Adam Smith Institute

Little Johnny and his dad went to the supermarket and were in line for the checkout counter when Johnny said to his dad, 'Look at that Lady in front of us, Daddy, she's fat.'
The man notices the lady but politely tells Little Johnny, 'That's not a nice thing to say'.
Little Johnny continued to stare and point and then said, 'No Daddy, she's really fat.;
The man said, 'Please son, we're almost done here, behave and stop saying those things'.
Just then the lady's phone went off and Little Johnny said, 'Watch out dad, she's backing up!'

It's time to make the Olympics not only profit making but also interesting. Every four years the Olympics rolls into some poor naïve city and proceeds to prove to all and sundry that it wasn't worth the time, the effort, or the money that was spent on it.

With London 2012 expected to be enormously over-budget, I would suggest implementing the following plan - not just to save money, but to also put some life back into the Olympics. Post 2008, regional qualifying should take place over three years, reducing the field of competing athletes to a cream of the region. Then, when the Olympics come around, the events are simply a series of finals with no one but champions competing in them. Perhaps the Olympics could be reduced to a three-day event. Infrastructure would then be dispersed around the World and costs shared, and the event itself would be short and sweet.

The amount of taxpayer's money that is going to be wasted upon on the upcoming London Olympics is not even known by the current administration. The honesty of their continual claims that it will not be over budget is hard to believe, but they could insure themselves against dramatic loses by seeking to have the cost of the games shared across the globe! The Olympic Committee will continue to seek others to pay for their games and, unfortunately, many cities/governments will continue to force their taxpayers to pay.

It has to be remembered that governments are vain, and there is nothing better than an Olympics to rub the egos of those in power.

[Ed - I also like Sir Simon Jenkins' rather more modest proposal: that we deliver the Olympic games at the originally agreed cost and not a penny more. If that means we have to use existing stadiums and venues, well, so much the better!]

Alain Roberts climbed Portland House the other day - a tall building (mainly full of quangos) near London's Victoria Station. He did it all with his hands and feet - he used no ropes, pitons or other kit. At the top he was promptly arrested.

The charge? Wasting police time.

Now I don't know what makes the police think their time is so valuable that the antics of this harmless eccentric amount to a waste of it. Presumably they reckon that while they were taking tea on the roof and waiting for 'Spiderman' Roberts to arrive, they could have been out booking motorists for doing 36mph, or harrassing middle class citizens for trying to stop thugs breaking into their homes.

The police didn't have to be there. Their action reminds me of the supposed lawyer's bill: To crossing the road to update you on your case, £100. To crossing back after realizing it wasn't you £100.

We seem to live in a society where we invent crimes for no good reason. Why punish people for smoking weed (or tobacco for that matter) when the only person caused any harm is themselves? I'd really prefer it if the police sat at home rather than having to think up new reasons to arrest folk.

Sadly, we in the UK are going this way too, reversing the burden of proof. It's not big, it's not clever and it doesn't advance freedom or liberty in any manner whatsoever. If the Government wants to take your property they should at least have the decency to convict you of something first.

Prohibiting alcohol, prohibiting drugs, prohibiting paid sex: it all leads to the same thing : merely a change in the channels of distribution as was known a century ago but I guess it takes time for politicians to catch up.

Just why are people trying to increase voter turnout? It's far too high already!

One of those justifications for the pub smoking ban: that non-smokers would flock back to the pubs. Well, that seems to have worked, doesn't it ? 

Now this is what you might call high-tech crime fighting ! 

Markets in everything. Finding it difficult to grind out the blog posts over the holidays? Try Blog Sitter . 

And finally , vital information for that last minute shopping, or for the January sales. Which food halls offer the most samples? 

The Conservatives' defence spokesman, Dr Liam Fox, is a worried man. Not just because the UK has more attack aircraft in the RAF museum at Hendon that it has flying in the RAF. As he told the Economic Research Council the other day, he sees trouble brewing over energy security.

