This is the fourth in a series of articles about how ideological interest groups react when their institutional preferences are … Continue reading “Not Invented Here #4 – Smoking”

This is the second in a series of articles about how ideological interest groups react when their institutional preferences are … Continue reading “Not Invented Here #2 – Alcohol”

This is the first in a series of articles about how ideological interest groups react when their institutional preferences are … Continue reading “Not Invented Here #1 – Obesity”

The electricity generator Drax is not an easy company to love. It doesn’t help that it shares a name with a James Bond … Continue reading “Biomass subsidies: how an environmental accounting trick benefits vested interests and the government”

During the Tory leadership campaign in the summer, Rishi Sunak repeatedly insisted that he would ‘get a grip on inflation’. … Continue reading “Big Government, Big Borrowing and Big Inflation are probably here to stay”

This week the IEA published a new study I wrote, looking at the extraordinary social experiment of lockdown and what … Continue reading “Lessons from lockdown for (anti-)alcohol policy”

When minimum unit pricing was introduced in Scotland in May 2018, it became illegal to sell alcohol for less than … Continue reading “An evaluation of Scotland’s minimum alcohol pricing experiment”

As a history of the British economy since 2008, The Decade the Rich Won (BBC2/iplayer) has a number of flaws. … Continue reading “Review: “The Decade the Rich Won””

MPs will vote today on the Health and Care Bill. This legislation has much to commend it to Conservative MPs. … Continue reading “The Health and Care Bill: nanny statism on steroids”

My colleague Kristian Niemietz recently commissioned an opinion poll to get the measure of Millennials and Zoomers. He concluded that … Continue reading ““Millennial Socialism” is not Bolshevism – it is a confused and shallow knee-jerk socialism”

A study published in JAMA Pediatrics this week looked a ban on e-cigarette flavours implemented in San Francisco on 1 … Continue reading “The empirical evidence is clear: anti-vaping policies are pro-tobacco policies”

Some countries allow you to buy a beer at any time day or night. Others have total prohibition. The enormous … Continue reading “WHO is your nanny?”

Was it really only last Monday that the ‘rule of six’ came into force? From tomorrow, pubs and restaurants will … Continue reading “The new Covid restrictions seem largely about sending a message – but the cost will be real”

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic reached our shores, there were calls for spending on public health to be increased. Health … Continue reading “The pseudo-economics of preventive care”

F. A. Hayek’s motivation for writing The Road to Serfdom (1944) was his fear that measures needed to conduct World … Continue reading “Beware the normalisation of illiberalism”

An article published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives recently outlined the theoretical justifications for taxing sugary drinks. The authors … Continue reading “The economics of soda taxes”

At the weekend, I put up a tweet suggesting that supporters of the BBC make mutually exclusive claims when they … Continue reading “The case for the BBC licence fee is based on bad arguments”

Tim Worstall has written a nice little essay about paternalism for the IEA. In To Ban or Not To Ban?, … Continue reading “When is the government justified in restricting freedom?”

The Bristol Pound is on its last legs. The idea of creating a local currency for the city emerged “around … Continue reading “Local currencies are just make-work schemes for people with fashionable opinions”

Danny Dorling has a theory and he will not let it lie. For several years he has been claiming that … Continue reading “No, life expectancy is NOT falling”

After a prolonged campaign and a series of court cases, minimum unit pricing for alcohol (MUP) was introduced in Scotland … Continue reading “Minimum Unit Pricing is paternalistic, regressive and seemingly ineffective”

It is widely believed that the Brexit turmoil has forced Theresa May to put her domestic agenda on hold. If … Continue reading “The Deposit Return Scheme is a load of rubbish”

Summary:  This report aims to provide estimates of: (a) the size and value of the UK’s illicit cannabis market in … Continue reading “Joint Venture”

After a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages was introduced in Britain last month, campaigners wasted no time in calling for it … Continue reading “WHO proposals for new taxes on food and drinks would cost a typical UK household up to £458 per year”

Last November the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, proposed a ‘total ban’ on new fast food establishments opening within 400 … Continue reading “Zoning bans for fast food outlets have been tried before. And failed.”

‘You can’t just point at things and tax them,’ said the singer Myleene Klass to Ed Miliband in a TV … Continue reading “Sugar taxes have never worked anywhere”

Robert H. Frank offered an unusual justification for clamping down on smokers in the New York Times last month. As … Continue reading “For God’s sake, Robert Frank: just admit that you’re a paternalist”

It’s easy to dismiss ‘nanny state’ regulation as a minor nuisance but the underlying paternalism of those who wish to … Continue reading “Why can’t nanny state campaigners at least admit that they’re anti-liberal paternalists?”

Disentangling ourselves from the EU after four decades will be fiendishly complicated but some elements of Brexit are refreshingly simple … Continue reading “The low-hanging fruit on the Brexit tree: repeal the Tobacco Products Directive”

‘Until 1914’, wrote the historian A.J.P. Taylor, ‘a sensible, law-abiding Englishmen could pass through life and hardly notice the existence … Continue reading “The Nanny State Index – whatever happened to ‘liberal Britain’”

When the NHS was created in 1948, Aneurin Bevan believed that healthcare spending would fall as the population became healthier. … Continue reading “Healthy lives cost money”

The chart below has been retweeted thousands of times on Twitter in the past week, accompanied by such pearls of … Continue reading “A rising tide that lowers the boats? On wage growth and labour market performance since the crash”

I was on The Big Questions (BBC1) recently talking about poverty. Specifically I was trying to help answer the question ‘Will … Continue reading “It’s not all doom and gloom. Beware politicised forecasts”

Last month saw the publication of a Public Health England (PHE) report on alcohol which promoted various interventions in the … Continue reading “Public Health England: a tax-funded neo-temperance campaign group”

150 years after Karl Marx first proposed it, the theory of immiseration continues to have an uncanny hold on the … Continue reading “How Danny Dorling (and Oxfam) recycle Karl Marx’s wretched ‘immiseration theory’”

Every once in a while, Oxfam likes to talk about inequality in the UK, though God knows what that has … Continue reading “Oxfam’s inequality fabrications”

Remember April 2015? The tail end of the coalition government seems a long time ago. The bien-pensants now have a … Continue reading “Poverty, inequality and the day before yesterday”

If he maintains this Stakhanovite work-rate, Dominic Sandbrook will have written the definitive, 8,000-page history of Britain’s post-Churchillian twentieth century … Continue reading “Was 1976 really the best year? A review of Seasons in the Sun by Dominic Sandbrook”

2008 represented something of a milestone for Britain’s charity sector as it was the year in which it received more … Continue reading “How the government uses charities to lobby itself”

On 23 January 1912, representatives from twelve nations signed the International Opium Convention, which contracted them to ‘use their best … Continue reading “An alternative to drug prohibition”

Yesterday saw the US Chamber of Commerce, the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue, the Emergency Committee for American Trade, the National Association … Continue reading “Plain packaging laws undermine intellectual property”

The New Economics Foundation recently revived its idea of restricting working hours to 21 hours per week as a means … Continue reading “An evening with the New Economics Foundation”

In the preface to their best-selling book The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett compare what they call their … Continue reading “More Spirit Level delusions”