Adam Smith Institute

I'm quite impressed by Right On, the Daily Telegraph's 15-minute weekly television show. It's all very professionally produced. It features a two-minute segment called Heffer Confronted in which the rotund and politically incorrect pundit is confronted by (the slightly less rotund and almost as equally politicially incorrect) Iain Dale. There's also a discussion with leading politicians on a current affairs issue (on this one it's Alan Duncan MP) and a short section of snippets from the Westminster gossip factory.

I think this will work and will grow. Iain Dale's 18 Doughty Street internet enterprise was a really good try at pioneering the unknown terrain of online television. But I guess that few people want to watch five hours of political stuff on their computer screen each night. And if you just dipped in, you never knew exactly what you'd get. I'm sure the way forward is something like the Telegraph have done - a few short snippets that you can select from, and play the bits that really interest you. I imagine the choice will expand as the Telegraph gets to grip with the format. Worth a look.

While the proximate cause for the rising distaste for the Beijing Olympics is the way that China treats Tibet, I think there’s something else. My local market stallholder expressed it the other day as "all those Chinese in rows and ranks of uniforms – makes me shiver".

What he pictured was an old cliché of Maoist uniformity. I rather liked the “rows and ranks” which I think was expressed tautologically, but actually captured the sinister uniformity and hierarchical inequality of communist China rather well. Today, the cultural mores of post Mao capitalistic China are quite different, with the creative chaos of Western clothes and accessories prevalent. But he did bring back to me the scene when London’s 2012 Olympics were announced. The British delegation leapt in delight and hugged and wept, but what struck me then was the contrast of their individual abandon with their corporate uniformity. If my memory serves me right they were all uniformly dressed in formal business suits in a rather drab beige.

For me, this is the lurking cultural mistake behind the Olympics. Sports people suffer from some of the blind intensity of totalitarians. Sure, they celebrate excellence, but it is not a spontaneous excellence, rather a planned excellence that is generated by a rigorous collective effort. This deliberate construction of performance has strong echoes to the way it is achieved through the controlled statist methods of the communist regime. As such, it becomes culturally unreal, a freak show that ordinary mortals see through.

All over Britain teenagers – most between 15 and 20 - are being recruited into our Olympic effort for 2012. These half-formed athletes will be sponsored and trained up to excel on our behalf in the Stratford wasteland. What a contrast with the ideal of individual self-discovered excellence – spontaneous achievement by those who take part because they have found that they can excel. [Click read more to continue]

The tabloid newspapers are greatly enjoying the story of Natasha Farnham: "Drunk at 12, liver failed at 14, now rehab at 18", as yesterday's Metro put it.

The young lady in question apparently began drinking at 12 and was drinking six bottles of wine a day by the age of 13 (well, at least she had some class). After a three-day bender aged 14, in which she consumed 16 bottles of wine, cider and spirits, she was diagnosed with liver failure. Now – to her credit – she is warning other children not to repeat her mistakes.

The most telling part of the story were the comments of Natasha's mother, Michelle, who said "irresponsible advertising" was to blame. Yes, that's right, her 13 year old daughter drank 6 bottles of wine a day (Did she notice? Did she care?), and it's all down to advertising!

The abdication of parental responsibility must surely be behind many of Britain's social ills. Yet in this, as in most other things, government is not the solution to the problem. Indeed, to a great extent, government is the problem. It is the long years of welfarism and the nanny state that have told people we depend on politicians, not on ourselves, for our wellbeing. It's a sorry state of affairs.

When I went to Dublin a while back, I had a couple of spare hours so I thought I'd look up some of my Irish ancestors. I was advised to go to the National Library (pictured), which seemed sensible, so I did. After a few minutes in its labyrinth, I eventually found the right bit of the building, only to be told that the records had all gone over to the National Archives about a mile away. So I trudged there, but by the time I had got through its labyrinthine system I had run out of time, with not so much as a readers' ticket to show for it.

Yesterday, back in Dublin, I bee-lined it to the Archives at the crack of dawn. Only to be told that the records I wanted were not in fact there, but in the General Register Office, about another mile back in the other direction again. Thanks, people.

