Comedians have it easier than politicians. People are always coming up to them and saying "Go on then, tell us a joke." They don't go up to politicians and say "You're a Member of Parliament, go on then, tell us a lie."

Last Sunday we left Gatwick airport bound for Copenhagen. Once there we only had time to check in to our hotels and meet up for a quick Tuborg. The following day, after helping him with press and TV interviews, I headed out with Madsen to the harbour by the canal. We found a restaurant with a good view and settled down for lunch. It was time for me to get to grips with some Danish food. Smørebrod is the traditional Danish lunch. It consists of a slice of buttered rye bread with some kind of meat or seafood on top, usually with mayonnaise. I was feeling adventurous and headed straight for the beef tartar. My dish of raw beef was served with raw egg and some raw onions. Despite the novelty of this dish, it didn’t actually taste very exciting. Madsen went for the herring buffet, which seemed to feature an infinite variety of pickled fish, again on rye bread. The meal was of course washed down with wine and a small glass of Akvavit.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around the harbour and the Strøget – basically Copenhagen's equivalent of Oxford Street, but pedestrianized like much of the city and therefore quieter and more laid back. For the whole trip the weather was simply beautiful. That evening we had dinner in the Tivoli pleasure gardens, with a glass of white beer, and watched people screaming in terror on the fun rides across the lake. Tuesday morning was the day of the CEPOS conference, where all of the speakers spoke very coherent English, although most were Danish. The conference lasted until lunch time and Maat Laar’s talk in particular was very amusing. Together the speakers made an excellent case for flat tax, currently sweeping across Europe from the east. After a few 'town hall' pancakes in the hotel we had a quick lunch in a tavern by the town square, then it was time to head home.

That evening, we were welcomed home by torrential rain, thunder and lightning.

At the CEPOS flat tax conference one of the most popular speakers was Mart Laar, who was prime minister of Estonia when flat tax was introduced in 1994. Mart, who looks a lot better than this picture of him at the conference, gave a very funny speech which you can look at here.

Among his points was the fact that he and his government team were all too young to know it couldn't be done, so they just did it. The IMF told them to prepare for a huge drop in revenue, but it resulted in a big gain which has been maintained. Investment and growth have boomed, and now Estonia is set to lower from the original 26 percent flat rate to a new 20 percent flat rate.

Tallinn is well worth a visit. It was already a stunningly beautiful city, and you can see for yourself how the prosperity of the last decade has given it extra buzz and vitality.

I was in Copenhagen yesterday, speaking at the CEPOS conference to launch flat tax onto the Danish agenda. It was a first class affair, and included a presentation from Denmark's Taxation Minister, Kristian Jensen, pictured (left) with myself. Mart Laar, former PM of Estonia, and who launched Europe's first flat tax, also featured.

Several people wanted to know if flat tax was only suitable for relatively undeveloped, former communist economies. George Osborne, UK Shadow Chancellor, has raised the same point. The answer is that it will work in advanced economies, but where undeveloped economies in new Europe have made gains by curbing widespread tax evasion in the black economy, the Western countries will gain by curbing the need for tax avoidance, the legal but widespread tax sheltering which goes on.

Flat tax came to new Europe first because it is politically easier to do there, not because it is more appropriate economically. The Eastern states do not have the long history of entrenched interest groups influencing the democratic process. Politicians in countries with a longer democratic tradition have to be careful in taking on groups which perceive benefits to themselves from the progressive tax system. Some see advantages in the exemptions and allowances which characterize such systems, and fear they might lose out.

It takes political skill and leadership to bring flat tax to sophisticated economies. Once they do it, however, it will work just as well there, if not better. The advanced economies suffer the adverse effects of high tax rates because those rates are enforced, and therefore have much to gain when they are lowered to a single flat rate. The incentive boost to economic activity is probably higher in a more developed economy. And since they have other factors which make them attractive to investors, including clear property rights and business law, the move to a low flat tax increases their attractiveness to foreign investors.

