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Washington DC, via South Shields
Director at libertarian think tank CEI
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"While it is true that latter Saxon England was Christian, there can be no doubt that Christianity only truly took root in the post-Roman era after the conquest of 1066."
I suggest you read the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, finished some 300 years before the Norman Conquest.
Jacob Rees-Mogg's doubts about Robin Hood
Matthew Barrett There was an exchange between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker during a Finance (No. 3) Bill session last Tuesday that I thought I should bring to readers' attention: Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con): The increase in the tax threshold is extremely welcome, as is the ...
If you like Arnie, you're one of very few. His approval rate hit a new low of 17% this month, with 80% disapproval.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollTrack.aspx?g=f298166f-5e01-41ff-8e79-ee7303f9ec07
US conservatives warm to Cameron
Tuesday's New York Times piece described David Cameron as a "Slasher of Government Bloat". The article by John F Burns was premature in comparing Cameron to Thatcher but the fact that it appeared on the front page of America's most important newspaper is noteworthy. Americans are partly inter...
And which the Spanish Government has now admitted was accurate.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/leaked-spanish-report-obamas-model-green-economy-a-disaster-pjm-exclusive/
Meanwhile, the NREL study was done at the behest of the Wind Lobby.
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2010/03/03/bombshell-obama-admin-caught-red-handed-working-with-big-wind-energy-lobbyists-misleading-american-people/
As to your points about unusual methodology, see here
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2009/09/03/the-nrels-flawed-white-paper-on-the-spanish-green-jobs-study/
The 10 worst examples of dodgy reasoning in Tim Yeo's new book
Last night, I attended the launch of the new book from Tim Yeo MP "Green Gold: The Case For Raising Our Game On Climate Change", published by the Tory Reform Group. It was reported in the media yesterday and is available for download here. The book is a bit of a masterpiece of green convention...
Best of luck to Jeremy!
Final six for Devizes
The following six have been shortlisted to succeed Michael Ancram: Victoria Atkins Paul Hearn Claire Perry Jeremy Quin Nadhim Zahawi Zehra Zaidi More on the Devizes Conservative Association website.
"Generally very reasonable"
Are you sure?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.html
Obama attacks blogs
Barack Obama is apparently open to a bailout for the newspaper industry. Frightening stuff. We really don't want large sections of the media dependent upon the state (a danger Jeremy Hunt MP is very much alive to). In the course of discussing a newspaper bailout, the American president said this...
Was Bush unpopular in 2004? He was getting 45-50% approval ratings in 2004 (see here). That's the same level as Obama has been getting in recent polls.
It's far, far too early for the Republicans to start celebrating
After many months of deep gloom there are suddenly plenty of things to encourage America's Republicans in political terms: Obama has lost control of the budget. Figures released by the White House budget office - reports Associated Press - now foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010...
Isn't the entire point of having a police force supposed to be that we *can* leave our doors unlocked?
Stealing Satnavs? Breaking into houses? What are the police up to?
Law and order has always been at or close to the top of the public's concerns. Given the continuing problems with organised gangs reaping the profits of the drug trade and the recent boom in knife and gun crime, proactive policing has rarely been more in demand. Irrespective of the views of Home...
Sure his name's not actually Alan B'Scard?
Gosport Tory Chairman happy to adopt woman candidate if she's attractive
The Telegraph has the story: "Alan Scard, the Chairman of Gosport Conservative Association in Hampshire, is selecting a candidate to replace Sir Peter Viggers as the local MP at the next election. Sir Peter announced that he would quit Parliament after The Daily Telegraph disclosed he had attem...
Up to a point, Lord Copper. The approval index subtracts those who strongly disapprove of the President's performance from those who strongly approve, giving a good indication of how passionate people are about the President. His current approval rating is -9. Today's tracking poll from Rasmussen of likely voters shows the President has 49% approving and 51% disapproving of his performance to date. Details here.
Rupert Murdoch's "representative on earth" rubbishes claims that Barack Obama does not see David Cameron as a man of substance
Recently the New Statesman's James Macintyre wrote this piece claiming that Barack Obama had dismissed David Cameron as all "sizzle" and no substance. It was a variation on the theme Mr Macintyre adopted in December last year when he made similar claims that the then President-elect had brande...
I defer of course to His Grace on the relevance of sola scriptura to the Church of England, but I would have expected by now someone to have mentioned Article VI: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." As His Grace implies, this is something different.
sola scriptura
On this morning’s PoliticsHome, in the TimesOnLine links, link 10 was to the Times leader entitled “Honest to God”. The article was about the impending abandonment by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America of its moratorium on consecrating practicing homosexual bishops. The conte...
Would have been even better if they'd added:
'And we'll get out of the way.
