IN THIS BULLETIN:
- YOOF: A virtual Freedom Week, but very real scholarships for young freedom-minded people
- REPORTS and EVENTS: Paying for blood; monetary polizzzzzzzzz; freeing Hong Kong
- THE MAGIC WEB: Of moths and ministries
BUT FIRST...
Our first real test begins — the pubs are opening tomorrow! The government hopes that we'll act like responsible adults with this new privilege (Hmm...they don't say that often––Ed.). Who else can't wait to spend £5 on a poorly poured pint and stand outside the comfort of your own home, trying very hard not to brush shoulders with anyone at all? Well we're in luck, starting at 6am tomorrow, all of that can be ours. Some might say that's a little early, but anyone who has been to a 'Spoons in a British airport would say it's a bit of a late start, really.
The stupidity virus continues to spread. Experts say that spikes in infections ten days after BLM demonstrations ‘might’ be connected (“Might'? ‘Experts'?—Ed.). Greece has suspended flights from the UK (but I guess if you live in Leicester you couldn’t get to the airport anyway). The Royal College of Physicians (sounds fancy, but it’s just the posh doctors’ union—Ed.) says it could take two years for the NHS to return to its normal capacity (that is, two years before we can start waiting another two years for a new hip).
Courts, however, might take ten years to clear the backlog (which can’t be good news if you’re on remand for calling Boris a rude name or some other terrorist charge). But Nightingale Courts, we’re told, might be an answer. (Have to have another name, though: how about, or Melford Stevenson or Denning Courts?)
Parents face fines if they don’t send their kids to school in September: education’s important, after all. (Though schools, it seems, won’t be fined for not educating the same kids for the last three months.) Marrying couples, under new guidelines, may not be able to kiss when they tie the knot (which seems to take a lot of the point out of it).
The PM seems to have got his BoJo back, promising to spend £5bn of our money on building projects (hopefully the plan will include lots of statues). The Opposition leader, meanwhile, has fired the Shadow Something Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, ostensibly for antisemitic tweeting. (But probably really because it’s bad PR to have a double-barrelled name on the Labour front bench. Can’t be long before the leader himself drops the ’Sir’, can it?)
But I digress…
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DONATE!
I wasn’t sure whether to ask you to invest in our important work here or at the end when I’ve told you about it all below. But I’m not going to prevaricate, the country and the world are in a mess and they need some good ideas to get out of it. Preferably ones that don’t involve raising taxes and digging the hole deeper.
Well, with your help we can keep those ideas coming and changing events. And we’re also looking to the next generation, to explain to them the workings of a free society and the ideas and principles that drive it. Not something they are likely to get at school or college, or from TV news. It’s vital work, and we need your support to do it. So please, help us restore common sense to this strange world we’re in.
Click the button and do it now. Then you can read all about what we’re up to, below, and close this email in smug satisfaction of what a good investment you made.
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YOOF
Freedom Week, our boot camp for young freedom-minded activists which we normally hold in Cambridge, is going virtual this year for the first time. So the thirty or so super-brainy kids we’ve selected (from hundreds) will just have to make do with pictures of parties and doing silly things in punts. Perhaps we can put such activities on our Zoom backgrounds. But anyway, we have a full programme of world-class speakers and we’re sure that this year’s crop will acquire the skills to spread the ideas of liberty among their generation and beyond. Successful applicants will be notified at the end of next week, so if you’ve applied then keep an eye on your inbox!
Blundell studentships. Our expert panel of judges is currently looking over the final shortlist for those who have applied to our grant programme for prospective and current postgraduates. Keep an eye out for this year’s winners, as if previous years are anything to go by they’ll be authoring ASI papers and blogs over the next year!
Young Writer on Liberty. The last of our winners’ blogs are live on the ASI blog, from Tim Edwards on how free markets can boost green innovation to Amos Wollen on the promise of carbon dividends.
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DO-TANKING
Impact
We’ve had quite a few policy successes over the last few weeks (though the country’s still in a mess, isn’t it? Try even harder—Ed.). The big issue of the 21st Century is of course e-scooters, which seems a nifty way of getting about, which the government says it’s indeed going to legalise. But only if they’re rented, not your own. Well, you work out the logic of that caveat and send it to me on a postcard. Or drop it round on your e-scooter…I mean, someone else’s e-scooter.
Let’s hope the e-scooterists (or is it e-scooterers?—Ed.) take care or they could be bumping into diners, spilling out onto the pavement under the new cafe-culture ‘Alfresco Britain’ plan, designed to allow caterers to open up again while still maintaining safe distancing. I wonder where the government got that idea?
And the New Deal, I’m glad to say, is not just a razzmatazz way of spending £5bn that HMG were going to spend anyway. It also comes with a battery of planning reforms, allowing people to build up and out, thereby making housing more affordable, particularly to those young people who, we're told, have been most hit financially by the lockdown. So that’s good too.
Hard-won support for our friends in Hong Kong. As I mentioned to you in our last bulletin, the ASI has been standing by Hong Kong since the 1980s and made the case for offering the right of abode to BN(O) passport holders just last year. Hong Kong has always been emblematic of the virtues we fight so hard to protect. And now that her people and those values are at risk, we are so pleased to see the government act and uphold the rights of BN(O) passport holders and their families.