Flat tax becomes politically easier as more countries introduce it. As it spreads from the Baltic states through Eastern Europe, and is taken up by major countries such as Poland, the competitive pressure is felt to keep other countries attractive to enterprise and investment. CEPOS yesterday took a big stride for Denmark and for Europe.

So, the Bill on ID cards gets through the House of Commons - albeit with the government's majority cut in half. It won't fare so well in the Lords (where promises of future peerages don't cut much ice). But let's remember, what the Bill proposes is not an Identity Card scheme. It's an Identity Database scheme. As long as the government has centralized records on all of us, who cares about cards?

Some people argue that we all carry identity, and lots of people have info on us: that if MI5 really wanted to know all about us, they could. Well, if the security forces can check us out so easily, why do we need a new, centralized database? That simply enables petty officials to check us out too. And they are open to corruption: leaving us open to blackmail - and identity theft, on an even bigger scale.

The Bill won't stop benefit fraud (only 5% of which involves identity fraud), nor terrorism (Madrid was bombed despite national IDs), nor illegal immigration (each year 26m people enter the UK for short visits which will not require an ID card).

The government say that only basic information will be kept on people's records. But they're leaving a few fields empty just in case they think of things to add in the future. And who will decide that? Some official, or Parliament?

Nor will it be compulsory to carry an ID card, they say. Oh yeah? How long will that idea last? It's because I know how governments work that I am donating £10 to the fighting fund being set up by No2ID. You should too.

When a Member of Parliament died, an ambitious candidate called his constituency agent. "I was sorry to hear about Mr Jones's death," he explained. "I wondered if you would consider me to replace him?"

"Only if the undertaker agrees," replied the agent.

The ID Cards legislation had its Second Reading rather narrowly yesterday. Not by coincidence my Alma Mater, the London School of Economics, released their study into the costs and benefits of the scheme. As the Telegraph reports there are some differences on cost estimates:

The Home Office predicts that the scheme will cost £7 billion but the LSE puts the minimum cost at £10.6 billion - without the technical problems or overruns that have dogged other Whitehall IT projects - and suggests that it could rise to £19.2 billion.

There are also certain differences on the likely benefits.

Most damning for the Government is the fact that the study does not believe the ID system as proposed will fulfil any of its intended functions such as curbing identity fraud or countering terrorism. If anything, the existence of such a large database and the assumption that the system is foolproof, when it is likely to give false readings, will make it vulnerable to hacking and fraud. Professor Ian Angell, of the LSE's IT department, said the scheme was a "one-stop shop for fraudsters". "It is a dog's dinner. I do not believe it is going to work."

One of the defenses of the scheme is that biometrics have to be added to passports anyway:

"The next few years are going to see effectively a visa and passport revolution across the EU and the developed world. We are going to be in a position where we have to make our passports here in the UK biometric if UK citizens are to continue to enjoy the right to travel freely around the world." -Tony Blair.

Indeed we do need to add biometrics to UK passports but this is very different from the legislation being proposed. Chris Lightfoot has the details:

The ICAO biometric passport programme requires only that passports be equipped with a `smart-card' style chip containing information about the bearer (the same stuff that's printed in the machine-readable zone on the bottom of the back page of your passport in and angular OCR font), plus a digitised photograph and a cryptographic signature.

The Australian Government is managing this at a cost of 8 pounds per passport. Expensive, won’t work and not required. Could someone remind me why this Bill has been re-introduced?

(Tim Worstall writes here)

Someone once suggested to the Irish music megastar (and Live8 campaigner) Bono that he might advance his political and humanitarian ideals by running for president. "I wouldn't run for president," he replied. "I wouldn't want to move to a smaller house."

A soap bubble looks like a bubble at the time, but you can only be sure of a financial bubble once it has popped. Allister Heath (The Business) thinks US housing is in a bubble, and suggests that China and hedge funds might also be. If that isn't enough, we have nanotechnology coming along.

Housing first. In Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Charles Kindleberger describes a bubble as "a series of price increases that are so large as to make an asset loose all relationship to fundamentals before ultimately suffering a price implosion."