We'll reform CAP
and make it easier to trade.'
'One World Conservatism'
I've put this video on our revamped videos page (we're now uploading audio too) but a great video from CCHQ to accompany today's launch of the Conservative approach to international poverty (discussed earlier): > The new One World Conservatism page at conservatives.com. Tim Montgomerie
Perhaps I was too lax in my use of the term 'conservative movement.' Over here in the US, the term includes everyone from Tom Ridge to Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, and I would suggest the latter is more classically liberal than IEA has ever been. A UK equivalent would surely include the IEA. I did try to emphasize that I was not talking about party politics, but advancing the cause of free markets. These days, that has to be done as much within the conservative movement as without, I am afraid to say.
Yet that does involve dabbling in small-p politics, campaigning and the like. The idea that "If you build it, they will come," doesn't work very often and almost certainly does not work in politics any more. It certainly didn't work with the IEA's website, which has been as ineffective as you suggest precisely because they didn't seem to know what to do with it (compare the ways in which the Heritage Foundation made their website a daily destination). Of course content is vital, but that content needs to be crafted in the right way, and that way needs to understand the value the medium adds to the message.
As for reaching for the skies, an Olympian director such as you suggest would only advance free markets if lightning strikes him. Instead, he should be throwing a few bolts around (as befits an Olympian figure). Free markets need advocates, IEA should be such an advocate, and advocacy requires an understanding of, and use of, modern communication tools. Otherwise, why not just stand in Speaker's Corner?
Whither the IEA?
Tim raises some very good questions surrounding the future of the Institute for Economic Affairs. As someone heavily involved in running a think tank that is all about free markets over here in Washington DC, I hope that these observations will prove helpful to those who are to decide its futur...
Brazil is very different to most S/C American countries - like having Egypt represent Africa.
William Hague identifies the top three changes he would make to foreign policy
Last week we published a first tranche and second tranche of shadow foreign secretary William Hague's answers to the questions you recently wanted to be put to him. Here he replies to some of the general questions you posed about his portfolio, starting by identifying the top three changes he ...
Why Africa but not South/Central America?
William Hague identifies the top three changes he would make to foreign policy
Last week we published a first tranche and second tranche of shadow foreign secretary William Hague's answers to the questions you recently wanted to be put to him. Here he replies to some of the general questions you posed about his portfolio, starting by identifying the top three changes he ...
Did Steve Bruce vote?
Local elections live blog
6am: Labour lose all five seats it was defending on Essex County Council. Also in Essex Tories win three seats on Harlow, increasing the party's grip on the bellwether new town. LibDems gain Bristol, Labour lose 8 of 10 seats it was defending (see LibDemVoice) Tories on course to win Staffords...
You can believe in everything the scientists say in the WGI report of the IPCC (which is, as I'm sure you know, very different from what Al Gore says) and still believe that the approaches governments are taking to the problem are likely to cost more than the benefits. An example: unchecked climate change will lead to $22 trillion worth of damages. Stern's approach will reduce warming damages to around $9 trillion, but at a cost of $24 trillion (Nordhaus). That's the road both main parties are trudging down, and Peter Lilley is right to warn people about it, whatever the science says.
"By far the most expensive piece of legislation ever to go through Parliament."
Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph pays tribute to Peter Lilley MP for uncovering the likely cost of the Climate Change Act: "One measure of the fantasy world now inhabited by our sad MPs was the mindless way that they nodded through, last October, by 463 votes to three, by far the mos...
See comment above for why I decided not to correct this typo...
It's Time For The Plan
Al Gore is fond of suggesting that the Chinese word for "crisis" consists of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." As with so many other things he says, he's wrong about that (see here), but it strikes me that in the depth of this severe political crisis, there is a genuine opportunity...
You know, ordinarily I'd change such a typo, but you're right! An
avalanche of abolitions it is!
It's Time For The Plan
Al Gore is fond of suggesting that the Chinese word for "crisis" consists of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." As with so many other things he says, he's wrong about that (see here), but it strikes me that in the depth of this severe political crisis, there is a genuine opportunity...
Hear, hear, Therese Coffey has been a dedicated party stalwart for a long time and deserves her chance. She'd make a fine MEP.
Why Norman Tebbit is wrong (for once)
By Roger Helmer MEP. I yield to no one in my respect for Lord Tebbit. In the Tory pantheon, I place him just a little behind Margaret Thatcher. I was hugely grateful some years back when he wrote a foreword for my first book, "Straight Talking on Europe". So I was particularly disappointed w...
The tribunes should beard the fathers when the fathers so blatantly grind the low.