I could go on about our role in forcing Public Health England to return the phone calls of all those private labs that offered to help out with testing, and lots of other things, but I’ve probably told you that already. Not bad, though, eh?
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PODCAST
Introducing, The Pin Factory
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We’ve only gone and finally done it. We have a brand new podcast!
Every week, The Pin Factory will bring you an informative and entertaining roundup of the week in news, with commentary on political, social, and economic developments from across the world.
A rotating cast of ASI staff members will be joined by leading thinkers, politicians, journalists, and more as we bring our perspective to what is happening in the world around us. You’ll also get a sneak peak into the inner workings of the ASI and the minds of our guests as we finish each episode with a ‘pick of the week’ —a favourite moment or current fascination.
Topics already covered include the BLM movement and police brutality, the economy post-Covid, China and Hong Kong, UK trade talks, the upcoming US election, and more.
Our pilot episode featuring Sam Bowman and episode 1 featuring Kate Andrews of the Spectator are live now! You can find The Pin Factory on all your favourite podcast platforms, including iTunes, Spotify, and Podbean. Be sure to subscribe, like, and share each week to show your support!
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Our webinars continue apace. This week we had ex-MP Douglas Carswell and Manchester Met policy evaluation boffin Dr Chris O’Leary alongside our own Matthew Lesh. It seems Dom & BoJo want to shake up the civil service, so let’s help them get stuck in. I could certainly point to a few useless government departments. And our Covid-19 response has been one of the world’s worst, with quangos like Public Health England roundly demonstrating their uselessness. So much for our supposed ‘Rolls-Royce’ civil service. If you can hear bubbling, it’s my blood boiling.
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And last week we had a Wednesday lunchtime webinar on Britain’s duty by Hong Kong, with our own John Macdonald, plus Lisa Nandy, Shadow Foreign Secretary, Tom Tugendhat of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Benedict Rogers of Hong Kong Watch—plus Joshua Wong, the pro-democracy campaigner, sadly reporting that this was probably the last occasion on which he might be able to express his views in public as a free man. Rather chilling thought. But at least the government has listened and is allowing British passport holders in Hong Kong to come in.
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To celebrate the launch of our report on NGDP targeting, we had report author Scott Sumner and fellow monetary policy expert Anthony Evans for a webinar on reforming yet another aspect of government activity (Sure does keep us busy––Ed.). Our brainy bunch discussed the merits and demerits of NGDP targeting, government responsibility in monetary policy, and just what we might expect in the face of a looming recession. (Glad someone is thinking of it!)
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REPORTS
What do the words ‘monetary policy’ do for you? Yes, put you to sleep in most cases. But actually it’s a very important subject, so do stay awake. Our latest report, by Scott Sumner of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, explains why we should be targeting growth, not inflation. In dire circumstances like these, he explains, inflation isn’t exactly the problem. It’s getting growth going again. Focus on curbing inflation, and you’re likely to choke off future growth too.
Oh, and if you look up, you'll see Scott Sumner did a webinar for us on the subject too…
Bloody Well Pay Them. Bit of a racy title for us, but Matthew Lesh, our policy supremo and title picker, is Australian, so you have to make concessions. The author, Georgetown Prof Peter Jaworski, says that blood plasma is more useful than ever in research, but we’re having trouble getting the stuff. In fact we import nearly all of our plasma therapies from the USA, which allows its donors to be remunerated. Our own failure to pay for plasma means we’re failing to be anywhere near self-sufficient and leaving low to middle income countries to face artificially high global prices in the midst of a massive shortage. So we should, er, darn well pay for it.
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MEEJA
I see that our policy boffin Matthew Lesh has been on the radio again, but this isn’t really news because he’s always on the radio. In fact, I think if you turn on your radio at any point, you’ll find him talking on Hilversum or Luxembourg or the Home Service or something. A bit like McCartney’s Yesterday, except that ML talks about today and tomorrow. Anyway, there he was on the Jeremy Vine Show telling us how to re-open the economy before bold as brass doing the same thing on Sky TV. Can’t keep up with that chap. He’s Australian, you know.
ASI Fellow Sam Bowman also appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show to talk about the UK’s duty to Hong Kong and the creative ways in which we can honour our commitments to her people while also making the UK better. He made the same argument on LBC and they did a lovely write up of it to make our jobs easier. You can read more about Hong Kong 2.0 in Sam’s blog post from a few weeks ago.
Matthew Lesh made a cameo in Esther Webber’s Times Red Box piece touting the need for meaningful planning reform following Boris’ announcement (The title says something about newts but don’t let that put you off—Ed.)
On the subject of Boris’ speech, Matt Kilcoyne went head to head in the CityAm debate section to argue that, no, he didn’t reset his premiership. Mostly because there’s nothing to reset - we’ve hardly ever cared more about what the PM has to say than in the last few months and what he said the other day wasn’t anything we haven’t heard before. He also appeared on Sky News’ daily podcast to discuss it further if you’re interested in a long-form conversation.
