Are we doomed?

Written by | Friday 5 August 2011

With so much bad news from the financial markets, it is becoming difficult to see the wood for the trees. This is my attempt to identify the main economic problems we face, and to explore their policy implications. 

Problem 1. Sovereign Debt

Liberty and assisted suicide

Written by | Tuesday 2 August 2011

This week the issue of assisted suicide and euthanasia has come up again. In one case a woman in a coma who had signed a living will asking to be taken off her life support. The court has allowed this. In another case, M is not in a Permanent Vegetative State (PVS), but in a Minimally Conscious State (MCS). The dilemma here is that she is conscious and reacts to stimuli to the extent that she cries when listening to music; but she cannot actually communicate.

LulzSec and the open society

Written by | Wednesday 13 July 2011

The first subversive act I can remember carrying out was during the spring of my senior year in high school. At the time, I had signed up for intramural ultimate frisbee – I didn't take to interscholastic sports and never saw the point of spending my weekends being carted off to faraway destinations in a van, just to throw a ball at some people I'd never met before. Everything was going swell until one day, after arriving to practice bare-footed as usual, I was ordered to go back to my room to throw on some shoes.

How better regulation can make Private Military Contractors work

Written by | Monday 11 July 2011

Introduction

A thicket of summer grass: the thymotic anger behind the strikes

Written by | Thursday 16 June 2011

Summer is very nearly upon us, and for many it is a happy time of year, one we associate with pleasant memories of carefree youth and halcyon days gone by. I for one remember, as a child, lazy Sundays fishing on the creek that flowed out of the marsh alongside our house; as a teenager, spending hot and breezy afternoons skippering a rickety, thirty-year-old catamaran on Long Island Sound; and, as a law student, flying back to America to watch the Fourth of July fireworks by the water with my family.

The folly of the public benefit test

Written by | Thursday 26 May 2011

This week the long running dispute between the Independent Schools Council (ISC) and the Charity Commission moves towards a conclusion in the courts. While Robert Pearce’s comments on Friday will come as a disappointment to association members hoping for clarity on the question of how schools may meet the new public benefit requirement, I can’t help but think that the issue has become little more than a distracting side-show.

Free Schools are heading for failure

Written by | Wednesday 11 May 2011

So now it’s official: of the 323 free school proposals received by the DfE as of 11th February, 282 were turned down. Less than 50 were given an amber light. It looks likely that roughly ten will open their gates in September. The century of civil servants seconded to process applications can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to whatever it was they were doing before they were so rudely interrupted, for it’s unlikely under the strictures of the new applications process that for 2012 there will be anything like the volume of the first tranche.

The impact of proportional representation and coalition government on fiscal policy

Written by | Monday 18 April 2011

Introduction

For many years, there have been calls to change the electoral system within the UK from First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) to a more proportional system. This has featured in successive Liberal Democrat (formerly the SDP/Liberal Alliance) manifestos, as the FPTP system favours a two party system as the percentage of votes does not reflect the number of seats won in Parliament.

The case for NGDP targeting – lessons from the Great Recession

Written by | Monday 11 April 2011

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest report, The Case for NGDP Targeting by US economist Scott Sumner, argues that that the Bank of England’s inflation targeting regime was proved inadequate by the Great Recession, and should be replaced. Instead of targeting inflation, the Bank of England should target nominal gross domestic product (NGDP). This is sometimes referred to as nominal income targeting.

In making his case, Sumner argues that:

To have or to be? A reflection on the anti-cuts march

Written by | Monday 28 March 2011

As this Saturday was the first in a while that I've had to myself, I woke up early and resolved to make a particularly special effort to spend the day doing things that make me happy. One of these is to take a walk in Hyde Park around the Serpentine, maybe with a cup of tea, as my father and I sometimes do when he visits. When I got there, however, I discovered – to my horror – that the park was completely overrun with thousands of trade unionists.