He argued that 90 percent of the world's oil comes from undemocratic countries, which is asking for trouble. And a fair proportion of that has to come through some pretty narrow straits and canals that are obvious targets for terrorists.

Fox believes that NATO - which unlike the EU does not exclude Norway (a large producer) and Turkey (a major transit country) - is maybe better placed to deal with the issues of energy security. But liberalizing its own energy markets is maybe a good first step. We can't afford the present inefficiencies.

Meanwhile Russia is using its energy strength as an instrument of foreign policy. Gerhard Schroeder, whose government underwrote a €1bn loan to Gazprom just before he left office, for a pipeline project (which he now sits on the board of.) The Ukrainians and others have felt the heat - or rather the cold - when Moscow turned off energy supplies. Even Norway is beefing up its navy because it feels it can't trust the Russians. Maybe planting a flag on the seabed was not just a stunt.

But the lack of investment in upstream gas production in Russia, thinks Fox, might well lead to future shortages, even if Russian malevolence does not. That puts the UK, with its declining North Sea production, and at the end of all the pipelines, in a dangerous place.

Maybe its' time we started being nicer to the Canadians, with all their oil sands, uranium and hydro-electric power.

Little Johny asks a pregnant woman: "What is in your tummy?'
'My baby!'
'Do you love him?'
'Of course I do!'
'Why did you eat him then?'

It's time to bring this farce to an end. The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has been abused, in the supposed name of art, for too long now. November of this year saw the erection of "Model Hotel 2007" (pictured left), by Thomas Schutte, a few sheets of coloured glass, and some metal rods; this replaced the eyesore more commonly known as "Alison Lapper Pregnant" by Marc Quinn. Rather than commissioning any further pieces of artwork the Mayor of London should begin a campaign to raise the statue originally intended for that plinth: King William IV.

King William IV reigned from 1830 to 1837, during which time he played a key role in the poor law reform that led to the Reform Act of 1832, also under his reign slavery was abolished (even though he had previously spoken against this) and child labour laws established. He was the first truly constitutional monarch of Great Britain and he also served admirably (no pun intended) for his country in the Royal Navy. Thus qualifying him for his place in Trafalgar Square.

Yet it is highly unlikely that the current Mayor, Ken Livingston, would have high regard of someone who was a champion of the poor and who held the people of this country sovereign. It is also doubtful that he'd even allow the statue to be placed there as originally intended, even if it were privately funded, let alone publicly! But the real reason for not allowing the erection of a statue to someone who achieved so much could be the embarrassment it would cause to our current crop of politicians.

So the time has come to say goodbye to the Adam Smith Institute and move on to pastures new. After a Christmas that will be centred around friends and family, I will be paying a visit to Moscow, before taking up a new post at the Policy Exchange in January.

I am pleased to have spent this time at the ASI, and have certainly found it challenging. This is an exciting time for anyone involved in politics, and I wish the ASI the best of luck in helping to shape the future agenda.

Something to mull over. Linux shows that Hayek was right?

Highlights from the Scottish political year. 

If Chile is doing better than Venezuela and has been and is more econonimcally liberal, doesn't that show that neo-liberalism is the way to go? 

If the rich pay most of the Federal taxes, then most of the spending benefits the rich, right? No, both the taxation system and the spending are progressive. 

Great economic controversies of our time. Why is there so little sex going on? ("Speak for yourself matey" is a necessary but not sufficient answer to this question.)

Time to update the old rhyme: some are born little libertarians.

And finally, is Hillary Clinton really Honoria Glossop? The unnecessary but sufficient answer of "Yes" would explain a lot.

Dani Rodrik asks an interesting question about the World Trade Organisation. Why does the US actually (eventually, grumbling as it does so) do as the organisation insists it must, while refusing to join or obey other such international ones?

I would love it if somebody would come up with a sensible story as to why the U.S. has ceded so much power in trade, while zealously guarding its sovereignty and right to unilateral action in every other domain.

