As the Guardian reports, a ban on smoking in public places will form part of Labour's third term manifesto, according to draft policy documents to be presented to the party's policy forum.

The third term agenda, due to be published later in the summer, focuses on restrictions on binge drinking, irresponsible pubs and unscrupulous food marketing.

There is a new Puritanism about. The original Puritans, you will recall, opposed bear-baiting not because it was cruel to the bears but because it gave pleasure to the people. And today, anything you might do to enjoy yourself - smoking, boozing, and now even eating - incurs a similar injunction from the politicians. Their idea of a perfect society seems to be one in which we all walk sheepishly to work and back, consume a bowl of thin gruel, and then go quietly to bed at nine o'clock.

We can't blame this on Tony Blair's own religion, though it may be a factor. More significant, I think, is our highly competitive media, which - to sell papers and airtime - makes temporary mountains out of molehills. Then it moves on to some other 'sensation', which most of us pay just as little mind as the last one. The trouble is that during each temporary frenzy, politicians are interviewed and asked what they propose to do about it. So they say it should be stopped. Then, over the course of a year of media stories, they're committed to stopping just about everything. Not much fun.

Tonight on Radio 4, Chris Woodhead, Britain's former Chief Inspector of Schools, gave a robust case for less central government control of schools. Maybe inspections have had their day, he said, suggesting that if all parents had real choice, we wouldn't need OFSTED as a way of pulling up standards.

Wind-farms are once again a hot topic in the UK as the first offshore wind turbines have recently been launched just off the coast of North Wales. Further debate about this renewable resource has also been stirred up in Scotland where more wind-farms are being proposed to hit the Highlands in the near future.

Environmentally friendly power resources are always attractive especially in a day where movies about Global Warming are big in the box office, but are these gigantic wind turbines really wanted or necessary for the UK to meet and prepare for future energy needs? While Greenpeace and certain other environmentalists believe wind-farms and wind energy are appropriate means to combat air pollution and other various harmful fossil-fuel emissions, others here in the UK see wind-farms in a much more sceptical light. Among others, David Bellamy sees wind power as:

...an unreliable supply of minimal amounts of electricity that, despite its claims to 'greenness', will have no significant impact on global warming and will divert funding from better alternative power strategies such as energy efficiency. In fact wind power is a planning fiasco that is destroying the natural beauty of some of our most important landscapes.

It could be argued that these 30 storey high wind turbines in the scenic countryside are themselves damaging to the environment. Some point to the extremely loud noise or the deaths of tens of thousands birds annually as a high price to pay for the marginal benefit wind farms have on the environment.

To meet government targets for renewable energy - under which wind will produce about 5% of Britain's electricity by 2010 - between five and ten thousand machines (on-shore and off) will have to be put up. This large number will be required because wind turbines produce such relatively small amounts of electricity. As there are about 1,000 wind turbines in the UK (in 2003), this will mean that over 10 wind turbines will have to put up every week to meet targets.

It might be that wind-supplied energy is a counterproductive way to improve the enviroment.

The Social Affairs Unit has launched a blog - with the help of the team that set up ours.

It's early days, but already there are posts on subjects like why globalization reduces poverty and on how to sort out teacher training. One thing you can be sure of, this being the SAU's blog, is that it'll be challenging stuff.

Well worth dropping by.

According to the Independent newspaper, the population of the United Kingdom has reached almost 60 million. That's a rise of 9 million in just 50 years and of 1.7 million in the last ten years alone.

However, the truly remarkable figure is that one in 12 of that population were born abroad. The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) emphasise Britain's changing ethnic make-up, with 4.6 million people describing themselves as "non-white".

I find this remarkable, indeed; but not shocking. Indeed, I've always agreed with my late friend Julian Simon that immigration has been a great spur to economic progress almost everywhere. Immigrants tend to be young; to be outward looking and get-up-and-go. They bring in new ideas to challenge the old order; and ideas which mix with the established way of doing things to create completely new approaches.

So I don't fear immigration. But I'm worried by benefit tourism - that if a country's welfare state is too generous, people will flock there just to pick up the easy money. The solutions to that, though, are pretty obvious.

