Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, spoke to the Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Iceland about the attraction which intellectuals feel for socialism and similar ideologies. He quoted Hayek's observation that intellectuals are drawn to visions and ideas, as well as to systems which accord them a greater share of influence and power. Intellectuals feel 'under-valued' by the market, in that it puts a value on them less than they think appropriate.

The case Klaus put was that the 'hard' version of socialism (ie communism) might be over, but the weak versions, including social democracy, the welfare state, and the 'social model,' now posed the threat of big and patronizing government, high regulation, and large-scale income redistribution. Intellectuals are attracted to this type of thinking because it elevates their importance and the chance to impose their ideas on a world which would otherwise reject them.

The threat these days, Klaus said, came from the spread of illiberal ideas OUTSIDE of socialism. He instanced ambitious social engineering, radical human rightsism, the enforcement of the perceived good, environmentalism, what he called 'NGO-ism,' and Europeanism (meaning moves to an integrated European over-government). All, he said, were substitute idelogies for socialism, and all provided niches for interference by intellectuals in the spontaneous activities of human societies.

It was a tough speech, identifying the new threats to liberal values, and the allure they always have for intellectuals who stand aloof from the real world.

Do you ever wonder why it is that the State continually expands? That we never actually reach a point at which we can all dust our hands and say "Right, that's it, we can stop now?" C Northcote Parkinson pointed out that bureaucracies expand because that's what bureaucracies do, starting with his prediction that the Royal Navy would end up with more Admirals than ships (achieved by the way).

The Telegraph reported on the discovery of a new addiction:

Sun-tan addiction may explain why sunbathers stay in the sun or regularly use sunbeds even though they understand that they are putting themselves at risk. The researchers from the University of Texas say in the journal Archives of Dermatology that they interviewed 145 beach-goers. They adapted a standard psychological method to test for levels of addiction and found that 26 per cent of the group could be classed as "ultra-violet light tanning dependent." Then using another method from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, they found that 53 per cent could be classed as ultra-violet light dependent.

Addiction and dependency! Well, apart from explaining Mr. Kilroy-Silk, this gives us all an opportunity to extend health care services into a previously neglected field, no doubt to the great benefit of the entire population. Beaches will have to be inspected for those poor addicts, tan lines minutely checked for evidence of natural skin colour, special attention will have to be paid to tanning salons and nudist beaches, insistence upon non-addiction will be "denial" and thus proof of it. Quite wonderful, we can have another revving up of the State's duty to protect us from ourselves. How long before The Guardian is able to come to the rescue? Perhaps with job advertisements like this.

Ambridge Mental Health NHS Trust is committed to providing high quality integrated health and social care for local people with mental health problems in Ambridge and more specialist mental health services for people throughout the UK.

The Trust actively seeks to recruit people currently under-represented in the workforce. This includes people from ethnic minorities and people who have freckles.

Think it couldn’t happen? I bet you thought Real Nappy Officers were a figment of some satirist's imagination as well.

(Tim Worstall writes here).

How many property tycoons were first set on their merry way by playing Monopoly when they were children? The thought is prompted by a letter to the Evening Standard a few weeks ago, reproduced in the July 2nd issue of this magazine (which was how I came to read it), which told of the origins of Monopoly. A lady called Lizzie Magie invented Monopoly in order to expose the evils of property speculation. You can read more of the story here, and here.

Like a lot of people at the beginning of the last century, Lizzie Magie was a follower of Henry George. But the Monopoly story reminds me of another tale about another piece of anti-property-speculation propaganda, of the Communist variety, that also went wrong. As I heard it, a revered Communist used once upon a time to give fiercely well informed and minutely detailed lectures about the evils of the Californian property market, in pre World War II Los Angeles I think this was. By the end of the story, all the most successful property developers in post World War II Los Angeles were former Communists, and graduates of this one man's lectures. They were so impressed by what they had heard that they decided to do it for themselves. (Their mentor died poor.)

Have I got that right? Can anyone supply any links to internet material that will confirm or deny any of it? Or is it one of those urban myths?

Whether my Communist teacher of property tycoons is truth or legend, I have long suspected that Communist propaganda in general will be looked back on by historians as having had very different results to those intended.