Allister Heath points out that US housing has risen 50 percent in five years, with a quarter of that in the last year alone. Moreover, he tells us, housing supply in the US, unlike Britain, is outpacing demand. It is not the only potential bubble in town.

In an important report out this weekend, Bear Stearns is warning that China, hedge funds and nanotechnology are three other areas which are already or may soon succumb to bubbleonomics and where a meltdown is likely to occur.

There have been bubbles before, like the South Sea Company and Dutch tulips, and the world recovered. Yes, but it took time and only after much chaos and ruin. This time, says Heath, it could be worse.

There have been plenty of bubbles over the past five centuries, but with the exception of the equity boom of the 1920s, none that could wreak as much devastation as the current three - if they pop. Bubblenomics has always been a mad science; but the huge sums involved today are truly frightening.

Of course, people make money when a bubble is inflating. It's just that a lot more of them lose a lot more when it pops. If you're the nervous type, get out of US housing investment, Chinese stock and hedge funds. And look the other way when nanotech becomes flavour of the month.

Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking.

- William E. Simon

I have terrible luck. If there's a 50:50 chance of something going wrong for me, you can be sure that nine times out of ten, it will.

This week, 50,000 shareholders in Railtrack - the privatized track and stations company which UK Trade Secretary Stephen Byers forced into administration in October 2001 - take the government to the High Court. They aim to prove that Railtrack did not die by natural causes, but was murdered.

The privatized rail industry remained dependent on government money. The burden of the government's own new regulations didn't help. Eventually, Byers said enough was enough. But that, say shareholders, wasn't an act of desperation: it was premeditated.

And they've uncovered a blizzard of memos to support their case. Transport officials were debating 'radical options' including re-nationalization, as far back as February 2001. In July, one Treasury adviser wrote to another about needing a 'trigger' to push the company into administration. In August, Byers's adviser Dan Corry wrote that the Transport Secretary was 'very attracted' by the idea. In September a 10 Downing Street adviser wrote of his fear that rail regulator Tom Winsor could thwart the plan. In October, Byers pulled the plug on Railtrack and told Winsor that he'd be legislated out of office if he interfered.

Early on, this government realized they didn't need to go to the expense of buying back privatized industry to control it. They could do that through regulation. With Railtrack, they went a step further by bankrupting and replacing it their own state alternative. 50,000 Railtrack shareholders say that was plain theft. They may well be proved right.

(From the final days of the socialist economies…)

How is our potato crop?

Comrade, if you piled up our potatoes it would make a small mountain reaching to the very feet of God.

Comrade, this is a Socialist country; we know there is no God.

That’s fine comrade, since there aren't any potatoes either.

Getting rid of bad leaders is easy. The difficult bit is clearing up the mess afterwards. The Americans had a clear military plan to evict Saddam, for example, but their understanding of how to fill the power vacuum in a country with many conflicting religious and ethnic groups was obviously rather less precise.

Now we are urging African leaders to get tough with Robert Mugabe. His latest Marxist lunacies involve demolishing the homes of 200,000 people (in Opposition areas, of course). Not just 'illegal' shanties, but solid houses that have been there since it was Rhodesia, and whose owners' title deeds seem perfectly valid.

The excuse is that these folk run a 'damaging' black economy. There's Marxist logic for you: chuck out your best farmers, kill the rest of the economy with controls, and then blame your shortages on poor people trying to scrape an existence as best they can.

Quite how these displaced thousands will survive out on the plains without water or sanitation is a good question. Maybe this is another case of 'indirect' genocide like that in Burma.

Western powers may have too much on their plates to think about unseating the odious Mugabe. Before long, though, the grim reaper will do it for them. If we and the neighbouring African nations, had any sense, we'd already be laying down plans to help them restore order and assist the transition afterwards.

You can tell politicians are out of touch whenever they talk about "discipline" in schools. Whenever I hear the word discipline, two thoughts enter my head: the cane and detention. Neither are particularly nice thoughts for parents worrying about whether their child will get on in a school.

I checked out my former school, Dulwich College in south London. Its website has an introduction by the Master who says the school is a "a caring, supportive and well-ordered community which encourages spiritual and personal development where boys from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds can feel secure and equally valued."