'Today, there can be no more important time to understand the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union' reads the blurb on the back of The Essential Guide to the European Union. Indeed. So it's good to see a book that so usefully documents the European Union. To shrink-wrap this into a mere 194 pages is a bold achievement. Many would shirk away from attempting to unravel the plate of spaghetti bolognaise that is the EU. But this book succeeds, and it is a refreshing, comprehensive and substantial text that lays out each and every piece of European legislation, law, policy that has passed over this politically troubled continent.

Written by Ruth Lea, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, the guide is critical of much of the centralist and bureaucratic approaches that infest the European Union way of thinking. But it is not a 'what should-be-done' manifesto. Rather, it charts the rise of the European Union from what was once, some might say, a pioneering force for free-trade and free-markets into a very different beast.

The number of people killed in road accidents in Britain is edging up again, to 3,500 a year.

Oddly, we seem to accept this without getting very agitated. Sure, we campaign for by-passes around towns and villages, and spend a fair bit making road junctions safer. Then we carry on, and each day another 10 people or so are killed.

By contrast, if rail accidents kill just 10 people in a year, the whole network is brought to a halt. Privatization and profit are blamed. Politicians demand we spend billions to make the railways perfectly safe. And then we're told that only state control can achieve this.

The fact is, rail deaths are rare - indeed, they were increasingly rare under privatization - so when they do happen, they're a shock and make headlines. And headlines, not reality, are what drives political policy. It's an irrational way to run a railroad.

According to the Financial Times, the government is set to get tougher with UK firms involved in bribery overseas.

I wish someone could tell me what the right policy on this should be. The fact is that in many countries of the world, bribery is just normal practice. To get paperwork approved, you have to grease palms. You want to develop a new apartment block, and an official suggests that a donation to his office costs would be very welcome. (Come to think of it, planning authorities in Britain use the same ploy, but here it's legal, apparently.)

If the British firm doesn't bribe officials, they won't get the work, and some other country's firm will. I'm opposed to bribery and we should do what we can to stamp it out. Perhaps countries should cure the 'demand side' by paying their officials properly; but we have no control over this. And if we try to tackle the 'supply side' unilaterally, are we just cutting our own businesses' throats? I'd really welcome ideas.

Concorde was a beautiful plane and a technological marvel. It was a joy to fly, cutting hours off transatlantic trips. Unfortunately it was never a commercial venture. Its development was paid by UK & French taxpayers, and only 13 were sold. Furthermore, the development of subsequent models, through which development costs are often recovered, never took place.

Its successors will be different. Manufacturers are concentrating at the start on the business jet market, developing supersonic craft to whisk CEOs in luxury to their meeting. They are developing innovative ways to solve the problem of sonic booms, and looking to speeds of Mach 1.8.

Analyst Richard Aboulafia estimates a market for 400 business supersonic jets costing $70-80m each. John Rosanvallon of Dassault, whose company is engaged on a supersonic version of its Falcon, thinks that 200 will be the minimum order needed to make a supersonic jet profitable. Several companies are competing, as if in pursuit of a giant X-Prize, but in this case the prize is commercial success. The winner will then have the prospect of a stretched version, a long-range version, an ultra-quiet version, all making use of what they learned on the first model.

The same may be true for private space travel. When the X-Prize is won, the technological advances it took to do so could lead to stretched versions to carry more passengers, and ultimately much more powerful versions to achieve orbit.

The days are gone when governments would spend huge sums to produce prestigious national flag carriers. But the days are upon us when private firms explore innovative ways to tap new and potential markets with privately-financed developments. I welcome this, both as a taxpayer and a future customer.

The excellent James Bartholomew makes a point in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that I've been making for a decade now - that if our state pension system were subject to the same rules we impose on private plans, a generation of cabinet ministers would now be bankrupted and in the slammer for fraud.

Indeed, Bartholomew reckons we've been defrauded to the tune of about £5,813 billion. Nearly six trillion quid, if you like.

