IN THIS BULLETIN:

• POLICY INITIATIVES: Paying for blood; fixing social care; protecting privacy
• ONLINE EVENTS: Universal basic income; invention; and innovation
• THINKING: The NHS; structural racism and who’s fit to talk about it; LEPrechauns; and Quorn rolls
   

BUT FIRST...

So: people take to the streets to complain about racism and the government sets up a commission on racism. Then a footballer writes to the PM about free school meals and the government u-turn on school meals. (So now we at ASI know how to change public policy. We’re organising a mass demonstration on full expensing for capital investments. And asking Marcus to write to the PM about Nominal GDP Targeting.) Oh, and the Churchill statue is boarded up in metal cladding because somebody spray-painted a slogan on him. (I’m heading out to buy a spray can and then it’s straight on to the House of Commons...)
 
Norway has deleted its contact tracing app over privacy concerns. (Can’t be long before the UK deletes its tracing app developers over incompetence concerns.) UK ministers are contemplating whether to halve social distancing, to 1m. (They’re keen to tell us how their virus policy is ‘bringing the country together’ so that’ll be another promise kept. Sort of.) Still, I’m rather disappointed to see lockdown coming to an end. (It’s given me a chance to binge-watch all that toilet paper we bought.) Nor am I too concerned that four in ten state school pupils are not in regular contact with their teachers. (In fact, homeschooling is teaching them all sorts of valuable lessons. Like their parents can’t do arithmetic.) 
 
I read that J K Rowling got into a transgender row, Secretary of State for Something Michael Gove said that there will be no delay to Brexit and London deaths are below the seasonal average (but since opinion polls report that faith in the media has reached an all-time low, I can’t vouch for any of those things). What I am pretty sure about is that 600,000 of us have lost our jobs and there’s 2.8m on the dole. (Still, the racing’s back on TV so as we nibble our cod roe and swill our Asda lemonade we can pretend we’re at Royal Ascot slurping caviar and champagne. And just to complete the diorama, there must be a silly hat in the cupboard somewhere…)
 
Apart from the occasional demo and counter-demo, things have been pretty quiet around Westminster. My colleague Madsen Pirie thinks this is why he’s noticed a plague of rats around Parliament.. (Actually that’s nothing new. I bet I could give you their names and constituencies.)
 
But I digress...

VICTORY FOR CONTACT-TRACING

NEW PUBLICATIONS

A price for blood?
Our latest paper, by Georgetown U’s Peter Jaworski, explains why we should pay blood plasma donors. The stuff’s amazingly useful (e.g. in virus treatment research) but the UK is chronically short of it. The countries that allow payments (e.g. Germany, Austria, Hungary...) produce 90% of world supply. But the UK has to import plasma from no-remuneration places like Canada and Australasia, which is expensive—actually more than twice as expensive—and we still don’t have enough. There’s plenty of evidence that paying for plasma is safe. So why don’t we do it? (We should call in the Treasury—they could get blood out of a stone—Ed.)

Read it here.

Fixing social care
The UK’s delivery of social care is such a mess that pumping more money into it is about as useless as pumping more fuel into a rusty engine, say care expert Paul Saper and I in a new report. It’s not just care homes (you know, the those places full of virus-vulnerable elderly people that the NHS decanted 25,000 untested hospital patients into) but care of younger people with physical or mental issues, and support delivered directly to people’s own homes. Rather than promise to make social care free for all, which would be the biggest nationalisation since Henry VIII took over the monasteries and the costliest ever (That won’t stop this government, though—Ed.) we should instead be constructing partnerships with the public and the private sector to bring in new investment and make care provision affordable. 

Read it here.

THE WISDOM OF THE CROWDS

We captured lots of good ideas on ending the lockdown quickly and safely, thanks to our friends and supporters like you responding to our ideas search. Well, here’s another one. On the other side of this crisis, our depleted economy is going to struggle to carry the huge weight of government spending, bureaucracy, schemes, initiatives, projects, departments, quangos and all the rest. Not to mention ‘investment’ that turns out to be yet more spending. 
 
