Adam Smith Institute

Sale of the government's racehorse betting monopoly - the TOTE - cheap to a panel of racing interests would be a lucky windfall to wealthy owners but daylight robbery for the taxpayers who are supposed to own it, says Keith Boyfield. This ASI report led to a European Commission decision to block the government's cosy deal with the racing industry.

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In a new ASI paper, distinguished energy expert Prof Ian Fells says the government's energy policy is 'timid, complacent, and reckless'.

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Media entrepreneur Eben Wilson says that a state-supported BBC is simply out of date in a world of 2500 digital channels. Politicians love the free airtime, but why should we pay? Time to sell Auntie and give every family a £200 cashback.

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Tim Ambler of the London Business School says that up to £1b a year is being wasted on unnecessary bureaucracy in the research councils - and that we would get better science at less cost by allocating the research budget directly to the universities.

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Do we need regulation, rule-books and new codes of practice to keep boardroom executives in check? Corporate-governance specialist Elaine Sternberg says not. The keys to getting on-the-ball, responsible management are competition and shareholder empowerment. Her punchy report takes on the regulationists and shows how to achieve good governance without politics.

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The only booming sector in the UK seems to be the public sector. We've skimmed the Guardian's jobs pages and added up the cost of all those community awareness co-ordinators (30,000 of them each year, at nearly a billion quid in salaries). Our report, by Jonathan Woolham, shows exactly where your hard-earned tax money is going.

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Britain's electricity supply has been left dangerously vulnerable by the government's plans to phase out nuclear power and rely more on gas and renewable energy. Wind and solar power are costly and intermittent sources of energy that cannot fill the gap left by nuclear, while planned gas imports rely on a complex cross-national network that is easily disrupted by political upheavals in any one of a number of countries.

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Travel by air is becoming almost as common place in the 21st century as walking was for our ancestors. Whether on business or for pleasure, we fly at the cick of a mouse, to the four corners of the earth. Furthermore thanks to travel search engines and low cost airlines, we even decide to go, not to a place of choice, but to where the cost is least. These are extraodinary freedoms. Air travel and air freight are, at the same time, sinews of a growing,internet- linked, just in time, global economy. The growth is explosive. Since 1949, the birth year of the first passenger jet, air travel has grown 70 fold.

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Local authority officers, backed by proposals from Brussels, want to end the 20 year old deregulation of buses and bring bus operations back under their control, says transport executive Prof. John Hibbs OBE in a new ASI report. But that could mean less competition and higher taxes...

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Showing the practical benefits that education choice has brought in other countries, the authors develop a no-nonsense plan to open UK education up to the same choice and competition that is already improving school standards in the most disadvantaged communities in Europe and the US. The plan aims to improve equality, access and diversity by allowing parents an escape from failing schools, empowering parental choice, and boosting the provision of new non-state community schools.

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