We've been whipped into a frenzy against private insuers for 'mis-selling' pensions, and against private enterprises which collapse under the weight of keeping their pension schemes solvent. But we hear nothing about the fact that state pensions have been 'mis-sold' for years - we've been forced to accept a contract in which we pay taxes for a pension, but where the other side (the government) just change the rules when they feel short of cash. And you never hear anything said against the stupidity of politicians who have made the regulations on private company pensions now so onerous and costly that, not surprisingly, firms are finding them impossible to maintain. Nor the fact that since 1997 the Chancellor has been taking about £6bn a year out of pension funds by way of 'stealth' taxes.

I say bankruptcy and the slammer are too good for them.

There was not much overlap in our readers' choice of the magnificent seven. Those featured included 58 names.

The top were (with number of votes in brackets):

Churchill (6)
Adam Smith (5)

Thatcher (4)
Jefferson (4)
Hayek (4)

Rand (3)
Jesus (3)
Feynman (3)

By chance there were 8 rather than 7, but hero-worship, like economics, is not an exact science.

I went on Sky TV today to congratulate both Labour and Tory politicians for at last accepting the need for more patient choice in healthcare - but to say that neither of them went remotely far enough. We don't have a national food service or a national shoe service, but people are perfectly well-shod and well-fed. So why do we think that only a national(ized) health service will keep us healthy?

Some very odd person from the IPPR argued that if the NHS worked perfectly, people wouldn't need choice. Well, it doesn't, and even so, that is no reason to deny people the right to go elsewhere.

At present, we have greater choice about vetinary treatment for our dogs and cats than about medical treatment for our own bodies. And you don't have a four-month waiting list at the vet's. Let us hope this debate continues.

For years, governments have promised us a 'bonfire of red tape' and yet the number of quangos - quasi-autonomous non-government organizations - just grows and grows. The Scottish Executive, for example, announced their intention to light the touch-paper a few years ago. But now, Scotland's taxpayers have discovered that their quango bill has risen by £137 million since 1999. Indeed, the £346 million spent on quangos is edging up to the unbelievable £400 million being wasted on building a new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh.

Tony Blair has opened Britain's national debate on the new EU Constitution, saying he'll expose the 'myths' about Europe promulgated by the skeptics.

"But if anyone is peddling porkies, it's the PM himself," says leading political editor Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun newspaper. Here are some of the Euro-myths that Kavenagh cites:

MYTH: 3 million UK jobs depend on EU membership.
FACT: We buy more from the EU than vice-versa.

MYTH: Unless we join the Euro, our economy will suffer.
FACT: "Since we were bundled out of single currency preparations in 1992, Britain has enjoyed a record 12 straight years of growth," says Kavenagh.

MYTH: The Union has given us 60 years of peace in Europe.
FACT: Kavenagh says it was the US and Nato who ended the Cold War and resolved the Kosovo mess when the EU dithered.

MYTH: The EU does not promote daft rules like demanding "straight bananas".
FACT: Kavenagh quotes chapter and verse: "'Bananas must be free from abnormal curvature of the fingers' says Commission Regulation 2257, Quality Standards for Bananas."

Looks like it's going to be an interesting national debate...

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith is launching a new campaign to promote social justice. It is called the Centre for Social Justice. IDS sometimes talked about 'social' justice as Tory leader, so it seems like a good fit for him. It's just that 'social' justice, as commonly understood, is an odd fit for a Conservative.

The similarly named Center for Social Justice in the USA calls for people to vote against parties that support tax cuts. It says tax cuts lead to dirty schools, poverty, lower quality of life, bad water and crowded hospitals. Of course, free-marketeers take the view that you can have good public services without higher taxes. Indeed, by having monopoly state provision, you tend to get a worse quality of life.

Social justice in the UK is used in exactly the same way as in the USA. It is used to advocate socialist views - on tax, redistribution and trade. Philosophers like F. A. Hayek and Anthony Flew have criticised the term as merely a way of justifying socialism as without giving a real reason.

It is, of course, possible that IDS realises this. Maybe his Center for Social Justice will redefine social justice. I'm always keen for words used inappropriately by the Left to be reclaimed by free-marketeers. For example, I don't see why the anti-globalisation lobby - which is against development and promotes ideas that lead to a less sustainability - should claim the term 'sustainable development'. Let's just hope that IDS doesn't end up presenting a confused, paternalist political philosophy.

