This news story from today: Prof Mike Kelly, the public health director at Nice, added: “This isn’t about telling individuals to choose salad instead of chips — it’s about making sure that the chips we all enjoy occasionally are as … Continue reading
I have been trying to digest this Krugman article in the NY Times about the Tea Party movement. Sooper genius Krugman has worked it out: the Tea Partiers think the GOP is about helping people, but it’s really about helping … Continue reading
Does regulation improve worker safety? If so, you should be able to tell from this graph when the USA’s landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed. Can you? Scroll down for the answer. . . . . . . … Continue reading
Isn’t quite as strong as people think: Tesco, which bases the price it pays to its 800 dedicated suppliers on the cost of production as estimated by Promar, actually cut its rate from 1 April reflecting predicted farmer savings on … Continue reading
I was skimming one of the debates, from 1984, about the changes to the law concerning the sale of reading glasses, now that a large part of the Hansard back catalogue is online. This is a case I was involved … Continue reading
The Irish Liberty Forum has moved to: http://irishlibertyforum.org/ I recommend the site strongly. Libertarianism gets associated with ZaNuLieBore crapola far too often and the Irish Libs are serious and thoughtful explorers of this seam of political thought. (See also the … Continue reading
After the abolition of fractional reserve banking, one of the things some libertarians (and others) tend to advocate is a return to the gold standard. The idea seems to be twofold: that this would remove from governments or central banks … Continue reading
Staying with this subject, about thirty years ago I spent an afternoon chatting with the man who started the Pitlochry Knitwear Company. He had initially used a very conservative bank that wouldn’t lend; they saw their role more as that … Continue reading
When I posted before on this subject, I wrote: While [fractional reserve banking] might be inflationary, it also fuels growth. The alternative, so far as I can see, would be both deflationary and cause economic contraction. Adam Smith lived throught … Continue reading
Here’s a great line from a piece in the Guardian about the BNP’s campaign in Barking and Dagenham: And there [Nick Griffin] is, like a Bond villain relocated to the set of the Royle Family But here’s a very strange … Continue reading