More regulation to cut red tape?
The Telegraph reports today (24th October) on the Government wasting billions of pounds by inefficiently regulating the economy. For example, it costs more than £2 billion for the Health and Safety Executive to comply with the regulatory…
Gerrymandering of health services
Most examples of picking losers are normally quite subtle. Very often, the offending policy is well-meaning, and the harm unintentional. But the abuse by the Labour Party of their control of the levers of power to steer funding towards…
A party-politicised House of Lords
While we are stuck with big government, an important check on the power of the executive is an independent second chamber. Although the undemocratic nature of the House of Lords is much derided, it is noticeable that their Lordships have…
The ghost of inflation
For the past decade, the West has been relatively immune to price-/wage-inflation, despite significant expansions of the money supply and movement of various national balances from credit to debit, thanks to the deflationary effects of…
Tories on tax
The Telegraph nearly wrote this entry for us. They have listed the winners from the recommendations of Michael Forsyth's Tax Reform Commission: A couple with two children, one under five, with one earner working 30 hours a week and earning…
Gordon and the red-tape hydra
Gordon Brown has pledged to "cut red tape" for at least the third time this year, according to the Telegraph. This might seem a strange thing to criticise on pickinglosers, but we do so, not because it would be a bad idea, but because we…
Anti-social services
Government intervention is always frustrating, but when it inflicts direct damage on people's lives, it is an altogether more serious and contemptible matter. Yet, this is happening on a regular basis to British families. We learn today of…
hotelbookings.gov.uk
Yet another effort by the Government to "go commercial" is failing. £10m was spent on an internet accommodation service which produced just over 400 hotel bookings this summer, reports the Telegraph. What a surprise. When I book a holiday…
Save our Post Offices (whatever the cost)
David Cameron and the Daily Telegraph think we should subsidise rural Post Offices to keep them open, even though 800 of them get fewer than 16 customers per week. It's funny how people who preach about competitiveness forget about their…
Putting the disabled to work
David Cameron has vowed to find jobs for the disabled, on the basis that "We have a social responsibility to help disabled people into the workforce". What could be more sympathetic and just than the government giving people a leg-up who…
Nuclear meltdown
Back in the 70s, government picked a real winner: nuclear power. It was going to produce, they promised, power "too cheap to meter". We know how that turned out. Rather than being too cheap to meter, nuclear turned out to be first too risky…
The long malign arm of the Environment Agency
As reported by the Telegraph, but strangely not available on their website, the charity Inter Care has been forced to shut down its operations by the Environment Agency (EA). Inter Care sends unused drugs from the UK to African hospitals…