70 years to the day

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Like this bulletin? Tell your friends. Don’t like it? Tell me. — E

In this Jubilee Bulletin 🇬🇧👑🇬🇧 …
* Reforming Whitehall: Our new report series explains how to trim structures, reduce numbers, and save money.
* Gap year and summer interns: Applications are open. They’re plum jobs, though we’re choosy...
* Online: Fixing the cost of living, bashing the nannies, YouTube events and more.

BUT FIRST...

Scientists tell us that people who have lots of birthdays and monarchs who have lots of jubilees tend to live longer, so that’s good. Personally, I know I’m getting old because it takes me longer to recover than it did to get tired in the first place. I’m actually old enough to be alive when the Queen was crowned, though I was too shy to watch it. (Seems that you’re a Coronation Chicken! Geddit?—Ed.)

The Queen of course is so rich that she even throws balls for the corgis. And unlike the rest of us she has people to cook the rather complex new Jubilee Pudding. (A more appropriate pudding to sum up the state of the nation might have been Old Etonian Mess or something squishy, slightly nutty and full of hot air.) But if you do try to make the Jubilee Pudding, at least you’ll be able to weigh the ingredients out in pounds and ounces (a Brexit benefit on a truly Imperial scale! Geddit?—Ed.)

In political news, teachers are saying that because of the cost of living hike, more pupils should get free school meals. Perhaps they should go to Windsor, which plans the world’s ‘longest lunch’ with a string of several hundred tables. (Wouldn’t be as long as some of the lunches you see around Westminster.—Ed.) Airports have warned of ‘travel carnage’ as airlines struggle to respond to the surging recovery in demand (but since you have to wait a month for a passport, you’ve probably missed the plane anyway)

But I digress…


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** REPORTS
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Reforming the Department for Education ([link removed]) . As the first in our coming series on civil-service reform, management consultant and ASI Senior Fellow, Tim Ambler marks the DfE’s report card and gives it a straight F. It’s teeming with quangos and agencies that duplicate or second-guess each other, he finds. In fact the Department would be more efficient if many of them were ditched, others merged, and the core Whitehall staff reduced. Ambler's proposals would produce a 68% cut in headcount and huge savings for taxpayers.


** EVENTS
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Rights and Rand. ([link removed]) Craig Biddle, co-founder of The Objective Standard magazine, explained to a capacity ASI crowd why most theories of individual rights are plain wrong, and how Ayn Rand proposed another standard, based on the principles for life-giving choices and actions. Yes, you missed it, but you can see the YouTube version here ([link removed]) .

How liberty made the world ([link removed]) . Celeb economic historian Deirdre McCloskey joined us this Tuesday, to explain how every advance begins in the human mind. And, she says, the incredible economic growth we have had since 1800—a ‘Great Enrichment’ rise of 3000% in average incomes—also derived from an intellectual enlightenment that recognised the value of free people and free markets. So don’t mess it up now. See the YouTube clip here ([link removed]) .

Misrepresenting Adam Smith ([link removed]) . David Friedman—son of Milton, and a noted economist and legal thinker in his own right—popped in to tell an ASI audience all the things that revisionists get wrong about Adam Smith as they try to claim him for their own. Progressive taxation, state schooling, monopolies policy—no, he wasn’t a modern ‘progressive’ on any of them. But nor is he a modern conservative on them either. To find out what he was, you need to watch the YouTube of the event here ([link removed]) .


** GAP YEAR OPPORTUNITIES
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We don’t take many gap-year interns, but those we do become full members of the team—and not just gophers. Which makes it possibly the best gap-year internship in Westminster. You can find out more and apply here ([link removed]) . And you can hear how great it is from Fiona, one of our current gap years, here ([link removed]) .

