But will anything change?

[link removed]


** IN THIS BULLETIN:
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* Westminster — it’s already back to normal, unfortunately.
* Reports — keeping on the lights (and heat) and getting rid of bureaucrats
* Events — online policy harm, levelling up generations, focusing government


** BUT FIRST...
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We're open again after the Westminster security lockdown necessitated by the week’s sad commemorations. As Churchill might have said: “From Church House Bookshop on one side ... to the Cinnamon Club caff on the other … an iron curtain descended across Great Smith Street." But disruption during state events is the price of being near the centre of power. (Not that I’m much in favour of power. I just like working in Westminster because it makes me feel I’m close to my money.)

The late Queen, of course, never gave interviews, so it’s only now that we are getting insights into her wry sense of humour. My favourite story is from former Royal Protection Officer Richard Griffin, who was walking with her at Balmoral when they encountered two American hikers, who — not recognising her — asked where she lived. She replied that she had a holiday home nearby, which she had been visiting for 80 years. “Well, if you’ve been coming here for 80 years, you must have met the Queen,” said one of the hikers. "I haven’t," she responded “But Dick here meets her regularly.” “What’s she like?” “She can be cantankerous at times,” said Griffin, going along with the charade. “But she has a lovely sense of humour.” Whereupon the tourists handed her a camera and asked her to take a picture of them with this supposed celebrity. Afterwards, none the wiser, they swapped places and Griffin took a picture of them with her. As they walked away, she said to Griffin “I’d love to
be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to his friends in America, and hopefully someone tells him who I am.”

No such wit from our politicians, who resumed their normal bickering with unseemly speed, and glee (I googled ‘politicians’ and 'humour’ but it came up with no matches. Geddit?—Ed.). The arguments will get even worse after Friday’s Budget — or 'Fiscal Event’ in Treasury-Speak. (Is that like 'Special Military Operation’ in Putin-Speak?—Ed.) Leaping above the fray, the Prime Minister left to attend the United Nations in New York, where she’ll probably be lectured on freedom and human rights by the various dictators, kleptomaniacs, thugs and sociopaths who strut around General Assemblies. (Still, most of them will serve only two terms — one in office, one in jail.)

But I digress...


** HELP US HELP US ALL
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With a new Government, now is the time to turn our activities into overdrive. There are so many great free market policies and those with the right instincts floating around in Westminster, but we need to see these ideas over the line. That's why our work educating politicians, the general public and the next generation is so important.

If you'd like to help us get all these great ideas through, help us shore up our coffers to keep our good work going. It's easy! Just click this button below.
Donate to the Adam Smith Research Trust ([link removed])


** IN THE THINK TANK
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Keeping the lights on ([link removed]) . Energy experts Simon Clanmorris, Peter Edwards FRS and Dr Paul Norman explain how the government is underinvesting in the nuclear capacity it needs to reach its decarbonisation targets, and sets out how we can fast-track modern, less expensive, reactors.

Keeping the heating on ([link removed]) . Also on the energy theme, In the Bleak Midwinter by John Macdonald, Emily Fielder and Alex Hughes (one of our star interns), sets out the best way to tackle energy costs and help poorer households. Instead of a price freeze, they say, support should come as direct cash payments to those families who need it most, with benefits rapidly uprated for inflation too.

Full-fat freeports ([link removed]) . Oxbridge boffins and other critics argue that Liz Truss’s freeports won’t create jobs, just move them around. If so, that isn’t much cop. The solution, says our latest report, is to make them full-fat — don’t let the Treasury within twenty miles of them, and strip out all the unnecessary taxes, tariffs, regulations and bureaucracy. Then you will see freeports creating real jobs, and new growth.

Smarter money. ([link removed]) Tim Ambler’s latest assault on civil service overmanning lobs a grenade into the Treasury. Its objectives are rambling, its quangos are a plague, and its operations provide poor value for money. With a bit of slimming and axing, Tim reckons we could reduce the headcount by 1,500, or two-fifths of the present staffing.

Actually, Tim — an expert on organizational efficiency — has been pretty active on other parts of Whitehall too. Home Truths ([link removed]) finds that the Home Office is failing on all of its delivery objectives and that most of its agencies should be shut down, saving nearly 7,000 bureaucrats. Even more remarkably, in Criminal Negligence ([link removed]) , he questions whether we need a Ministry of Justice at all — a potential saving of nearly 88,000 personnel!


** EVENTS
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Join us in Birmingham at Conservative Party Conference. All of our events are free to attend and you don’t need to register, but you do need to have a pass to the conference secure zone.
[link removed]
Levelling up the generations. ([link removed]) Let’s face it, young people have been completely clobbered by the boomers voting themselves one public freebie after another, then running out of other people’s money and telling the next generation it’s their problem. Oh, and NIMBY housing policies, ultra-low interest rates and all the other things that make housing unaffordable to anyone under 35. So we’re going up to Birmingham to tell the Tory Party Conference why it’s time to change, and how to do it. Join Aria Babu of The Entrepreneurs Network, Michael Turner of Freshwater Strategy, James Dickson of Ebury and our own John Macdonald on Monday 3 October at 10.30am in the Hyatt Fortissimo Suite. (It means strong, and we will be.)
[link removed]
Shut the backdoor. ([link removed]) While we’re in Brum, we’re also going to explain why the Online Safety Bill actually poses a huge threat to privacy, encryption, and free speech — and why that’s important. Join Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University, Graham Smith of Bird & Bird LLP, freelance journo Sam Ashworth-Hayes, Jun Pang of Liberty and our own Emily Fielder. Monday 3 October 15:30 in the Hyatt Andante Suite. (It means moderately slow, and we probably won’t be.)
[link removed]