Tory backbenchers to be the focus of tomorrow's Telegraph coverage
10.45pm BBC News reports "sources close to David Cameron" as saying the Tory leader is "appalled" by the latest round of revelations and that he is "considering whether to take disciplinary action". --- 10pm Details emerge regarding a further clutch of Tory MPs: Douglas Hogg, former agricult...
A moat. A moat... Are you fracking kidding me? A moat!?
Tory backbenchers to be the focus of tomorrow's Telegraph coverage
10.45pm BBC News reports "sources close to David Cameron" as saying the Tory leader is "appalled" by the latest round of revelations and that he is "considering whether to take disciplinary action". --- 10pm Details emerge regarding a further clutch of Tory MPs: Douglas Hogg, former agricult...
Drat and double drat, my link to Niles didn't work. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/property-rights-electric-grid.asp is the direct link.
Mrs Thatcher and the Environment
I have been busy so missed the opportunity to post this closer to the actual anniversary of Mrs Thatcher's first election victory. In any event, I thought it important to reflect on Mrs T's oft-cited policies on the environment. She tends to be lauded by those in favor of immediate action on gl...
Isn't the entire point of encouraging "clean energy" picking winners? I suspect, however, a no regrets approach that removes barriers to innovation will get a better result than subsidy etc. Even just allocating property rights for rights of way can help by encouraging distributed power(see Niles here, which is almost certain to be less emitting, even if coal is used. In the US especially, there are a lot of rights to be allocated or homesteaded before we even get to the air (which I freely admit is a sticky problem, but so was the American west before the invention of barbed wire, as Terry Anderson et al have shown).
And of course you're right that if you don't know the size of the problem, then you can't set policy accordingly, unless those policies are genuine no regrets policies, which provide substantial benefits for the economy whether or not global warming turns out to be a problem. That's why I believe true no regrets policies have the best potential for dealing with the small risk of catastrophe.
I'll certainly post my paper here. Thanks for this refreshingly focused discussion, by the way.
Mrs Thatcher and the Environment
I have been busy so missed the opportunity to post this closer to the actual anniversary of Mrs Thatcher's first election victory. In any event, I thought it important to reflect on Mrs T's oft-cited policies on the environment. She tends to be lauded by those in favor of immediate action on gl...
It's not an original idea. I used in in my book which came out before Lord Lawson's, but I cannot claim to have invented it. Offset firm Terrapass was moaning about how widespread the comparison was back in 2006. I suspect it occurred to several people separately at around the same time when offsets began to take off.
Government sends two ministers and 45 officials to conference on climate change
Update: Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Greg Clark has issued a press release on this story. Rather like rock stars who take a private jet to play at an event condemning the evils of climate change, Whitehall departments sometimes fail to practice what they preach, as J...
Not sure where you get the "false choice" from. Here's a quote from the article I link to, which includes a quote from Mrs T herself:
n fact, Thatcher makes it clear that she regards global warming less as an "environmental" threat and more as a challenge to human ingenuity that should be grouped with challenges such as AIDS, animal health, and genetically modified foods. In her estimation,
"All require first-rate research, mature evaluation and then the appropriate response. But no more than these does climate change mean the end of the world; and it must not either mean the end of free-enterprise capitalism." (Statecraft, p.457)
I can't improve on that.
As for specific solutions, we could have a long debate over the appropriateness of Pigovian taxes in specific situations (and I believe Coase knocked Pigou for six), but to even begin to apply Pigovian taxes you must have a clear idea of the social cost involved. The literature on the social cost is all over the map, with Stern a major outlier, but the general indication of the most recent research is that the social cost is pretty low, with a small risk of catastrophe (see Tol), and probably low enough that any genuine Pigovian tax would do little to spur (or fund) the development of alternative technology. Which brings us back to the question of whether there is a climate crisis worth bothering about, and I suspect Seldon's general warning about trying to correct every externality should be heeded here. Moreover, Indur Goklany's work suggests that there is an exceptionally high opportunity cost involved in any of the solutions currently being advanced by the "mainstream" on this issue.
That's why I believe that the small risk of catastrophe should be managed alongside emissions by a no-regrets approach of the kind I've often written about before. It may be that we need a no-regrets-plus approach, with significantly increased investment in basic energy research, but a no-regrets approach that removes barriers to innovation should help spur that, given the rewards that will accrue to the people that develop affordable clean power.
I've got a paper forthcoming from NCPA in Dallas outlining ten policy steps we could adopt tomorrow that would reduce emissions or mitigate possible harmful effects of global warming without burdening the economy. I'd be interested in your feedback when that comes out.
Mrs Thatcher and the Environment
I have been busy so missed the opportunity to post this closer to the actual anniversary of Mrs Thatcher's first election victory. In any event, I thought it important to reflect on Mrs T's oft-cited policies on the environment. She tends to be lauded by those in favor of immediate action on gl...
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