’t safe from Britain’s NIMBYs.
Elsewhere, Mimi Yates was in CityAm [ [link removed] ]on why the next Mayor should extend the Night Tube, Maxwell Marlow was in CapX [ [link removed] ]on New Zealand’s approach to farming, on BBC Radio Ulster to talk about hospital car park charges, and the Daily Mail [ [link removed] ]on the smoking ban.
And our paper on VAT and independent school fees keeps getting media hits- here it is in the Telegraph [ [link removed] ] and ConHome [ [link removed] ], [ [link removed] ] and it was also featured in the Times.
And listen out to the BBC World Service this Sunday- Maxwell will be on to talk about the smoking ban!
And I quote…
Thinking as I was about elderly leaders, this inspiring idea about the government, from US President Ronald Reagan, came to mind:
Let’s close the place down and see if anybody notices.
Sounds with a try, doesn’t it?
Bye,
e
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