If we want to make Britain better place for those on low incomes, what we need is not 'social' justice but reform.

Britain's Conservatives say they want smaller government and less regulation, but have no clear plans for getting it. Indeed, some of their ideas in health and education would need more laws and more bureaucracy.

Let me help. One big way to cut waste would be to be clear about which level of government should deal with which type of regulation. EU directives involve both EU and national layers of government: fine when just six states were involved, but confusing when there are 25. So directives are now written more like regulations - i.e. more tightly drafted to eliminate flexibility. They might as well be regulations in the first place.

Meanwhile, any directive requires one or two regulatory impact assessments (RIAs), plus 25 or so for each member state - all of which ties up businesses in consultation at both levels. Indeed, the whole consultation process may be a bigger burden on business than the directive itself!

So let's just eliminate EU directives entirely.

Fix the appropriate areas for EU and national law-making. Do the same for UK and devolved governments and local government. Clarify which single layer of government will deal with any particular area of regulation and then stop the others from meddling in it. It is not the whole solution but it would be a start.

Tim Ambler is a Senior Fellow at the London Business School.

With the first private trip into space, just successfully accomplished by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, we seem to have moved into a new era of space travel. For many years the great achievements seemed to be behind us. The Voyager missions which showed us the outer planets and their moons started in the 1970s, and the first moon landing was 35 years ago.

Now we seem to have gone back to the future. This year there were the Mars landings by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, followed by the Cassini approach to Saturn and the stunning photos of Phoebe. Now we have the dawn of private space flight.

It interests me personally, not least because I am one of those who have paid to be taken on such a trip when the vehicle is cleared for fare-paying passengers. The developments are of great significance because they herald, and might help to promote, a spirit of optimism and the attitude that we can solve problems and meet challenges successfully, including the ones we set ourselves.

A survey of millionaires compiled by Merrill Lynch and CapGemini reveals interesting facts.

• 1 in every 125 Americans is a millionaire.
• The number increased by 14 percent last year.
• More were created last year in the US & Canada than in Europe, Asia, Latin America & the Middle East combined.
• are now 30,000 Americans worth more than $30m each.
• Of millionaire fortunes worldwide, only 20 percent came from inherited wealth.

Last week a Timbro survey by two Swedish economists revealed that in terms of GDP per head, only Luxembourg can rank with the richest US states, while most European countries come below the US average, and below Arkansas. It does not cover "the value of leisure or a good environment," (including the unwanted leisure of high European rates of unemployment).

In 1999 a quarter of US households were poor (with less than $25,000 pa). By this standard 40 percent of Swedish households would be considered poor. Of course, some prefer to measure poverty relatively. In this context of US poor households, 45.9 percent own their own home, 72.8 percent have a car, and 77 percent have air conditioning. Their average living space is 1,200 sq ft per household. The European average including both rich and poor is 1,000 sq ft.

(Statistics are quoted in the UK The Business (not on line), derived from Eurostat, US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Timbro and Wall Street Journal.)

A Barclays Capital survey shows many New York prices well below London ones. Of typical goods we buy every day, a BMX X5 (SUV) is £10,834 cheaper in New York. A Trek Liquid 55 mountain bike is £386 less. You save £64 on a 40GB iPod, £36 on a hooded Hugo Boss sports top, and £14 on a Ralph Lauren polo shirt. (Multiply by about 1.83 for dollar savings). The goods were bought in similar shops & locations, and the full comparative basket includes books from Amazon, clothes from Gap & Hermes, and goods from Toys 'R' Us and Ikea.

Why? David Hillier of Barclay’s Capital suggest the pound is 10-17 percent undervalued against the dollar (but not against the Euro), and "should move towards $1.64."

This is certainly a plausible explanation, but I wonder if smaller factors might contribute. For example, London store rents are very high. There is a high business tax, and a local peculiarity of long rentals which are periodically revised "upward only." You might think competition would have driven out this practice long ago, but it hasn't. Unofficial collusion is difficult to deal with. London store properties are controlled by a fairly small group, and it is in all their interests not to upset the apple cart. A similar unofficial price ring kept UK car prices a third to a half higher than elsewhere in Europe. It was in the manufacturers' interest to keep it that way, and to put obstructions in the way of buyers who sought to shop abroad.