I recently encountered, in a remainder shop, a big book containing hundreds of Chinese Communist propaganda posters, much like these ones. They depict a vivid and colourful fantasy world of industrial excellence and economic triumph, of collective progress and personal fulfilment, of joy. The people who now preside over China's current economic miracle were teenagers when posters like these were at the height of their influence, and I think this is no coincidence. It makes perfect sense to me that the more imaginative and impressionable people brought up on imagery like this would turn away in disgust from the lumbering state centralism that these posters were intended to sell, once they realized that state centralism could never deliver such wonders, and instead switch to being enthusiastic pro-capitalists and even capitalist entrepreneurs. After all, only if China switched to capitalism could a real future like this be even hoped for, let alone rationally anticipated.

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 wear in your ears. It sounds too good to be true because it is.

I bought the first Noisebuster when it appeared 11 years ago. It proved very effective against low frequency rhythmic sounds, such as those generated by engines. Many times I worked happily in my sun-room by filtering out the sound of lawnmowers. It reduces these sounds to a low-level hum. It is not effective against high frequency sounds, which include crying babies and speech, nor against unpredictable sounds. The technology cannot analyze incoming random sounds quickly enough to put their antidote into the headphones. That said, it was worth buying it to kill low frequency noise.

The makers, aiming at a larger market than silence-lovers, went for music lovers, selling their machine as the way to enjoy music undisturbed by unwanted noise. I believe that the original Noisebuster was withdrawn in 2003, but there is an Earhugger to replace it. And some airlines offer Bose noise-reducing headphones for inflight entertainment.

This is all very well, but what I want is a unit which cuts off the outside world. Other people can then thump out bass rhythms through open car windows, motorbikes can roar past, and businessmen can run their office loudly by phone from the train to show how important they are. I will buy the unit which allows them all to do this without disturbing me at all. That way we can all be happy, except for those whose pleasure comes from imposing their noise on others.

The price? It doesn't matter.

Fifty neighbourhoods in the South-East of England are paying for private security patrols, rather than relying on the police to protect their homes, according to a report in the Evening Standard newspaper. Residents typically pay £1,000 a year for round-the-clock checks and panic buttons.

One private security firm, Crown Protection Service, provides dog patrols in 40 streets in fashionable Kensington alone. They say they have caught burglars and muggers in the act, leading to arrests by the police.

Naturally, the police, and academics at Britain's state-funded universities, are fulminating against private security and say it doesn't cut crime. But would residents fork out £1,000 a year if they thought there was no effect?

People want to feel secure on their own streets and in their own homes, and are prepared to pay for it. The state does not understand this demand - all it offers is a package of diverse services every four years at elections. Nor do state monopoly providers need to bother to respond to it. But security is now one of those essentials, like education and healthcare, that people increasingly are doing for themselves, having given up on the state.

It is good to see people voting with their feet and going private. The only trouble is that only the rich can afford it. As usual, it is poorer families, those whom the state most wants to help, that are left behind to suffer its dismal service.

There is interesting news on the population front. First, according to the bi-cerebral shadow minister David Willetts, Britain is now a country of 60 million people. In the small hours of Friday morning, according to official estimates and projections, in a maternity hospital somewhere in the UK, that figure was passed for the first time.

Perhaps the happy parent was one of those 8,000 underage mothers whom the government frets about but cheerfully subsidizes. Anyway, Britain's rise in numbers contrasts with many other European countries like Italy, where populations are shrinking.

But then some of Britain's population rise is due to the fact that people are flocking to live here. Polish plumbers might have given the French a reason to veto the EU Constitution, but Britain is their destination of choice. Perhaps it's because we speak English (that Estuary sound you hear with all those glottal stops is, in fact, a form of English). Many of the newcomers also praise our tolerance. It certainly can't be the climate.

The newcomers from Eastern Europe who applied to work in Britain since the EU expanded last year are mostly keen to work, and take hard-to-fill jobs. They probably like our growth rate, which is about twice that of the Eurozone. And our unemployment rate is less than half that of some of the core EU members. I guess our taxes, which are way higher than they should be or need be, are still more appealing than the higher taxes and deductions taken in many other EU countries.

60 million will take some getting used to. I hope government gets the message, and doesn't spoil the things that make the place attractive.

Fifteen district councillors and about 70 council staff from Wyre Forest, Kidderminster, attended a two-day "equalities and diversity" course this month. There, Richard Savill (Telegraph) tells us, they learned not to say "shipshape and Bristol fashion" because it referred originally to black slaves. In fact it referred to Bristol’s reputation for well-appointed ships.

They were also told not to use "nitty gritty" because it also referred to transported slaves, though the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang records its first example from 1956. It is used to mean "basic essentials."

