There are strong arguments to suggest that the UK Treasury is too focused on maximizing tax revenues at the expense of broader goals such as economic growth, living standards, and fairness.

An underlying and fundamental part of our analysis of what has gone wrong with this sceptered isle is that we simply have too much bureaucracy.

Waitrose has ruled out buying American beef and chicken as it insisted it would stand “shoulder-to-shoulder with our farmers” after Sir Keir Starmer’s US trade deal.

That is, it’s possible to regulate something so much that the protections aimed at disappear.

This week’s post takes foreign policy as first serving the people of the UK, then our friends, then the rest of the world. Once this was known as “realism”.

We do - no really, we do - wonder what goes through minds like these: UK urged not to exploit poor countries in rush for critical minerals

There is a strong case for proposing that those living on the basic UK State Pension or the National Minimum Wage should be exempt from income tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs).

We await the usual insistences as a result of this story: Thames Water refuses to rule out a hosepipe ban as drought looms.

Taxation is collected under the threat of punishment such as fines, asset seizure, or imprisonment, making it non-consensual.

One of those differences between political, bureaucratic, action and markets. In a market environment the Dodd Frank rules on conflict minerals would be dead and buried now.

My colleague, Dr Eamonn Butler, will not like this proposal at all because he has expressed the view that Bank holidays are an anachronism that should be abolished, although he did once grudgingly tell the ASI staff that they could take Christmas morning off.