Can anyone suggest other reasons why New York prices should be so much lower than those in London?

From a World Health Organisation Press Release, Copenhagen, Budapest, 18 June 2004:

One in three child deaths in Europe due to environment. New WHO study details devastating effects.

The top five causes of death "due to environment" (which between them account for only a third of child deaths) detailed in the report include poor hygiene and injuries!

Needless to say the figure for injuries is far higher than all the other causes put together but it is nevertheless lumped together under the "environmental causes" umbrella with air pollution and lead poisoning. Deaths attributed to injuries is the only sample that includes 0-19 year olds (hygiene is 0-14 and all the rest are 0-4). In the small print, the report admits that the highest proportion of deaths are among teenagers.

The report cost a fortune to produce. It is being used to justify greater industry regulation across the board and, of course, more funding for further research.

The International Policy Network has just launched a new campaign and website aimed at getting commonsense into the battle against world disease and getting politics out of it.

For example, said pathologist Professor Colin Berry, US environmentalists forced a worldwide ban on DDT to protect American birds of prey. But what about the million people plus in developing countries who die from malaria each year because there's no DDT to keep down the mosquitos?

Or again, 80% of the cigarettes smoked in India come from tobacco grown locally and hand-rolled. Beating up Marlborough is easy for Western health fascists, but does nothing at all to cut smoking diseases in developing countries.

Likewise, campaigning against cars or power stations won't cut pollution deaths in india, which (Professor Barun Mitra pointed out) are mostly caused by burning wood and dung in unventilated houses. And is there much point spending fortunes to give AIDS drugs to everyone, when they don't have clean water to take them with?

We can cut the diseases of poverty, but we need to get our priorities right. The site has stats and summaries of disease in over 170 countries, briefing papers and other resources. So it's a good start, a good resource.

The DTI is apparently looking into whether holiday companies should be made to reduce their prices during school holidays. But the IEA's John Meadowcroft points out any attempt to cap prices would ignore the reality of what is happening:

The price of any scarce resource is principally determined by demand: holidays are more expensive outside school term time because demand is higher than at any other time of year.

If prices were artificially lowered at this time of year, it is likely that more people without school-age children would want to go on holiday at this time, leading to the possibility that many families with children would be unable to go on a package holiday at all. We can only wonder at what new intervention government ministers would then dream up to correct their original error.

Dr Robert M Sauer, President of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, has just done an article contrasting the benefits of Estonia's liberalism with his own country's tariff-bound socialism.

He points out that, fifteen years ago, Estonia was a state-socialist basket case. Now it's one of the freest countries in the world, with a growth rate predicted at 6.4% for 2004.

How did they do it? Well, the incoming Prime Minister, Mart Laar, decided to be radical. He abolished all import tariffs. He rejected progressive income tax rates and introduced a flat-rate tax (today it's 26%, but Estonia is considering cutting it to just 20%).

Ending tariffs worked. Estonians now understand that free trade doesn't create unemployment as foreign goods drive out domestic production: on the contrary, it raises employment and creates wealth.

The flat tax worked too. It generated greater productivity, higher wages, and job creation. Eliminating corporate taxes on reinvested profits also boosted capital formation.

So is it any surprise that Estonia is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world?

Those amazing job descriptions proliferate. In the Times of June 16th, Robbie Millen quotes a passage in the Islington South Newsletter about SureStart. Millen writes:

I was encouraged to learn from the Early Excellence Co-ordinator for Islington South SureStart that "we have a Family Support Team including: an Outreach Worker, Stay and Play Co-ordinator, Childminding Network Co-ordinator, Community Child Psychologist, Speech and Language Therapist, Outreach Teacher, Movement Playleader and (my favourite) Vision Inclusion Worker.

Robbie Millen in today's Times draws attention to a new book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki which makes a case for the intelligence of groups, and "why the many are smarter than the few."