To get another perspective, I checked out website of James Alleyn's Girls School which says:

Girls are encouraged to do their best at whatever they attempt, to explore new opportunities and to enjoy every aspect of school life. Our pastoral care provides support and understanding as girls progress through school and meet new challenges. Community Service, partnerships with local state schools and the Duke of Edinburgh Award are all significant contributors to our aim that every girl leaves our school self-confident, imbued with respect and concern for others and eager to make an active contribution to society.

Both schools are private and neither bang on about promoting school discipline. Parents want their children to be happy at school. The idea that children are disciplined the whole time is, frankly, scary.

My suggestion to politicians who want to talk about state education is to get a stack of private school prospectuses and just crib from them.

Alex Singleton is director-general of the Globalisation Institute.

How many free-market economists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None. If the room is dark, the invisible hand will ensure that the light comes on.

[supplied by TD Asch]

(Jokesmith will post the best few of the many 'lightbulb' jokes sent in)

Bismarck famously suggested that those fond of laws and sausages should not watch either of them being made. We have just been watching a law being made in Britain to ban smoking in places that also serve food. Mick Hume (Times) tells us that the Department of Health document

proposes a legal definition, not only of "smoke" and "smoking", but also of "enclosed", "roof" and "wall", and specifies that those countless non-smoking signs must all be "at least 280mm by 200mm".

Public buildings, workplaces, football grounds, pubs and bus stops are to be adorned with shop-a-smoker telephone hotlines, so that people can inform on transgressors and call upon the army of inspectors to enforce the law. As for food, it all depends on the type of food.

Drinking/smoking pubs are to be given a list of ready-made bar snacks that they are permitted to sell, and inspectors will crack down on unlicensed snacks. There is even a proposal to ban smoking within one metre of the bar in smoking pubs. The document admits that "there is no evidence that this would provide any health benefits."

I imagine that white lines will be painted on the floor, so that people can use their mobile phones to inform on any smoker who mistakenly crosses one of them. Watching this law being made has quite put me off sauages…

Old Europe seems to be guarding the Common Agricultural Policy as if the EU would collapse without it. Any renegotiation of the Budget will be considered reluctantly and only if the CAP is sacrosanct, say the French president and German chancellor. This is curious economics and even curiouser politics

When the CAP was introduced a major objective was to maintain farm income. Ever since Roosevelt's New Deal, rich countries wanted to support farm income at a level comparable with manufacturing income. They supported farm product prices by tariffs on imports. The inevitable surplus was exported with further subsidy to reduce prices to world levels.

By the 70s we realized that not much income support went to poor farmers. Since returns were increased by subsidy, farmers could afford to pay more for inputs like fertilizer and machinery (offset as costs). Rents and the price of farm land increased. The relevant elasticities are hard to measure but farmers were lucky to retain a third to a fifth of the price support benefit. At the same time it was recognized that 80 percent of payments went to rich, large-scale farmers who did not need income support and were only 20 percent of the farm population. This is true today in France.

Some 20 years ago New Zealand removed farm support without catastrophic consequences. Without subsidy farmers paid less for inputs, got more for their products, and rents fell. The price of land also fell, increasing return on capital.

The CAP represents labyrinthine economics, but are the politics any more intelligible? Tony Blair now says that paying 40 percent of the EU budget to 5 percent of the employed is not sensible. The French want to defend the CAP. But why, if 80 percent of French farmers get practically nothing?

The French are only a generation away from the land, and seem to think that France depends on the CAP for survival. Americans are rightly sensitive to the rural vote in swing States like Ohio. Only the Brits, long urbanized, think farmers are feather-bedded and lack political clout. Few realize we need to lose half our farmers and perhaps cultivate our comparative advantage in Wilderness and National Park.

It would be ironic if the CAP, created as the raison d'etre for the Common Market became the vehicle of its demise. Perhaps the CAP is a totem preserved like some ancient icon, no longer relevant to the world, but revered as a symbol of heritage and history?