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Fiona Townsley on her gap year at the ASI

The summer internship season has started. Again, we try to make our summer interns full members of the team. Right now we’re pleased to have Theo with us, who’s from Hong Kong and now studying law in London. He’s written an excellent blog ([link removed]) about the importance of encryption and preserving our privacy and security.
Schools visits. We’ve been taking the team far and wide on our special seminar event, which we grandly name the Independent Seminar of the Open Society (ISOS). Our speakers give school students an insight into aspects of economics and political science that they don’t tend to get from the textbooks. The next one will be at Wilson’s School, Surrey, soon. If you would like to arrange for us to provide a speaker, or bring the whole ISOS team to your school, just give a nudge to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]?subject=ISOS%20School%20Visit) .


** IN THE ETHER
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On our Great British superblog

Fixing the cost of living crisis. ([link removed]) Our own Dr Madsen Pirie reckons the TaxPayers’ Alliance is spot on when it says that the way to ease the cost of living crisis is not to throw large amounts of taxpayers’ money at it but to leave the cash in their pockets in the first place. The Treasury, he says, has developed a micro-management ethos—when you can’t actually micro-manage a process as large and as complex as the UK economy.

Madsen also complains ([link removed]) that we’re under constant attack from Department of Health zealots, who seem to think that they should use the power of the state to enforce changes in our lifestyle choices. It might be reasonable for experts to advise us about the consequences of consuming certain foods and drinks, he says, but to bully producers and the public and to make those choices for us is not the mark of a free society.

And I point out ([link removed]) that the government’s mooted plan to limit how much we can gamble online would have perverse and unintended consequences, For a start, most online gambling operates out of Gibraltar, a well-regulated British territory without much else to sustain it. And the industry already uses algorithms to detect problem gamblers and help them reduce their over-spending. The last thing we want is a clampdown that drives gamblers towards illegal gambling sites.

Seen elsewhere on the (invented-by-a-Brit) web

A new paper on rent control ([link removed]) finds that it harms minorities and those on lower incomes. Well, who’d have guessed? (All those who didn't read Milton Friedman’s ‘Roofs or Ceilings?’ back in the 70s, I guess.—Ed.)

Should we abolish the Treasury? ([link removed]) (a good friend of ours Stian Westlake wrote this for the Guardian, which must have had the majority of the once-proud paper’s readers coughing into their cornflakes). The Treasury’s economic role, he says, should be merged with the business department—just so we know why the Treasury has an economic role.

The world's first airport for flying taxis opened in the Midlands this month. ([link removed]) So with the glacial pace of UK regulation we're probably only 200 years out from commercial flying cars!


** MEDIA
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Our weekly podcast—or more-or-less weekly podcast, as our bod Daniel Pryor was off last week struggling with the lurgi, continues to amuse, the pre-lurgi one being Daniel and John Macdonald discussing the good, the bad and the ugly from the Queen's Speech here ([link removed]) .
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Dr Madsen Pirie on Talking Pints with Nigel Farage

Last week, Madsen Pirie was the star of the show on Nigel Farage’s Talking Pints- the full episode of which you can watch here ([link removed]) . Madsen made the positive case for low taxation and regulation, a free society and international trade.

The big announcement of the month was, of course, the Chancellor’s statement on measures to reduce the cost of living, including cash transfers and a windfall tax –– sorry, ‘energy profits levy.’ John Macdonald was on Times Radio with Ayesha Hazarika ([link removed]) and Carole Walker ([link removed]) to discuss it. Our comment on Sunak’s statement was also featured on Guido Fawkes ([link removed]) .

Elsewhere, our team has been discussing a wide range of policies in the media. I was in ConHome ([link removed]) making the case for using tried and tested consols ([link removed]) to manage debt accrued over the pandemic; Charles Bromley-Davenport criticised the Bank of England’s stance on pay raises and interest rate hikes in CapX; ([link removed]) and Morgan Schondelmeier and Daniel Pryor were in the Evening Standard ([link removed]) and CityAM ([link removed]) respectively on the
case for legalising cannabis. Morgan was also on GBNews ([link removed]) on the subject of the Government’s new visa scheme for high-skilled graduates.


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** AND I QUOTE...
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In her long reign, the Queen has met many world leaders — and even went horse-riding with one, the US President Ronald Reagan. That’s as good a link as any to introduce my favourite Reagan comment — which seems more appropriate now than it did when he said it back in 1965:

“Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

Bye, 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

e

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