Millen himself points out that:

When you go to a supermarket to buy orange juice, the likelihood is that it will be there. The orange grower, packager, wholesaler, grocer - a large number of people far away from each other - have made a series of decisions that allow you the consumer to buy a Del Monte drink.

The free-market economy works because millions of us make small calculations about what to make, sell, or buy, what price to sell at, what price to buy at. Nobody directs it, yet the magic of supply and demand makes us all wealthier; and certainly happier than the glum shoppers at the Gum stores of the old Soviet era."

Precisely so.

There has been a steady development of hydrogen fuel cells over the past decade. Novel ways of obtaining hydrogen are continually evolving with increasing efficiency and usefulness. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed installing hydrogen-refuelling stations every 20 miles along major highways in California before 2010. The future is in the movement away from central station power generation and petrol vehicles.

There are numerous methods to produce hydrogen. Water can be heated to 600 degrees centigrade and then with the combination of an alkaline solution can be used to split water molecules into hydrogen and the by-product oxygen. Hydrogen can also be extracted using electrolysis and solar energy can be channelled into the separation of oxygen and hydrogen molecules. Hydrogen can also be extracted from biogas and natural compounds, e.g. ethanol from corn. The only emission when hydrogen is used is water and this can then be electrolysed to make more hydrogen, a continuous cycle of energy production.

The point is technology in the field of energy is continually developing - and hydrogen is just one of the ways we will be able to do more things in a cleaner and cheaper way. Some view a future where we put our cars away in order to save the environment. The reality is that we won't have to. The future is a richer world, with more economic activity - and without the damaging the environment.

If you could pick your seven greatest, real-life heroes of all time, who would they be? Submit them in the comments, and later we will select some of the most popular and take a poll of readers.

Sir Peter Gershon thinks he can save £15bn by making Britain's civil service more efficient. David James, the business troubleshooter who is advising the Conservatives, says this is 'decidedly unambitious'.

James is right. Sure, we can save at least 5% (that's £1bn) on the government's IT budget just by sorting out the appalling messes it has created. Certainly, government procurement is disastrous, which is why it gets sold so much duff kit. Making that more professional would save an awful lot. There are certainly efficiencies to be had.

But then, be honest. Do we really need a lot of what Whitehall does at all? The Department of Trade's budget soars, but has business benefitted? No: all that's happened is that even more EU regulations are being 'goldplated'. What does the Department for Rural Affairs actually do? Couldn't we do without the Education Department and just give the money direct to school head teachers? And if we did, wouldn't it be better spent?

If we couldn't ditch 10% of what the state does without noticing the difference (and that's a saving of £50bn-odd) I would be astonished.

I seem to enjoy the things most people like, including lobster, Champagne, Rolls Royces and, of course, caviar. Fortunately a new supply of caviar is coming from Yorkshire.

It's simple, really. Shred waste cardboard for stable bedding. When soiled, compost it for worm food, then feed the worms to sturgeon and harvest the caviar. It also employs young people on drug rehabilitation programmes, and manages to transform derelict land into a nature park.

This is good business, which does quite a few worthwhile things on the side. And I get to eat the caviar.

Britain's election for the European Parliament amounts to electors saying 'A plague on both your houses'. The Conservatives topped the poll with 27.4 per cent, with Labour on 22.3 points, the UK Independence Party on 16.8 and the Liberal Democrats 15.1.

Amazing figures: since less than half of those bothering to vote (and people weren't exactly stampeding) voted for someone other than the two main parties. And more people voted for the anti-EU UKIP campaign than for the hugely euro-enthusiastic Lib Dems. Indeed, opinion polls show that over half the UK public want to pull out of the EU altogether.

Perhaps people agree with economists like David Smith of Williams de Broe, that the recent adoption of costly workplace regulation puts the EU into the geriatric ward of the world economy.

Or maybe it's simpler. The Political Establishment reiterate that pulling out of the EU is a barmy idea. Perhaps a majority of the public have just got fed up with being called barmy by people they no longer respect.

We often criticize the Treasury for taking the attitude that the national wealth belongs to them, and that we should be thankful that we are allowed to keep any of it at all. Indeed, everything not taken from us is called by them a 'tax cost.'