State hospitals and clinics in England went £140m into the red last year, with a quarter of them failing to meet their legal requirement to balance the books, government audit bodies have revealed. That's despite billions more of taxpayers' money going into them. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt says they need better financial management.

No, that's not the answer. State healthcare is overflowing with managers. But since it's a monopoly there is no incentive for them to excel at the job. And doctors ignore them anyway, claiming 'clinical freedom'.

Last night the authors of our new health report gave a seminar at the Adam Smith Institute. They support the ideals of the National Health Service and many of its features. But along with many in the audience they were scathing about the ability of the NHS to deliver good, joined-up patient care. Sorry, they said, but this 1948 state monopoly has to go. Sure, the government should pay for a lot of health care. But we need state-run hospitals about as much as we need state-run supermarkets or clothes shops. People actually get a much better service if there is innovation and choice in its supply.

I was surprised just how directly people were talking. Even some government officials there were nodding agreement with this radical view. Or maybe not so radical, these days. People feel the extra billions being spent, but see no change in how the NHS is run. Shiny new buildings, same squalid service.

The NHS has long been a national icon, immune from criticism. Not now. The mood is growing that the 1948 monopoly model has had its chips. No amount of new management can save it. Better to break it up and make every hospital and clinic independent. One might even say, privatize them.

You can make the public sector look a lot smaller if you just define its activities as 'private'. For example, when the UK Chancellor Gordon Brown got private consortia to put up the cash to build new state hospitals, he did just that. And he fought a long battle with the Office of National Statistics (headed by a man with the unfortunate name of Cook, as in books) to make them accept this sleight-of-hand.

Now the ONS is getting its own back. For a few years now, the government has encouraged 'city academies'. These take state-supported students, but are sponsored and run independently by philanthropic investors. When one, in Middlesborough, got into financial difficulties with £1.5m debts, the government bailed it out.

Whereupon the ONS said that if the government was going to underwrite the debts of city academies, they could no longer be considered independent and had to be re-classified as - well, quangos, basically, like the ONS itself. So out goes the city academies' independence, in come all the rules and regulations that government the finance and operation of public bodies.

Of course, that would kill a pet policy stone dead, so the government will find some way round it. But isn't it bizarre that the government statistics nerds apparently have the power to turn private into public at the stroke of a definition?

[a reader sends us this from the late Tommy Cooper]

I backed a horse at twenty to one.
It came in at ten past three.

HRH Prince William graduated at the University of St Andrews yesterday, as the three founders of the Adam Smith Institute did some years previously. The place worked its magic on him, as it does with most, and no doubt he will take away happy memories gained among its cobbled streets and grey stones.

Like many students these days, the prince is lined up for some work experience afterwards, in the three areas of the financial sector, land management, and mountain rescue. These are good choices.

From the mountain rescue service he will experience how important and valued is the work of the unpaid volunteers who give their time and risk their lives in the service of other mountaineers.

In land management he might learn some of the country conservation practised on his father's lands. He might see how the vast prairies of subsidized monoculture so prevalent elsewhere do nothing for the appearance or ecology of the countryside.

In the City he will acquire a knowledge of how economics and business works in practice, and understand the importance of controlling costs and putting incentives in place. He might well come to support the low taxes and sensitive regulatory regime under which economies prosper. Then again, he might learn to down incredibly strong cocktails in evening displays of conspicuous consumption!

Either way, he has made good choices which should bring him a range of useful experiences and knowledge.

There is no art which one government sooner learns from another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

- Adam Smith

One generation passeth away and another generation cometh (Eccl 1:4). It is happening in Europe before our eyes. President Chirac and Chancellor Shroeder, whose alliance did so much to set the lead and the direction of the EU, are in the home stretch now. In both cases they seem likely to be replaced by more Atlanticist, free-market successors.

But it is not just the leaders who are changing. One vision of Europe has been passing away. It is the politically united Europe with strong central institutions modeled on the French state, and with social guarantees which lie in the continental tradition. That Europe, which was to stand up against America as at least an equal, would have had its president, ambassadors, army, and tax regime. It will never happen.