Public money is being spent like water on this kind of thing. Equalities officers and diversity co-ordinators grace the public jobs pages with generous salaries and benefits. It might well be counter-productive. People who have no wish to give unintended offence will take reasonable care over their terminology, but it is taken to extravagant and silly lengths which invite ridicule. I doubt if any black people at all regard either of the above expressions as insulting.

People who put out this nonsense, including those who object on 'multi-cultural' grounds to school nativity plays at Christmas, or public carol concerts, do no favours to minorities, most of whom are happy to have their children and themselves enjoy such festivals. The idea that we must examine every word and every action lest it could be taken by someone somewhere as offensive is itself offensive. This is just zealotry, and risks arousing resentment to the very groups in whose name it claims to speak but does not.

The citizens of Nottingham have reacted with dismay to the ban imposed by their sheriff on the wearing of hoods in the vicinity of Sherwood Forest. The ban applies to all hoods worn within the forest or its approaches, and was described by the sheriff as a crime-fighting measure.

"Peaceable citizens have been intimidated by people wearing hoods to conceal their identity," claimed the sheriff’s press officer, announcing penalties ranging from community service to anti-social behaviour orders.

The allegation was dismissed out of hand by Robin of Locksley, a spokesman for the forest dwellers.

"Hoods are simply a fashion statement by young people," he declared, denying that they were worn for illegal activities such as the hunting of royal deer. "This new law makes outlaws of people who are simply keeping up with modern dress styles," he said.

The sheriff scornfully dismissed claims by the hood-wearers that they were robbing the rich to aid the poor. "That’s the government's job," he told reporters.

A smart little yacht passed us as we were enjoying drinks on the riverside terrace of the Hyatt Regency in Miami at the recent meeting of the Philadelphia Society. And its owner...has a point...

I'm in Miami for the annual Fisher Prize presentation, organized by the Atlas Foundation, a family of free-market policy institutes in many countries and continents. They give several prizes each year for effective contributions to the public debate, but the one which caught my eye was for the book The Not So Wild, Wild West from PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center.

The book puts America's frontier history in a new light, showing how people created institutions that facilitated cooperation rather than conflict. You won't understand it from the movies (well, maybe High Noon), but it shows how ordinary people helped carve out legal institutions that tamed the West.

Ownership and property rights, and rules of transfer, evolved spontaneously among this colourful collection of Indians, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, homesteaders, and miners. The book concludes that we could learn something from them today - but instead, governments are trying to write the rules - and messing it up! Worth a look.

A rather attractive picture of the British emerges from the World Values Survey. They are found to be amongst the most tolerant of different backgrounds and alternative lifestyles, but far less ready to trust the state and its institutions.

The British are among those least concerned about the ethnic background of their neighbours, least likely to discriminate against gays, and more tolerant of casual sex and drug use. John Elliott goes through the figures in the Sunday Times.

With this laidback attitude to what others do comes a deep distrust of government. Only 23% have confidence in the political system, and only 36% in Parliament. Confidence in the EU is put at 26%. The British find it easier to accept their neighbours than their politicians.

Those more disposed to prefer conformity might hold that the figures reveal a lack of values in a nation which has lost its moral compass, but

The findings confirm Britain's long history of accepting people with different backgrounds and lifestyles, according to Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. "This is a picture of high tolerance, which is a British tradition," he said. "Not only are we in general more tolerant than other societies, it’s the key to the British character."

The image of the British as live-and-let-live types is more attractive to most people than that of drink-fuelled hooligans rampaging through foreign streets as well as their own. I hope it is true.

I was booked to appear on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday morning with Lord Layard, but the schedules changed when the pope's death was announced.

The discussion was to have been about Layard's book on Happiness, which I wrote about here in January. His argument is that although people are twice as wealthy as they were a generation ago, they are no happier. I addressed this subject a year and one week ago, saying:

People will always find reasons to be unhappy, whether it be from the breakdown of a relationship or dissatisfaction with their appearance. It will be progress, though, if they are no longer unhappy because their child died of cholera. Economic growth can remove some of the unnecessary sources of unhappiness, including hunger, deprivation and disease.

Layard proposes taxing high incomes to prevent us working for money which will make us no happier, and to eliminate the envy which comes when we see people earning more than we do. The Good Book instructs us to refrain from envy, but Layard is less demanding. Rather than have us resist the temptation, he wants government to remove it.

David Beckham, Jamie Oliver and Sir Elton John all earn more than I do, but I do not envy them their wealth. I would be happy to see them earn more. I applaud their success and the pleasure they bring to millions, and I do not need government to confiscate their wealth in order for me to avoid feeling resentment and envy.