In the Times of June 14th, Irwin Stelzer makes the point very forcefully.

An editorial in The Business (UK Sunday newspaper not, alas, on line) of June 13th points out that the Reagan tax cuts saw revenue rise faster than it did after the subsequent tax increases of Presidents Bush & Clinton. It also highlights the fact that the share of income tax paid by the top 10 percent went up during the Reagan years from 48 percent to 57.2 percent.

In the UK after the tax cuts of the Thatcher years, the richest 10 percent went from paying about a third of the total to nearly half. The US economy boomed during the period, shooting ahead of Germany and Japan. Critics point to the deficits which resulted when Congress refused to cut non-defence spending. They were indeed large, but a prosperous economy proved able to deal with them in a way that a faltering economy cannot.

If there is a lesson it is that tax cuts can boost growth and lead to the rich paying a higher share of the total, both of which are worthwhile goals. Given the economic boom and the Cold War victory, Reagan seems to have made better use than most of the time that was given him.

Of course there are analysts who try to show that the US economic recovery did not happen, that the UK did not really recover under Thatcher, and that the Cold War was not really won and that international Socialism did not really collapse. Yes, yes, all very well. But I am awfully glad that I lived to see such times.

On the very day that Britain goes to the polls for local and EU elections, the Bank of England raises interest rates. I don't know whether that's a sound move or not. But I do know that it would never have happened in the days when politicians decided these things. Credit where it's due: putting the Bank in charge of interest-rate policy was the soundest economic decision that Chancellor Gordon Brown ever made.

I often walk to or past the House of Commons, and am distracted by the unsightly demonstrations in Parliament Square. I've no idea what they're about, but they're permanent: the same placards have been there for months.

The place looks like a rubbish dump. Grubby, scrawled, illiterate, faded placards are strung out for yards, even though there seems to be only one person manning them. On one corner, another demonstration goes on, with someone ranting incoherently into a megaphone (probably about how immoral America is: it's hard to work it out).

Well, if this is free speech, I'm against. We don't allow unsightly buildings, so why tolerate unsightly installations such as this? Fine if it's one person one placard, but should we allow a single demonstrator to occupy a whole square with them? Fine if a demonstration lasts a day, but should we allow people to take up permanent residence on our streets? Fine if people are addressing a public meeting, but should they be able to disrupt people at work or in their homes by endless daily megaphone rants?

Simon Jenkins in The Times observes that the turnout in UK local elections, at 35%, is about half what it is in the rest of Europe. And why?

The reason is no mystery. It is that British local government has less power and can make less impact on public services than anywhere else. The electorate is not stupid. If voting in local elections makes no difference, why bother?

In which case, the answer should be no mystery either. Get Whitehall and Westminster out of local issues. Let local people themselves decide how much they want to spend on local services. Let them raise the money and run the show. And to achieve this, Douglas Carswell (in an ASI report) proposes to convert VAT into a local sales tax. Then local democracy will be worth something. It would be worth people voting. And they would.

Jenkins's solution, unfortunately, is to make voting in local elections compulsory. Right: so it doesn't matter a hoot because all the tax and spending decisions are made in London, but you're forced to turn up anyway. That just encourages the perpetuation of a rotten system. And there wouldn't be enough room in the jails anyway.

The Independent's front page reports some bizarre government proposals to reform prostitution.

The first idea is to establish toleration zones. These have been tried in various UK cities, though with mixed success. They make health checks easier, but they're usually in seedy, unsafe areas. And women working outside the zones face even more police intimidation than today.

The next idea is that in-zone prostitutes are offered careers counselling and financial advice. Bizarre: working girls probably know a lot more about money than any financial adviser. And what about non-zone prostitutes?

Lastly, men paying for sex outside these seedy red-light areas would face six months' jail. This is the government's usual solution to any problem: create a new criminal offence. We'll need a lot of new prisons.

Instead of trying to force prostitution into a few nasty places, we should bring it into the light. Today's problems (crime, trafficking, drug-use, disease) arise precisely because we try to force prostitution underground. Forcing it into nasty 'zones' won't improve things much.