The new vision of Europe which is replacing it is less of a political force, but with a stronger, more vibrant economy. It is a Europe which can prosper in a world which includes China and India among its economic drivers. It will do so by reducing its taxes, subsidies and regulations, and by trading more openly and honestly. It will recognize the part which incentives and motivation play in economic expansion.

Experts and analysts are already placing the origins of the new Europe in John Major's long game, which bought time for Britain in opt-outs, while steady expansion tilted the EU balance to the UK view. It was indeed some time in coming, but the speed with which it has emerged looks more like a rout than an orderly transition. As the dust and smoke clear from the field, Tony Blair, who was UK champion of the 'ever closer union' centralizers, has emerged as leader of the skeptic forces, scattering and slaying the federalists. Anatole Kaletsky (Times) attributes some of this to luck, but more to Blair’s ability to bend luck his way.

Either way, it is a new Europe we are looking at. There will be a rearguard action to defend subsidies and regulations and the old ways of thinking, but it will lose. The new Europe seems set to be fashioned in Britain's image, and to have Britain as its leader. Not at the heart of Europe, but at the head of it.

A party of economists was climbing in the Alps. After several hours they became hopelessly lost. One of them studied the map, turning it up and down, sighting on distant landmarks, consulting first his compass and then the sun. Finally he said, "OK, see that big mountain top over there?"
"Yes," answered the others, eagerly.
'Well, that's where we are."

[supplied by Valentina Korneeva]

The Royal College of Nursing - Britain's professional body for nurses - is reported as saying that more and more nurses are being forced to give up on the National Health Service because they cannot afford housing.

If any sensible employer were short of a vital pool of skilled people, it would simply offer more pay. But the state is not a sensible employer. So instead, we have seen an endless train of elaborate schemes from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott - trying to subsidize homes for 'key workers' or force lenders into state-backed 'part ownership' deals. Not enough to solve the problem, but enough to complicate and mess up the housing market.

I appreciate the problem. People are very keen to teach at our local school in Cambridge - until they look at house prices. Then they realize that a teacher's salary won't buy them much. We'd love to pay them more - but of course all that stuff is decided nationally by state bureaucrats.

If the government wants more or better workers in its health or education businesses, it has to pay more or better workers where local conditions dictate. Of course, the unions want to force their mock-egalitarian ideals of equal pay for all on them, so resist it. And, of course, the government is (always) short of money. But if it cut out some unnecessary quangos, fired some useless administrators, and allowed choice and competition to reign in public services, that would suddenly become less of a problem.

Passengers waiting for take-off watched in amazement as two men in pilots' uniforms walked through the plane toward the cockpit. Both wore black glasses, one of them led by a guide dog, the other tapping his way with a white stick. The passengers laughed nervously as the plane readied for take-off. A macabre practical joke, perhaps? Then as the plane gathered speed, they realized it was headed straight for water at the edge of the airport. Panicked screams filled the cabin, but at the last moment the plane lifted smoothly into the air.

Sheepishly the passengers relaxed into their magazines as drinks were served. Meanwhile in the cockpit the co-pilot said, "You know, Bob, one of these days they’re gonna scream too late, and we’re all gonna die."

[supplied by Mike Cunningham]

Britain's bossiest government has published its plans to ban smoking in public places like pubs, cinemas, restaurants and shopping centres. Lighting up will carry a penalty of £50. Members' clubs, and (mysteriously), pubs which do not serve hot food are exempted. But landlords of pubs and restaurants will be fined £200 if they permit smoking.

Just to make sure, environmental health inspectors will be snooping around public places, ready to pounce on smokers and owners who engage in these unspeakable crimes. It really is a case of the 'smoke police' coming to town - as the Canadian band The Intended warned us in their chillingly amusing song of the same name.

The environmental health inspectors, of course, think the ban should extend everywhere. "Our members, who are regulators and people in the industry, both want the same thing - simplicity," said Ian Foulkes, director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Others predict all kinds of problems trying to define what counts as an 'enclosed space' or 'food'.