Wealth can do much but it isn’t everything. As the great philosopher Neil Diamond, put it:

Money talks, but it don’t sing and dance, and it don’t walk.

Britain's government says that all workers should be entitled to count bank (public) holidays as additional to their annual leave. That means every worker will be entitled to a total of 28 days' paid holiday a year.

Apart from thinking that we'd be better off if every politicians were entitled to 365 days' paid holiday, this fixation with set holidays mystifies me. Originally, I think, bank holidays were introduced at a time when all business was done in cash. Forcing the banks to close meant that nobody could do any business. So firms were forced to shut too, meaning that workers gained a holiday - which was the aim of the policy.

Now though, the banks could shut for a week or a month and business would carry on regardless. But because of the tradition of the thing, all businesses shut anyway and everyone goes on holiday. Which means they all get in their cars and head for the coast on the same day. Pretty silly.

If politicians believe that workers should all get 28 days' holiday, they should say that. Why force them to take eight of those days' holiday at exactly the same time? Let people take their holidays flexibly, as suits them best, and abolish this antiquated bank holiday concept.

Better still, butt out and let workers negotiate the pay and holidays they want with employers, as suits both best.

Richard Layard’s new book on Happiness is reviewed in The Economist. It looks at the things which make us happy, and suggests that we are not necessarily happier for being richer. Bo Derek’s take on it was slightly different, though. She said

Those who say money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop.

In more serious vein Layard, an LSE professor and Labour peer, deals with some of the things conducive to happiness. Have good personal relationships, be involved in communities, have the security of religious convictions, settle into a lasting marriage. More controversially he suggests that relative status is a source of unhappiness, and that one person’s pay rise creates misery in another. People would rather out-earn their peers, even settling for a lower income if they can do so. He suggests using the tax system to curb the high flyers whose success make everyone else unhappy.

I often suggest to school audiences that it might be progress if we can remove some of the unnecessary sources of unhappiness. They may be unhappy in future because they are dissatisfied with the way they look, or because personal relationships don’t work out, but they probably won’t be unhappy because their child died of cholera or because their parents starved to death.

Many philosophers have proposed that happiness lies in moderation, and that the best goal is an above-average level which avoids the peaks of ecstasy and the troughs of despair. Few have followed Layard in suggesting that our personal happiness should drive public policy. As the Economist reviewer points out, if it does,

where then is the call to make divorce harder, given the pain that he says broken homes inflict on children? Further, where is his desire to compel the worship of a higher being, also on his list as a source of happiness? Thankfully, both are absent, but he never mentions the obvious reason for why they are: namely, that most people value freedom as a greater good than enforced happiness.

The UK’s Queen Elizabeth used her Christmas Day speech to make a powerful plea for tolerance, referring to the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan.

It is a timeless story of a victim of a mugging who was ignored by his own countrymen but helped by a foreigner, and a despised foreigner at that. The implication drawn by Jesus is clear. Everyone is our neighbour, no matter what race, creed or colour. The need to look after a fellow human being is far more important than any cultural or religious differences.

Adam Smith makes a strikingly similar point in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.

How selfish soever man maybe supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.

Smith says that while we cannot feel the passions of others directly, we can imagine how we would respond in similar circumstances, and thus feel 'sympathy' with their plight. We might today use 'empathy.'

Some suppose this sits at odds with the pursuit of their own interest which features more prominently in The Wealth of Nations, but the two works are not contradictory. The ‘self-love’ referred to is not to be equated with selfishness, but takes its place under prudence as one of the virtues, alongside justice and benevolence. It consists in a proper regard for our preservation, he says.

To use self-interest as a guide in economic activity is both appropriate and efficient, but those who feel no compassion for their fellow humans seem less than fully human themselves.

Prince Charles was in Turkey last month. He said that it would be good if Turkey moved towards 'social justice' among other things.

The royals are meant to be above party politics, so he must think that 'social justice' is a non-political term. In that case, Prince Charles has been right royally tricked.

'Social justice' is a term which has been used by the Left for some years in preference to 'socialism' because they reckon, quite rightly, that 'socialism' has some unfortunate associations (poor, backward countries, Stalin, etc.). They also reckon that no one could object to the concept. After all, we are all in favour of justice aren't we? So presumably we are in favour of 'social justice'?