Holland and Germany have licensed brothels. Germany and Greece require regular health checks. These seem like mature ways of dealing with the issues that surround what should be an entirely legal transaction between adults.

Some things are legal but not ethical. These might include failure to show due gratitude. Others, perhaps more interesting, might be ethical but illegal, such as hitting a burglar over the head. Law and ethics are clearly different, especially for those of us who believe in small government.

I am skeptical of ethical investment. We are told that while it is legal to invest in the defence, tobacco or biotech industries, it is not ethical to do so.

Conflict, alas, is sometimes unavoidable. To say that investing in defence companies is unethical is tantamount to supporting pacifism. Of course, the products of defence companies can be used in immoral ways, and there is a role in preventing the sale of weapons to certain countries. Yet the argument that investing in defence companies is unethical suggests that self-defence is always unethical.

Companies which make and sell tobacco are not immoral. They offer a product in which over-indulgence or misuse might bring harm. The same is true of those who deal in sugar, butters, burgers, fried potatoes and proprietary medications. It is probably true of those who sell climbing or ski equipment, too. This does not make them unethical.

As for biotech, it offers great opportunities for humankind. It opens the door to the conquest of killer diseases such as malaria, and to enabling those in poorer countries to feed themselves without massive use of fertilizers and pesticides. Classifying investment in it as unethical seems strange.

Then there is the question of oppressive regimes. Sanctions against Iraq did not work, but led to a lot of children dying. American sanctions against Cuba have not led to the removal Castro. In the vast majority of cases, sanctions are a failure. Trying to use ethical investment to remove money from oppressive countries may sound like a good idea, but in reality it means that jobs are lost, and there is less food and basic amenities.

If the effect of sanctions is to increase suffering and misery, it would be difficult to call it ethical, though 'self-indulgent' might fit. Sanctions can keep a country in isolation, where trade might have mellowed it.

Taken overall, the case for 'ethical' investment is a weak one at best, and there is a case that it might do more harm than good. I am not suggesting un-ethical investment, though I note that a fund made up of arms contractors, tobacco, energy and biotech companies would have far out-performed the so called 'ethical' funds over the last decade or two.

Under plans being considered by ministers, UK food and drinks firms could agree to fund sports facilities for children. This is seen as a useful alternative to a "fat tax".

But is fat blackmail really better than a fat tax? Food companies might well agree that school sports, (not to mention the arts, cleaner engines and better housing too) are all good things; but there is no reason why they should pay for them. Unless they fear something worse. Which they do.

The move comes because the government is being roundly condemned for not doing enough about childhood obesity. State schools, where 90% of British kids are 'educated' are pretty feeble when it comes to encouraging physical (or indeed mental) activity. So it's the usual story: once the government has messed up, it forces business to pay for cost of remedying things.

We saw it years ago when the privatized utilities were told they had to pick up the cost of 'social' objectives - like making sure that old ladies were not denied water or electricity, even if they didn't pay their bill - even though social policy should be the responsibility of governments, not firms.

And for years, local authorities have been blackmailing people in return for planning consent ("a voluntary contribution to the town development fund would certainly speed this matter through", etc etc).

It's still blackmail. Why should it be legal when the government does it?

The Guardian had its usual sneering piece about the late Ronald Reagan; this time saying how he gave the impression of doing a lot while actually achieving very little.

In fact, Reagan himself was asked what he had achieved in eight years of his presidency. "Well," he replied. "We did win the Cold War." No mean achievement.

But perhaps his greatest achievement was to restore the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans, aspirations that the domestic and foreign incompetence of Washington had left in tatters.

The East Coast media Establishment did not understand Reagan any more than Britain's; they could not believe that America would make a B-movie actor the most powerful man on earth. But real Americans saw his virtues: honesty, decency, courtesy; and a real optimism in the goodness, creativity and strength of ordinary people.

Ordinary Americans, he said "have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don't know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond."

The pompous conceit of the media Establishment is parried by Reagan's own epitaph on his administration, which reveals his own complete lack of both pomposity and conceit, tempering his pride in having changed minds and changed events: "Men and women across America for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All