I don't much like people smoking around me, but smokers these days are more self-aware, and I find it tolerable. What I find less tolerable is for people to be told that they can't allow folk to smoke on their own property - even if they have totally effective smoke-extraction technology and their customers are all happy with smoking.

It can't be long before publicans are forced to stop us bad-mouthing the government on their premises - which will really bring it home to us how quickly our freedoms can be eroded if not rooted in strong principle.

The Scottish parliament is to host the country's first festival of politics, with celebrities such as film-maker David Puttnam and activist actress Vanessa Redgrave. It's scheduled to run from August 24 to 26, but if the ten-times overshoot on the cost of the building itself is any indicator, it should still be running until September 25.

The BBC's Radio 4 programme In Our Time is choosing the world's greatest philosopher. This is the BBC, so guess who’s going to win? Correct.

Thanks to some good and generous friends I was able to enjoy a Centre Court seat at opening day of the Wimbledon Championships, where I was able to see the great Roger Federer and Lindsay Davenport go through with ease, and the Great British hope Elena Baltacha go out just as speedily.

On the way back I read that the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which runs the Championships, was complaining that tickets for the finals were selling at £700 on eBay, and urging that re-sale of tickets should be made a criminal offence. (Oh, no, not another.)

They've got themselves into the same pickle that Live8 did, which we reported on earlier. If you set the price of tickets too low, you have to ration them. Wimbledon does it by a ballot every year, where hundreds of thousands of hopefuls put their name into the hat for the right to buy a show-court ticket. But is that the best way?

It certainly means that the All England Club is missing out on a wodge of money. They would make far more if they sold the tickets for what they were worth - up to £700 as we now know. And that is cash that could be used to improve and extend the facilities and allow more people to enjoy the tennis. And indeed, improve coaching for Britain's young and promising players. Indeed, with better facilities and more people going to the Championships, you could actually keep prices down - which the Club is keen to do - and generate the same revenue.

Also, remember that there are many avid tennis followers who miss out on Wimbledon every year because they fail in the ballot. So that doesn't help the fans that Wimbledon wants to help either. They'd be better off if they knew they just had to save up and they could buy a ticket like anyone else. Millions of people make sacrifices in order to buy season tickets to their favourite football club, which is fine: why are other public events so keen not to use the market?

Journalists were quick to note David Cameron’s retreat from the voucher system for schools. Vouchers increase parental involvement by increasing their choices, and it is important that those with a say in education reform should not overlook their political impact and importance.

The policy proposed, and from which David Cameron seems to be retreating, is essentially a clone of the Swedish system, as detailed in this paper by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm.

It is simple to set up a private school. They can be community run, for profit, or charitably. They can, as long as they obey certain basics of the curriculum, teach what they like. They cannot charge top up fees and the municipality must fund it in direct proportion to the number of pupils it attracts. This is what was being proposed, and while allowing top up fees would be even better, Cameron really does seem to have missed the point.

A large part of the political left in the UK, perhaps most of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, use things Scandinavian as a template, a design for what would make a better society. Scandinavian is equated with ‘good.’ The Conservatives showed political astuteness by proposing Scandinavian-style vouchers in education.

The principle can be extended to other policy areas. To those who praise the French health system above our own it can be pointed out that it includes private providers and private top up insurance. These things are worth doing for their own sake, of course, because they offer solutions to intractable public sector problems. But it is also useful in politics to confuse and confound one’s enemies, and this seems to be the point which David Cameron might have missed.

(Tim Worstall writes here)

A friend took one of Milton Friedman's classes at the University of Chicago. He tells that after a wild night, he fell asleep in class. He was woken suddenly and confronted by an agitated Dr Friedman pounding the table and demanding to know the answer to the question he had just asked.

"It's the money supply," my friend blurted out. He was right, too.

The BBC reports good news from the aircraft industry.

[New] targets by airlines, airports and aircraft manufacturers aim to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by new aircraft over the next 15 years. Companies want aircraft built within that period to produce half of the carbon dioxide they currently emit.