No. We are not. 'Social justice' is a dangerous term because it can mean anything the most socialist person can think of. It can mean 90% income tax rates, and 100% inheritance tax. It can mean unemployment benefit at £300 per week and a university education for all at the expense of those still working. It can readily mean a state utterly weighed down with taxes, benefits and 'rights' - one in which a dwindling number of increasingly highly taxed individuals work to support those tempted into a life on benefits. It can mean low-growth and a relatively low standard of living for the entire society.

The concept is highly political and Prince Charles should know better than to use it.

James Batholomew is author of The Welfare State We're In.

An 1815 book by Louis Simond, the French-born American traveller, has some fascinating insights on the manners, customs and institutions of Britain, seen from his very cosmopolitan point of view. The closing paragraph, on the conflict in Ireland, struck me as applicable to many cauldrons of discontent throughout the world:

The political malady of Ireland appears to me to be at present more ideal than actual; and to consist in the traditional recollection of all the miseries suffered and inflicted, producing a sort of alienation of mind, and making the Irish an insane people, as far as political parties are concerned. If the recollection of the past could be obliterated at once on both sides, all the difficulties standing in the way of that perfect union, which shold prevail between the different parts of the same empire, would vanish at once. The great aim should be, to introduce new ideas, by a liberal system of education for all ranks of people; - and the best army to send to Ireland, would be one commanded by Bell and Lancaster [the leading educators of the day], and composed of their disciples.

I think this is very wise. I would argue that we need to spread the principles of representational democracy through conflict areas too, since democracies rarely go to war with each other - their people have too much to lose. And of course, free trade: for once again, people who benefit from trading openly with each other have all the more reason to bury their past disagreements and look towards a future in which they can bring each other at least some measure of prosperity.

Governments think they have to intervene everywhere to improve our lives and make us happier. But if legislation brings happiness, then we ought to have the happiest population on the planet, Brunel University Vice-Chancellor Professor Steven Schwartz told an Adam Smith Institute seminar last night.

Unfortunately, state intervention usually stops people from doing what they want to do - and ends up making them less happy. In a market economy, people exchange goods, services and money voluntarily because they believe they will benefit from the exchange. Swapping what they have for something they want more makes them happier. Where regulation thwarts free exchange, it eats in to our pursuit of happiness.

Of course, nearly all regulations have some justification. We don't want unsuspecting people buying electrical goods that are unsafe, for example. But much of the regulation that is justified in this way is actually an attempt by those in authority to stamp on everyone else their own view of how people live. We've seen that recently in the UK with all the dreary middle-class prattling about how those awful American-style casinos would corrupt us all if our 40-year-old gambling laws were liberalized. And there is no shortage of people who would like to modify our behaviour to fit in with their own view of how we should live.

Governments can't legislate us happy. "There have been many more bad governments in history than good ones," concluded Schwartz. "The benefits of freedom are under threat - from ourselves."

For some years observers have commented on the results of China's 'One Child' policy. ABC's Jane Hutcheon called them "the over pampered and over-fed offspring of China's elite." Jesse Zink, writing on the Acadia University page says that

the one-child policy has led to the rise of the so-called "little emperors" - only children who are spoiled, since their parents and grandparents have fewer people on whom to spread their largesse. Studies have shown that these children are less interested in tradition than their elders and feel compelled to quickly carve out a niche for themselves in society.

China's leaders introduced the 'One Child' policy for population control, never imagining children who would grow up as the sole centre of attention of doting parents and grandparents, and accustomed to instant gratification.

These solitary children carry the family's hopes and ambitions, too. Clay Chandler, in Fortune and The Business, reports that they are put through a daunting schedule of study, and are pressured to succeed.

Nanjing University's Professor Feng Xiaotian is quoted in the Straits Times questioning how different these children are from those of multi-child families. But most observers think they are already beginning to have an impact on the Chinese Society and economy.

The first wave of them are now in their 20s, and have decidedly uncommunist characteristics. They are very concerned about personal appearance, and spend freely on grooming products and designer wear. They assert individualism rather than collective values, and present themselves to the world through brand and lifestyle choices. They eagerly embrace new gadgetry, and seek to do things which mark them out as modern and different from their predecessors. They might be the ultimate me-generation.

In many ways their values and attitudes correspond with the high growth consumer society which China is fast becoming. They may lack the stoicism, restraint, and self-effacement which enabled their predecessors to survive the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, but they are a generation more likely to make a success of China’s embrace of capitalism.

It is one of history's unintended consequences that Communist China's 'One Child' policy, designed to produce a more easily managed society, is fast producing a generation more suited to the spontaneous dynamism of a free-wheeling capitalist culture.