Nor is the General Register Office easy to find. It's in a shopping mall, and there is no signage until you get inside the door – 'Reading Room 3rd Floor'. Even when you get to the third floor it's hard to spot, sharing the same door as the child welfare office. Is someone worried about terrorism (well, the IRA did blow up the record office in the 1920s, and thousands of irreplaceable records were lost, but that threat has somewhat subsided these days)?

And not surprisingly the place is a typical state-run organization. The staff are certainly pleasant and helpful enough (Ireland is still small enough for them to feel easy calling you by your first name). But there are bizarre rules (you can't order up more than five birth, marriage or death certificates a day, for example, even at 4 Euros a copy) which seem designed to make life comfortable for the producers rather than convenient for the consumers. And the indexes to all these records are kept in large, lumbering volumes.

This whole place, like most record offices I guess, should be privatized. There is no shortage of people wanting to look up their ancestry, and willing to pay to do it. A private-sector manager would have converted all the indexes, not just to microfilm (which you're lucky to get in some libraries) but to digital form, so that they can be scanned in seconds by anyone in the world – rather than people having to waste hours having to find the right place in Dublin and then having to lift, pore through, and replace heavy volumes – and copies of the records would spit out on your printer.

A lot of people worry about what would happen to libraries if the state did not provide them. I have no doubt. Without the dead hand of state bureaucracy, the whole business would be revolutionized in short order.

Yesterday I held forth at the same dispatch box that cradled the notes and timepieces of great orators like Edmund Burke and brilliant wits like Oscar Wilde. I was at Trinity College Dublin to debate arts subsidies.

Inviting state-subsidized students and academics to reject state subsidies is always a lost cause, but I made the case that subsidies corroded true art. They centralize what should give us diversity. They bureaucratize what should be free-sprited. They tax the poor for the delight of the rich. And they give us, not Shakespeare and Chopin, but an unmade bed and the Millennium Dome. On the other side, my usually bone-dry friend Dr Sean Barrett argued that arts spending was tiny, and better than most of what government does with our money.

But I wonder if Ireland's economic woes will make taxpayers there less inclined to fund any kind of state spending. After years of boom, house prices have fallen around seven percent in Dublin (some say the final fall will be three or four times that) and the unemloyment lines are growing.

Ireland's boom started, like Britain's, following a radical tax-cutting and public-sector reform programme But then Euro membership turned the real boom into an inflationary boom. Now a rising Euro makes it harder for Ireland to sell abroad and get through these hard times. Euro membership has been a euphoric drug. But now Ireland's suffering the hangover.

I was just trying to book some last-minute event tickets the other day. It's astonishing just how quickly many big events get sold out, mostly because of the policies of the promoters. Concerts and sports fixtures underprice their tickets in the belief that this makes them more accessible for the 'real fans' or because promoters earn more from sell-outs. So if you don't get in immediately the phone lines open, you've no chance.

A lot of policymakers would like to keep it that way because they simply don't like the idea of 'touts' selling tickets and making a profit out of Wimbledon and the like. The image is of the shifty, ill-shaven character flogging high-priced tickets outside the ground. But the reality is that there is now a thriving secondary market in event tickets, thanks to the internet and other highly respectable agencies such as Seatwave.

So folk like me can get the tickets they want, even if they have to pay a bit extra. So I'm glad that the House of Commons committee on Culture, Media and Sport, in its recent report on the subject, rejected the case for heavy restrictions on the resale of tickets. The promoters want regulation so that they can continue to control prices. But you can't buck the market. An open and secure secondary market has got to be good for fans. Seatwave, for instance, offers a guarantee that the tickets it sells are genuine, 150% refund if they do not arrive on time, and a full refund if the event is cancelled (which is more than you get from many promoters).

But politicians are born meddlers, and the Committee also suggested that there should be a levy on tickets resold online. The idea is that any premium on the price can be channelled back to players and performers. In fact it would be just a tax on fans. And such is the way of these schemes that most of the cash would go back to the biggest stars, who are already not short of a bob or two. The market – free of daft political schemes like this – is unquestionably the best way to ensure that tickets end up in the hands of those who most want them.

Never depend on common sense from politicians; it's not their strength. But in rejecting the idea of a ban on secondary online ticket sales by both touts and bona fide organizations the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee has come close to showing something akin to sense. While their criticism of the rogue elements of the ticket touting world is justifiable, they are right to ignore those calling for a levy on secondary ticket sales.

