What is fire and rehire? And why does it happen? What is the effect of banning fire and rehire? Bad policies can make a bad situation much worse – we have to be careful to not let good intentions cloud our judgement. Driven by Labour MPs (of course), Parliament is …
Read More »What’s the harm in feeding the poor?
What’s the harm in feeding the poor? Why can’t we just print more money and make everyone a little bit richer? What’s the harm in feeding the poor? What’s the harm in regularly giving people money, with no strings attached? Have you heard of the saying “give a man a …
Read More »Opposition to the EU is not the rejection of Europeans.
When a country which evidently rejects racism has democratically elected to oppose a political institution, please accept the simple evidence – it is NOT because of racism or hatred of Europeans. I have many friends who are European. I have even more friends who are pro-Europe. I too, am pro-Europe. …
Read More »Fun facts about Climate Change
Over the years, I’ve learnt some interesting facts about the atmosphere and climate change… Cloud cover Water vapour is evaporated from the seas , which covers 70% of the global surface area. The warmer air is, the more water vapour it can hold. [1,2] The more water vapour there is …
Read More »Parliamentary scrutiny and the Supreme Court
The principle of the tripartite separation of powers puts forward three branches of government: 1) the judiciary, 2) the legislature, 3) the executive. The judiciary exercises the law, and binds the executive to prevent it from breaking law. The legislature creates law, but is bound by the agenda set by …
Read More »Free market vs socialism: supply and demand
In a free market, supply always rises to meet demand: If someone is willing to pay for it, somebody is willing to provide it. If too many people are providing the same, either prices drop, or suppliers need to develop a premium quality product or service to maintain their attractiveness. …
Read More »The reasons for my opposition to the EU
My opposition to the EU is essentially down to the fact that it works badly. Everything that the UK government does not do well at, the EU does even worse. Let me list some prominent examples… Single currency (Eurozone):Normally, an ailing economy’s currency depreciates, which encourages inward investment and domestic …
Read More »State capitalism vs socialism vs communism
On an online exchange, a lefty illustrated the distinctions between those three concepts as such:State capitalism – private ownership with significant govt intervention.Socialism – democratic ownership of production.Communism – stateless, moneyless, classless society. Boiling it down to fundamentals, here are the distinctions according to their definitions:State capitalism – state? yes; private ownership? yesSocialism – state? …
Read More »Condemnation by medical experts
Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans were condemned by the both the medical experts and the UK courts. So their lives were taken away, by force of the court order. In Australia, Noah Wall was similarly condemned by medical experts for not having a brain. But his parents went with their heart. …
Read More »To the Left, everything disagreeable is far right
When are self-identifying lefties going to acknowledge the evils of far-left ideology? They will not. To the modern Left, every form of extremism is far right… Authoritarianism (more rules)? Far right.Anarchism (no rules)? Also far right. Plutocracy (rule by the few)? Far right.Populism (appealing to the masses)? Also far right. …
Read More »The EU, not Brexit, drove Nissan’s decision to produce its new car in Japan
Predictably, Remainers blamed Brexit for Nissan’s decision not to produce its new X-Trail vehicle in its Sunderland plant: Nissan chooses Japan over UK to build new X-Trail car. But scrutinise this allegation just a little, and you’ll find that it doesn’t hold water. Given that Japan and EU has just concluded …
Read More »Financiers are not just “greedy bankers”
I would hazard a guess that most people have heard the refrain “greedy bankers” to denigrate the wealthy individuals who work in the financial sector. However, how many are actually aware of what these people do, and what role does investment banking actually play in the economy? Not ‘just’ greedy …
Read More »The costs of housing policies
I live in Croydon. Like many parts of the country, we are experiencing a severe shortage of quality housing. Yet Croydon Central’s current MP is the Shadow Minister for Housing, Labour’s Sarah Jones; its previous MP was Gavin Barwell, then the Minister for Housing. If these politicians were serious about …
Read More »The foolishness of Keynesian stimulus
The economics of Keynesian stimulus: Spend more money on public services than tax intake People earn more money and spend more money More money earnt and spent means more tax intake Result: win-win… right? Theory vs practice Assuming everyone is taxed at 40%, let’s see how this plays out… Under balanced …
Read More »Exhausting the ‘far-right’ label
I am genuinely sick and tired of being called far-right. ‘Right-wing’ does not mean “everything that a leftie disagrees with”. I am genuinely sick and tired of being called far-right. I disagree with David Cameron, but I also disagree with a lot of lefties and left-wing policies, but that does …
Read More »Tackling public transport issues in London
Most people agree that London public transport is overcrowded and expensive. To tackle these two problems requires a two-pronged strategy, one on capacity, and one on costs. 1) Tube capacity The conventional method of tackling capacity would be to increase the length of the trains and to increase the frequency …
Read More »What is ‘affordable housing’?
I assume most people take ‘affordable housing’ to mean accommodation that is affordable, something that people on average levels of income are able to afford to buy. But let’s go back to basic economics: What determines the price of a property? Although there is a rough correlation in that, if …
Read More »“Pooled sovereignty” is an oxymoron
The concept of “pooled sovereignty” is rather like “guided democracy” or “autocratic vote”, one word overrides the meaning of the other. Let’s consider the basic meaning of words: Sovereignty is the idea of a nation being self-governing, having ultimate power or supreme jurisdiction over its own laws and direction. The …
Read More »Wealth creation is not a zero-sum game
A “zero-sum game” means that everyone’s gains are accounted for by someone else’s loss. Apparently, this is what socialists believe: “Capitalists cannot keep making money forever, because eventually they will have taken all the value from the world and would have to start taking money from the poor.” – Socialism 101 …
Read More »Progressives are not liberal
The Left may be described as progressive, but that does not mean they are liberal. Political progressivism really means nothing more than desiring change. But change towards what? Change toward authoritarianism is just as much ‘progress’ as change toward ‘anarchy’. We must never conflate ‘progressive’ with the genuine meaning of …
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