It is not, however, good news for eco-activists because it does not cause us to change our behaviour. Tom Symonds, BBC transport correspondent, said environmentalists would criticize the plan because it did nothing to reduce the number of aircraft in Britain's skies. "They had wanted larger taxes imposed on air travel," he said.

Brendon Sewill, a former Treasury adviser now writing for the Aviation Environment Federation, says there are ways in which the UK could combat aviation pollution.

His suggestions include increasing the air passenger duty airport departure tax, imposing VAT on air tickets, abolishing duty-free sales and ending the planning system to discourage airport expansion.

These seem to amount to making air travel more expensive and more difficult, and closing off the choices and opportunities it has opened for millions, whereas the industry's initiative prefers to address the problem with technological innovation. A pattern is now evident in which environmentalists point to a problem, and when ingenious solutions are developed, they are rejected because "they don't make us change our behaviour." It makes one wonder what the aim of the exercise really is.

Poor Zimbabwe. Even their post office has troubles now. The new stamps bearing the likeness of President Mugabe keep falling off envelopes. Apparently people are spitting on the wrong side.

[supplied by Philip Stevens]

Climate change is both political and scientific. The political side attacks capitalism, globalization and the USA. The scientific side identifies previous glacial cycles including the present one which began 10,000 years ago. The Earth was warmer 1,000 years ago, and the natural part of present warming seems to dwarf human contribution. This does not stop us acting to influence it if we want to.

This is where the politics comes in. The prescription is to cut growth and economic activity and learn to live more simply. We should buy locally and travel less, trying to minimize our footprint on the planet. Any technological approach which seeks to minimize the consequences of growth by developing engines which pollute less, or which removes carbon from the atmosphere, is unacceptable because it bypasses the political agenda. This is where the US and George Bush enter the frame. Fraser Nelson (The Business) sums it up:

Bush has pledged to reduce US greenhouse gas intensities by 18% within 10 years, a tougher target than Kyoto-signing Britain, which has set a target for 12%. His White House is pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 500 tonnes over a decade a bigger saving than the rest of Europe put together.

The problem for activists is that the US is pursuing carbon capture technology, plus a scheme to capture and use waste methane for energy. Far from cutting economic growth, such measures should boost it, creating new markets for innovative solutions.

… by 2015, the Methane to Markets programme will have removed 1% of all greenhouse gases emitted by humans into the atmosphere. This is the environmental equivalent of closing down England’s entire road network, or shutting down 50 coal-fired power stations,

Part of the US agenda is avowedly to reduce its dependence of foreign oil, but part of it is resistance to being straitjacketed by a Kyoto Protocol which imposes such heavy costs for so tiny a result. Some reports suggest, to the fury of eco-activists, that the Gleneagles draft being considered will incorporate some of these developments. It looks increasingly as if the way forward will involve leaving Kyoto behind.

Over at the Globalisation Institute, Alex Singleton suggests that we should put some sense of priorities into our foreign aid. At present we support everything, from

promoting women's participation, to African land reform, to the creation of church networks, to helping disabled people, to adult education, to discouraging drug use.

He says it would make more sense to concentrate on the most effective things, noting that the fight against malaria would save more lives than combating drug use. It is the same approach the Copenhagen Consensus takes.

Outside an athletics stadium recently I saw a man carrying an extremely long case containing athletics equipment.

I asked him "Are you a pole vaulter?"

He replied "Nein, I am German. And how did you know my name?"

[supplied by Michael Hirsh]

Islands of contemplation are harder to find these days, as assaults of noise rise in intensity and frequency. The revving of motorbikes, the whine of lawnmowers and the shouting of mobile phone users, all intrude on what used to be opportunities for thoughts and introspection. Now comes a report (Times) that seems too good to be true.

A remote control that allows you to switch off annoying noises could be available soon. The gadget – the size of a mobile phone – will allow you to zap the sounds of bickering children, thundering traffic, pounding road diggers, barking dogs or twittering colleagues.

Using technology developed for hearing aids, you point it at the offending noise, which it filters out by generating an inverted sound wave into the buds you we