The entertainment industry should provide solutions to the problems of its own creation and desist in seeking government intervention. In attempting to squeeze more cash out of the punters through a further levy they are merely trying to keep their up-front ticket prices artificially low.

Within each segment of the entertainment industry, from sport to music, through to such things as opera, ballet and musicals, each has its own individual economy; yet touts appear regardless. The touts may have purchased tickets and be looking to sell for a profit, perhaps cashing in on sold out shows and the increased demand upon a scarce resource or they may be selling on the tickets of those who couldn't attend. Either way all the tickets have been legally purchased from the seller, so the seller should have maximised their profit from the event, in which case what happens to the ticket after that point is irrelevant.

The under-pricing of tickets creates an unnatural scarcity which is reflected in the prices paid to ticket touts. We should leave the touts alone, and start suggesting that the producers and entertainers charge the real market value of their product. They will know when they've succeeded in this – the touts will only ever be able to garner face value prices for the tickets in their hands.

And for those that can't afford the real prices, the providers should find a way of redistributing the wealth within the prices they ask.

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!]

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.

Timothy Garton Ash had an interesting article in The Guardian this week, on the subject of religion in a free society. His argument is that for religious diversity to work we need to spell out more clearly the essentials of a free society.

Freedom of expression must be reclaimed from political correctness. Freedom of religion and equality before the law must be reasserted. Doing this requires a secular public sphere but the question is, what does that mean in practice?

It should not mean every trace of religion has to be purged. Displaying Christmas manger scenes in public buildings, for instance, or exhibiting the Ten Commandments in a law court does not strike me as problematic. It merely reflects the heritage of a country's culture and laws and, in reality, does no harm.

As Garton Ash says, it is practical questions that matter more than the theory of secularism. How to apply it to faith schools, for instance, or the teaching of evolution, the Mohammed cartoons, the building of new mosques or the hijab?

I have no problem with faith schools receiving public funding, but they should not discriminate between applicants, and religious instruction should be optional, separate from the standard timetable, and funded by the church, not the taxpayer. The theory of evolution should be taught in science lessons, though not perhaps as an absolute truth. Intelligent design, on the other hand, has no place in science lessons. This is not to say it's invalid, just that it's not a scientific theory and should not be taught as such.

The Mohammed cartoons are a straightforward example of freedom of expression. Living in a free society means you have the right to offend, and the right to be offended (but not to incite or threaten violence). New mosques and the hijab, on the other hand, are matters of equal treatment and religious freedom. People should be free to pursue their faith as they see fit, so long they don't harm others in the process.

This whole debate is one that liberalism is well equipped to deal with.

At some point someone has tell these politicians to stop. Yet another has been found to be have opened his mouth without thinking when pontificating on football. This time it was Richard Caborn MP, the former Sports Minister and now a possible Ambassador for the 2018 World Cup bid (please, no!) gave his views on wages in football:

I think there ought to be cost controls. Huge television revenues are now washing through into wages and that is something football ought to look at and some of that ought to be invested back into football.

There ought to be a discussion, not just at the English level but at the European level, and that's why the new European white paper and the new treaty changes on sport are important in this area and there ought to be some relationship between income and expenditure.

In simple terms for the former minister: Football clubs take the money coming in and then allocate it as they see fit based on how best to make a profit through the best use of their resources. Players wages are just one small part of it, but they are a reflection of how much the club value the talent at their disposal in the context of the competition around them. Not only do the revenues go on players wages but also on transfer fees, community outreach, fees to the Football Association and assorted other outgoings that are all part of the trickle down in wealth. Of course all this could be cut off at source by the government through taxation on TV revenues at a punitive rate, and thus destroy football as we know it.

A private industry is successful at entertaining people, and they are being rewarded for this and yet this is seen as wrong? When Mr Caborn speaks of, “cost controls” what he actually means is, “the government should legislate and impose a salary cap on the wages of individuals working in the private sector.” The clubs are better able to dispose of their income more wisely than a government minister ever could and they should be able to do so as they please without interference from economically illiterate ministers.

The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all.