Matt also appeared alongside fellow tax experts in CityAM to spell out 6 important tax reforms the Government should take on if they want swift Covid recovery. We said the Government should eliminate The Factory Tax, allowing companies to deduct capital expenditure immediately, instead of over time, resulting in massively boosted investment across the country.
Our paper on remunerated blood plasma donations has appeared in the media again, with write-ups in CapX and the Spectator. Some could say we’ve hit a vein here. (Ooft, put that one back on the shelf—Ed.)
We’re also in The Telegraph this week, discussing how to reform the bloated and inefficient state bureaucracy. You can read all about Matthew’s thoughts on that here, or watch our webinar on the same topic, if you’re an audio-visual learner. He appeared in The Telegraph earlier to give examples of such inefficient bureaucracy, saying of course they were never going to be able to create a track and trace app. ASI Fellow Tim Worstall makes the same point in CapX, thanking the powers that be that the Government realised their mistake — something they aren’t particularly good at.
Finally, you can always count on us to bash the unions and vested interests at every opportunity. In swift succession, we had Morgan Schondelmeier railing against the powerful police unions responsible for such toxic policing in the USA, Matt Kilcoyne pushing back against the lobbying groups who want to restrict whether or not we can go to the big shops on Sunday eve, and we also lambasted (in multiple outlets) the Government’s decision to appoint a regulatory commission overseeing trade negotiations, which was designed for and by the NFU. As Adam Smith so eloquently said… “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
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ON OUR SUPERBLOG
Crowding out Community. One of our gap year stars Charlie Paice talks us through his experience with his local community during Covid-19. Local WhatsApp groups, youths proactively volunteering, and support for vulnerable neighbors all sprang up organically. He says this goes to show that the state doesn’t need to force us to be charitable or strong-arm us into valuing community. In fact, when the state gets involved in trying to manufacture the ties that bind, they invariably screw it up (What’s new…?—Ed.)
The moths have got into my jumpers. They’ve got into the economy too, I tell the world (or at least the small section that’s interested). All those defunct restaurants, pubs, hotels, events spaces, travel businesses, theatres and the rest—plus the firms that supplied them—won’t grow back overnight. Indeed, they won’t grow back at all, we have to do a bit of darning. My jumper problem doesn’t need me to get out my knitting needles and start on making new ones, and Boris doesn’t need to get out his JCB and embark on a Roosevelt-type building spree. But the government does need to get out of the way, cutting regulations and taxes on start ups and new businesses, so that the holes can be filled.
Doing right by Hong Kong. We’ve stood with the people of Hong Kong, says Matt Kilcoyne in his blog. When we handed over that little bastion of free trade in 1997, its residents were promised increasing freedom. Instead they got increasing interference from Beijing. The new National Security Law breaches the handover agreement and we need to do something about it. Maybe offering our Overseas Nationals to come to the UK for five years and then apply for citizenship will give them a bit of choice that, otherwise, they won’t get under Communism.
Would we miss the Ministry of Housing etc? No, it’s not a trick question (and I love the ‘etc’) but I think we all know the answer. Turns out our beloved Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, has grown by 25% in the last year, and employs another 2,000 people in ‘agencies and designated bodies’ (that’s quangos to you and me). Though despite that they still haven’t sorted out Grenfell-type cladding problems, built houses or…well, I don’t know what they’ve done, really. Except possibly mess up a lot of people in planning appeals. We could mess about fixing this bit of it or that, says Tim Ambler, but really, it’s easier to scrap the whole thing.
And have a look at our Twitter feed here and follow us (or friend us or echo us or retwitter us or whatever you’re supposed to do on these things).
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LOCKDOWN TIME
I’ve been phoning a few friends (what, you still use old tech?—Ed.) to make sure they’re OK and find out what they’re up to, and it’s interesting to know how people are filling the long evenings of lockdown (though the nights are drawing in, you know. Soon be Christmas—Ed.).
For my part, I’ve been re-reading Jonathan Medes’s Museum Without Walls in which the architecture critic and wit takes a wonderfully condescending elitist scalpel to architects, planners, garden cities, totalitarian monumentalism (though democratic governments love that too—don’t get me started on HS2) and much else. And I’ve learnt a lot of long words too. Trouble is, I’ve forgotten what most of them mean. Ah well.
Tomorrow is the 4th of July so Morgan has a good old fashioned American BBQ planned to celebrate her roots and lament the state of American politics all at once. She’ll also be watching Hamilton with her British household to really rub it in.
Julia has been reading the Psychopath Test (I wonder if she passed) and is now even more skeptical of governments (as if she needed any more reasons).
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AND I QUOTE...
Apropos of nothing in particular…
"Professional politicians and interested bureaucrats react to the incentives provided by lobbyists and pressure groups to push a relentless growth in government activity. When, in living memory, has there been a significant process of repealing legislation?” —Craig Smith and Tom Miers, Democracy And The Fall Of The West.
Oh, and apologies to all those people who are really, really interested in monetary policy.
Bye…
E
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