Prioritisation. ([link removed]) Why do government bureaucrats — including, sadly, the police — do so much stuff that’s useless, rather than focus on the crucial things? We think it’s time for prioritisation — finding out what the public really wants, then cutting out all the marginal activity, the wokery and such like, and focusing on the basics. Join Dr Liam Fox MP, James Johnson of JL Partners, Alys Denby of CapX, Tom Harwood of GB News and our own Morgan Schondelmeier to find out more about it. Tuesday 4 October, 13.00 in the Hyatt Dolce Suite. (It means sweet, and we definitely won’t be.)

Our paper on how to tackle the energy crisis received plenty of media attention — it was picked by the i (daft name for a paper—Ed.) on their website ([link removed]) and in their morning briefing ([link removed]) ; by Bloomberg in their energy briefing, ([link removed]) John Macdonald appeared on Times Radio ([link removed]) , GB News and BBC Radio 2 ([link removed]) , and Alex Hughes, one of our summer interns, wrote for 1828. ([link removed]) So too did our Corporation Tax report, written by noted economist and ASI Fellow Dr Tyler Goodspeed, which appeared on the front page of the
Telegraph ([link removed]) . Tyler explained his findings in a piece for CapX. ([link removed])

John has been keeping busy — here he is in CityAm ([link removed]) talking about fracking, and again ([link removed]) on the energy price cap; in Reaction ([link removed]) on which taxes should be cut; and on Times Radio ([link removed]) on the cost of living crisis. So too has Dr Madsen Pirie, who appeared onTPA talks ([link removed]) , on Times Radio ([link removed]) to discuss inflation, and on GB News ([link removed]) on whether we should nationalise energy companies (Is that a trick question?—Ed.) And here is Emily Fielder bemoaning the short-term energy thinking of successive governments in Conservative Home.
([link removed])

Our ‘Full Fat’ proposals to beef up freeports have also been written up in CapX ([link removed]) by report author Sam Ashworth-Hayes as a way to get around pesky inefficiencies created by local and national government policies.

As always, we've been fighting the ever-encroaching nanny-state. Daniel Pryor welcomed the news that the anti-obesity strategy could be scrapped in Guido Fawkes ([link removed]) and Politico’s London Influence ([link removed]) . I was on GB News ([link removed]) beating up South Cambridgeshire Council’s plan for a 4-day working week, whilst Daniel Pryor was on ITV News ([link removed]) to talk about the idea more generally. Daniel was also in the Sunday Times ([link removed]) passing judgement on the leadership election, on GB News ([link removed]) on our unworkable asylum system and Emily was in the
Guardian ([link removed]) on why we should build on the Green Belt, and again ([link removed]) on the Rwanda scheme.


** IN THE INTERWEBS
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** On our Superblog
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The one constant in a changing world ([link removed]) , concludes Madsen Pirie in his tribute to the late Queen. She was the one bright spot through some pretty dismal decades, he writes. Now we move into an uncertain future, without that bedrock of stability. Let us hope that her successor can recreate it.

What lithium shortages? ([link removed]) We’ve all been told that the rush towards electric cars will create a world shortage of the lithium that is a vital component in their batteries. Tim Worstall — who’s actually in the rare metals business, so knows his stuff — says that’s nonsense. “There simply is no shortage of any of the metals that we might want to use,” for batteries or anything else, he thinks. The earth’s crust is so massive that we couldn’t use it up in a million years. The only shortage is the plant able to extract stuff right now. But, let’s face it, we’re pretty good at building tools.


**
Other Stuff
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Our friends at the Acton Institute — named after the guy who noted that ‘power corrupts’ — have produced a documentary, The Hongkonger, about Jimmy Lai, the HK businessman and his extraordinary struggle for freedom. He chose to stand up for the basic freedoms of HK citizens, even though it would cost him his own. It’s a story that shouldn’t die in a prison cell. See the movie on Monday 10 October, 6pm at the Odeon Covent Garden, 135 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8AH. Details here. ([link removed])

Students for Liberty UK and Ireland is organizing the second John Galt School together with the Ayn Rand Center Europe. It’s an 8-week educational course about Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism, its moral and political message and relevance to world events. Those who complete the school will get a chance to attend a fully funded conference in the US. The deadline to register is September 30, so sign up here ([link removed]) .

My new book Scaling the Heights is out, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs and reviewed on the ASI blog ([link removed]) by Madsen. It is a short history of the Mont Pèlerin Society, founded by F A Hayek in order to rekindle liberal ideas after the Second World War. A wicked international conspiracy working towards world domination by the rich (as George Monbiot would have it), or a bunch of well-intentioned liberal academics who have trouble raising the price of their next meeting? You decide ([link removed]) .
[link removed]


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** AND I QUOTE...
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As the new Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, struggles to rid the tax system of its absurd complexities, he might find inspiration in the words of Voltaire long ago:

“In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice.”

(And not just in taxation, mon ami.)


Bye,


e

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