So how do we get that burden down, and decide what things deliver the best value for money, and what we should really be ‘investing’ in? Reply to this email and tell me!  Keep it punchy, though… all the turmoil of the last few weeks is keeping me extremely busy. (Yes, up at the crack of 11, I bet—Ed.)

DONATE!

If lockdown and the continued closure of pubs has yet to dampen your giving mood, we'd be most grateful if you could help us win more victories for the cause of freedom. Every penny we receive from our supporters boosts our ability to hold the Government to account and create a freer, more prosperous society. 

UPCOMING AND PAST EVENTS

Upcoming:

Honest Monetary Policy: Understanding NGDP targeting

Upcoming:

Doing our Duty by Hong Kong

Past:

Replicating the Age of Invention

Universal Basic Income: Now, or never?

YOOF

MEEJA

We celebrated our links with Australia and New Zealand as the UK launched trade talks this week. Matthew Lesh (resident Aussie) hails this landmark in CapX and we’ve got a snazzy video on Twitter which has been seen by thousands. He also appeared in CityAM debates arguing that *of course* we should pursue tariff-free trade.

Matthew also appeared in The Telegraph commenting on the opposing forces of the US and China in the technology sphere, undoubtedly a new and growing battleground.
 
Our paper on paying for blood plasma appeared in the media across the world - getting hits in Australia (The Australian), the USA (Marginal Revolution), and New Zealand (Stuff.co.nz). 

The ASI’s paper Winning the Peace, was cited in The Telegraph, outlining the economic challenge we face and how to move forward. Eagle-eyed supporters will notice that the ASI’s calls for restaurants and pubs to be allowed to serve on the pavement outside their premises has been adopted. Up next: Sunday trading laws, as argued by our Matthew Lesh on Sky News and in a letter to the editors of the Times. 
 
Much to the dismay of our Deputy Director cum Work-From-Home Opposer Matt Kilcoyne, other Matthew had a feature in The Spectator arguing that COVID-19 may be the end of the office as we know it. 
 
And our social care paper was a big hit within the care sector press, getting mentions in over 15 publications, featuring on local radio stations across the country, and in big national publications like Public Fiance, CityAM and Conservative Home.
 
ASI Senior Fellow Tim Worstall made a compelling case against UBI (after our webinar on the same topic) for The Times Thunderer. 
 
Amid all the ‘discourse’ Matt Kilcoyne and I both voiced our opposition to the overwhelming pressure of the liberal zeitgeist. Matt appeared in The Critic, lamenting the state of history lessons in schools, and I wrote for The Telegraph as Fawlty Towers fell victim to the mob. 
 
Finally, our friend Robert Colvile mentioned ASI research on housing in his first appearance as a regular Times columnist (he’s off to a great start! - Ed.)
 

FOLLOW US

ONLINE THINKING

Dr Smith’s Despatches
Our frontline NHS doctor questions the official narratives and tells it like it is. Like on antibody testing: “The high frequency of results that raise eyebrows make me wonder what the test performances really are.” On patients’ low oxygen levels: “We tried everything, including turning the patients prone and then back again like a giant rotisserie, but many of the results were mixed.” And the NHS itself:
 
“No matter how bad some of the issues in the NHS, the switching costs are very high—it is akin to trying to fix a car engine while driving along the highway.”
 
“Stakeholders behave in ways that are individually best for them but to the detriment of the overall system… Resources do not naturally follow patients without petitioning the centralised budget holder.”
 
“‘We already have the best healthcare system,’ they say, despite multiple outcome measures pointing to the contrary.”
 
“Managers struggle to make more than minor changes…it is difficult to make changes without the assent of multiple other managers… since budgets are essentially fixed there are few if any incentives for service innovation."
 
