Why a tolerant society is not a free society
Individual freedom is the libertarian ideal, the abstract value which guides moral action. As a political idea, libertarianism emerged in the latter part of the 19th century from liberalism, the overarching political paradigm to come from the Enlightenment. Liberalism centred the individual, both as the architect of his own destiny through his faculty for [...]
The IMF: contrite and confused
The so-called ‘Neo-Liberal’ agenda is taking some flak from one of it’s supposed proponents, with the IMF publishing an article denouncing two of it’s alleged main [...]
Social Immobility and the Welfare Trap
The debate about inequality has recently been framed as the 99% against the reviled 1%. The premise of the debate seems to be that these groups are static. The ‘rich’ are [...]
Protest votes
Francis Fukuyama famously claimed that with Western liberal democracy we have reached ‘the end of history’ or the final state of man’s sociological evolution. We have [...]
Hunt pays up, doctors stand down
The long running dispute between Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and the British Medical Association over a new Junior Doctors contract may finally be at an end. Yesterday a deal [...]
UK Inflation figures: No rate hikes on the horizon
Another month of low inflation in the UK. April CPI was up 0.3%, due to falls in air fares, vehicles, clothing and social housing rents which offset the rising oil price. The [...]
Its ze Germans’ fault
Martin Wolf is at it again in the FT this week, scolding Germany for running a current account surplus and for their criticism of the ECB. In the Keynesian utopia occupied by [...]
The depressing (lack of) debate about tax
The level of taxation has always been one of the most hotly contested topics in politics, with the debate pitting those who favour taxes to rise in order to pay for more [...]
Let me hear you say it: ‘We don’t like Trump’
The UK doesn’t like Donald Trump. We politically correct, superior, civilised Democrat sympathizers think he is a bully, a brute, a Neanderthal and not sensitive at all to [...]
Another irrelevant election
Tomorrow we have the local elections to look forward to. And boy, are they exciting! Actually, the only remotely exciting aspect is the implications for Jeremy Corbyn’s [...]
Robots and local elections: difficult to predict
Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson is concerned. The rise of robots, he says, poses a danger which needs to be addressed. Low-skilled jobs will be threatened and will lead to [...]