May Big Ben ding dong from merrily on high

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IN THIS ASI BULLETIN:


* EVENTS: Forum; Rand; Schools roadshow; Kidnapping; Work and Welfare

* OTHER STUFF: My policy blueprint for the next government; and Hayek in London

* BLOG: Wrights, Cromwell and Eiffel; and Tim gets steamed up again


But first...

Well, thank goodness the election is over, and the prospect of another referendum and maybe even another election after that. You don’t hear people in North Korea complaining about there being too many ballots, but over here they seem to be catching on.

Let’s hope the new Parliament will change things. (When the last Parliament walked into a bar, the barman asked: “Why the long farce?”) It certainly looks like Boris will be taking a fire extinguisher to the EU.


Sales of Christmas puddings are
down this year. (Brexit uncertainty? No, I think they’re just hiding—it’s a very dangerous season for them.) And spare a thought for psychiatrists at this time of year. They must have to put up with white-bearded men in red pyjamas who don’t believe in themselves and reindeer that are miserable because everyone laughs at them and calls them names. Soon they’ll be having to deal with lots of BBC executives who are worried about their future. The Corporation got into trouble for its cartoon turkey holding a ‘Go Vegan’ sign, but with their election coverage they voted for their own early Christmas. (Get in line behind the Supreme Court and the Electoral Commission, guys.)


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EVENTS

Our annual ideas day, FORUM, held in London’s Comedy Store (How cool is that?—Ed.) was a great success with hundreds of people learning about flying cars and lots of other good things we’d have if politicians would only leave us alone.


Meanwhile, nearly 300 people packed into a swank City of London livery hall to hear a bravura performance by the author and broadcaster Johan Norberg on Progress. (It was our annual Ayn Rand Lecture and, yes, he turned out to be in favour of progress.)

We took our schools roadshow to 150 students from schools in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, prompting a story in the local paper ([link removed]) , and covering topics like immigration, lies and statistics, the welfare state, the gender pay gap, democracy and freedom—and, of course, the border after Brexit. If you would like us to visit your school, just say!

Daniel as usual has been making his way round various vaping and cannabis conferences. He is our vice expert but I am assured he only does theory. And I thought Madsen had won the lottery when he said he was expecting a collection of Dutch Masters but it turned out he was speaking to a group of Dutch Masters students from Utrecht University.

COMING UP
In January KCL Prof Dr Anja Shortland will tell us about The Economics of Kidnapping. No, it’s not a how-to-do-it manual, but she will explain why kidnapping is not just random but a complex and well-run international business—as is the response to it. An intriguing insight into a hidden world. Wednesday 22 January at 6pm. Ask [email protected] for invites.

Leading economist Roger Bootle is joining us in February, by the way, to talk about Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age. [If he charges us a speaking fee we’ll be replacing him with a robot!—Ed.] Details on www.adamsmith.org/events ([link removed])

MEEJA

It's been a bumper month bashing socialist from all sides by the ASI team. A few snippets here appeared in small regional titles like the Financial Times ([link removed]) , Charlotte Kude on France24 ([link removed]) , Morgan Schondelmeier in the Times ([link removed]) , and Matt Kilcoyne for the Spectator ([link removed]) — among a great many others.
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Matt Kilcoyne looked at the issue of the North-South regional divide on Sky News
OTHER STUFF

Your Christmas presents are sorted. Just buy them all my recent book, The Streetwise Guide To The British Economy ([link removed]) , now available on Amazon. It explains how we can clean up our economic and political neighbourhood and free ourselves from a self-regarding political/media mafia and all its works. HMG seem to be taking up a lot of the policy successions even as we speak. So stay ahead of the game: read it! (Then give it to someone, that’s what I do.)

In case you missed it, we are planning a memorial in London to the Nobel economist and liberal political philosopher F A Hayek. We have our eye on a site near to the London School of Economics, where he taught for 17 years and from which he launched his interwar debates with Keynes on planning and monetary policy. As one of the leading thinkers on free markets and the free society, Hayek deserves a memorial. Find out more or donate here ([link removed]) .
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE HAYEK MEMORIAL ([link removed])
ON THE BLOG

Madsen continues (unlike the Beeb) to inform, educate and entertain with his anniversary blogs, such as what happened exactly 100 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, why the ‘liberator’ Oliver Cromwell was worse than the autocrats he replaced, and how the designer of the Statue of Liberty nearly spent two years in the slammer.

Tim Worstall, meanwhile, has been advising Boris on how to keep his new northern seats, why equalising wealth ain’t so easy, and, well, Polly Toynbee again (you really should just stop reading that paper, Tim, you know it makes you angry).

And J P Floru thinks that establishing property rights in space could bring limitless wealth. (Nice idea, J P, but the first priority must be to re-establish property rights on earth, I’d say.)

And I quote...

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice.’
- Thomas Sowell

Bye, season’s best and a prosperous 2020!

Eamonn

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