Institutional and structural racism?
Mega-blogger Tim Worstall is fed up with politicians who insist that the only people fit to run an enquiry on a national issue are those who already accept the standard line on it. In terms of the coming enquiry on racial inequality, for instance:
 
“The insistence here is that anyone who does not already leap to the conclusion that it’s entirely structural and institutional may not be allowed even to run the investigation.”
 
But in fact we need someone with an open mind who will find out the real facts. For example:
 
“How much is racial inequality to do with institutional and/or structural racism—and how much to do with demographics (the BAME population is rather younger than the non-BAME), status as recent immigrants, the terrors of inner city educational systems, any cultural factors… We’d like to know what is going on and why."
 
Down with the LEPrechauns! 
Former FTSE-100 Finance Director and Business Prof Tim Ambler isn’t keen on the Local Enterprise Partnerships—LEPs—created in 2011 to stimulate local economic growth. But since nobody has bothered to look at their cost-effectiveness, we don’t know if the £12bn spent on them has done any good. 
 
“LEPs and the other local quangos are a maze of good intentions leading to muddle and confusion. Early stage entrepreneurs simply do not have the time to explore the myriad schemes available, still less go through all the application processes… The taxpayer should have more faith in the judgment of a private investor keen to put their money into a project than that of a small body of bureaucrats."
 
Funding social care
Here I go again. It’s really no use spending more public money on stuff that simply doesn’t work. Like our social care delivery system—in residential and nursing homes, and the support delivered to people’s homes:
 
“Money alone won’t get us far, because the whole social care delivery system is broken. Spending more money is like pouring more fuel into an engine that has already seized up… Most homes to which local authority clients are sent are outdated and substandard… Few carers hired by families have any worthwhile qualifications or training.”
 
We don’t need more nationalisation—a National Care Service—but rather more partnership with individuals and private investors to make social care affordable and effective.
 
How many Quorn tubes is two metres? 
Greggs is re-opening, and telling customers to stand 15 sausage rolls apart. But the bakery’s vegan version of the sausage roll has got EU regulators (aided and abetted by meat farmers) in a lather, says Amos Wollen, one of our Young Writer on Liberty winners. Should non-meat versions of things be allowed to call themselves ‘sausage’ or ‘burger’?
 
“Proponents argue that these labels cause customer ‘confusion’… What should replace them? ‘Veggie discs’, ‘Quorn tubes’, ’Soyal slices’ and ’Seitan slabs’ are top of the EU’s list. One might reasonably ask why, if the EU’s decision was uninfluenced by nervous meat companies, the suggested labels sound so unappealing.”
 
Of course, there’s no evidence of any customer ‘confusion’. It’s pretty obvious that a ‘vegan sausage’ isn’t meat. 
 
“If Britain’s EU negotiations wind up with our supermarket shelves stocked up with ’Soyal slices’, it would be a tremendous shame… Handing unfettered regulatory jurisdiction to the nanny state breeds nothing but illiberal cronyism.”

WHAT WE’RE READING, WATCHING AND GAMING

For my part, I’ve been watching and listening to as many old TV and radio comedy shows I can before the BBC bans them for political incorrectness. Along the way I’ve taken in some other old radio programmes, like Wilfred Pickles’s game show Down Your Way. Older readers will remember Mable at the Table. My abiding memory is of the man who, when Pickles asked what his life ambition was, said: “I’d like to take all the money in the world and divide it up equally between everyone.” But when the applause died down, he said, “And when I’d spent my share, we’d do it again!"
 
It’s the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo today, and Daniel has been reliving Wellington’s famous victory by playing Napoleon: Total War (as Great Britain, of course). He’s also been cultivating his house music playlists, including copious amounts of Idris Elba, for the inevitable post-lockdown parties and checking out a book on mindfulness his mum sent him (What’s she trying to say there then?—Ed.)

Ahead of our webinar next Wednesday afternoon, “Doing our Duty by Hong Kong”, John has been reading Joshua Wong’s book, “Unfree Speech, the Threat to Global Democracy” to prepare.

AND I QUOTE...