And the answer is I think quite simple.  The comments allude to several points, like the usefulness of using the WTO to face down internal protectionist pressures, but the most basic one is that the WTO is not in fact a giving up of sovereignty. It's a purely contractual relationship. Upon joining the WTO you agree to a certain course of action: we'll do this and this on trade for example. Everything that you will have to do in the future is spelt out: and those duties cannot be changed without your express agreement, for each and every country has veto power. What this means is that, having joined, a country is not sucked into a further widening of the agreement, the imposition of further duties and responsibilities, without the express agreement of that country.

Compare and contrast this with the European Union, the use of Qualified Majority Voting, the lack of such vetoes in many areas and thus the ever widening remit of the organisation and the imposition of policies that were not agreed at the outset and cannot be refused now.

The general international policy of the US is not to join things organised upon the latter lines, but to do so when they are organised along the former. The lesson to be learned would therefore seem to be that if you want the US to join something, you need to make it something purely contractual, not something that does indeed impinge upon sovereignty by having an ever expanding remit without that veto power.

Something worth remembering as people struggle to create Kyoto II perhaps? 

News this week that a key mental health unit in Surrey is to close is yet another hallmark of a disturbing reality that plagues the National Health Service.

The principle behind the NHS is that politicians motivated by a desire to win elections will have an incentive to provide good healthcare to the public at large. This glib and simplistic and view – typical of the naive school of thought that forged the UK's public sector culture – overlooks a key clash of values between politics and health.

Politics is an industry that is essentially based around popularity, while healthcare is one based around necessity. It is because of this fundamental contradiction in values that the unholy nationalisation of British health has resulted in healthcare priorities being set by ill-informed politician under pressure from a largely ignorant populace. The end result is that a government's performance in health is measured in terms of how much money is spent rather than how much suffering is alleviated. Indeed, health and education must be the only industries on earth where rising costs and falling productivity are considered signs of success.

When healthcare is run by the state and driven by a desire for headlines, it is not surprising that NHS provision of mental healthcare remains shockingly low, with minimal funding and appalling disregard for the needs of the patient.

The government would be better to measure progress in new ways, for no matter how much money they say they have spent, when a priority patient still has to wait up to 3 months to see a psychiatrist it is time to start asking how many vulnerable souls have been allowed to fade from lack of available help.

It is unlikely that any government will be able to prioritise such 'unexciting' areas whilst still keeping up the required level of media-hype to stay popular, so perhaps it is time to consider the ultimate humbling of the NHS – to acknowledge that the present model reeks of failure and that it is time to try something new.

Just throw the book at them...

Last week the French Booksellers' Union won their court-battle. The French people will now have to pay delivery charges for Amazon orders rather than be entitled to free delivery.

This is in order to protect French bookstores from 'unfair' competition. The result surely has to be that Amazon is more expensive for the French. However, customers buy books from Amazon for many good reasons; time, effort and cost; it is one of the most efficient ways of buying books. It is hard to believe that having to pay another 5 Euros is going to drive people onto the freezing streets of France this Christmas in order to patronise their local bookshop.

French people will continue to use Amazon for convenience but pay more for the privilege; if I was a French person – and luckily I'm not – I would be quite irate at the French Booksellers' Union for this early Christmas present. I would exercise this anger by voting against them with my money and continuing to use Amazon.

Clues for the Clueless: Dogbert's Big Book of Manners (£5.69 + postage)

"Lots of things have changed in the millions of years since etiquette was invented. Microwave ovens, for example. And so it seemed like a good time to update the rules of etiquette. Of course, you could buy some other book on etiquette, and in it you might find such useful titbits as what kind of uniiform the upstairs servants should wear, or the proper way to address the Pope when you meet him in person. But if you want practical information - like what to do after you sneeze in your hand - then you have to buy this book. It's the only book that speaks to you as the unwashed heathen that you know you are. Thanks. And I'm not just saying that."

Buy it here, from the ASI bookstore.