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A UK statute of limitations — Adam Smith Institute

1 day ago | adamsmith.org | Madsen Pirie

Most legal systems worldwide, including those of the US and EU member states, have well-established statutes of limitations for many criminal and civil matters. There are sound reasons why other jurisdictions do this, and the UK should take note of them and follow suit. Introducing such measures in the UK would align us more closely with international legal norms, potentially simplifying cross-border legal cooperation.
The sharpest nettle is the Town and Country Planning Act. — Adam Smith Institute

2 days ago | adamsmith.org | Madsen Pirie

Replacing the UK’s Town and Country Planning Acts with a more liberalised, market-led zoning system would represent a radical shift - probably the biggest planning reform since the 1947 Act itself. It would move the UK from a discretionary system (where every application is judged on its individual merits) to a rule-based or zoning system (where what you can do is largely predetermined by land use zones).
This is the point of it all - knitting bobble hats for post boxes — Adam Smith Institute

3 days ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

This could be viewed as a little reductionist, even concentrating too much on a tiny detail, but the entire point of this whole civilisation thing is to knit bobble hats for post boxes. Capitalism and markets make us rich enough to be able to turn our attention to such tiny details, liberty means we can do so. Jason Hickel, famously to us at least, complained that:What's striking about capitalist civilization is that it has no real direction.
But, but, this is the very point of tariffs — Adam Smith Institute

4 days ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

Do tariffs allow an outbreak of capitalist greed? The Lizzie Warren explanation? Well, actually, yes. Might be the first time the Senator has been correct on an economic issue. That is, there’s no maybe here, this is the whole point:One piece of research that has gained near mythical status among economists in recent months is a 2020 study of tariffs Trump applied on washing machines during his first term.
They don’t like competition these capitalists, don’t like it up ‘em — Adam Smith Institute

5 days ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

A little story in two parts. The comments came as Sainsbury’s said profits were unlikely to rise this year amid fierce competition between supermarkets. The company said it was expecting retail underlying profit of around £1bn for the current financial year, compared to £1.04bn in the year to March 1. …Asda, the UK’s third-largest supermarket, earlier this year kicked off a price war among supermarkets, with bosses claiming they had a “war chest” to win back shoppers.
Well, yes, we suppose it is the Home Counties — Adam Smith Institute

6 days ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

In our more dyspeptic moments we end up insisting that the Town and Country Planning Act, the entire idea of the Green Belt, is simply to make sure that none of these awful working class people, those proles, get to do anything in those rolling and admittedly lovely green acres of England. Nothing as in not live and nothing as in not making a living.
Taking Birmingham private — Adam Smith Institute

1 week ago | adamsmith.org | Madsen Pirie

It has been enthralling in a ghoulish way to watch Birmingham descend into a chaos of rat-riddled rubbish. Two questions spring to mind. Why does the city hire bin-men to collect its garbage, and why doesn’t it hire outsiders to do it? The case for having Birmingham’s bin collection performed by private contractors instead of being delivered in-house by the city council revolves around arguments concerning efficiency, cost savings, service quality, and flexibility.
If only Owen Jones could join the dots…. — Adam Smith Institute

1 week ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

So, everything should be nationalised and run as an economic democracy. This is the rallying call at least. The sadness here is that Owen Jones is failing at Chesterton’s Fence. Failing to ask why privatisation occurred in the first place. Here’s another example: water. Even the City editor of the Financial Times – hardly a bastion of radical socialism – concluded that its privatisation looked like “little more than an organised rip-off”.
Tariffs are Bad, M’Kay? — Adam Smith Institute

1 week ago | adamsmith.org | Tim Worstall

So British governance is edging toward economic reality then:Sir Keir Starmer is suspending import tariffs on dozens of goods to shore up British companies caught in Donald Trump’s trade war. Duty on 89 products from electric car batteries to fruit juice will be cut to zero for two years in a major state intervention to ease pressure on firms.
Unilateral free trade — Adam Smith Institute

2 weeks ago | adamsmith.org | Madsen Pirie

The old order has been swept away. Let us try something new. If we did unilateral free trade, we’d get flooded with cheap goods people can’t now sell to the US. This would make us much richer and trigger an economic miracle of our own. This would be especially true of the Chinese goods they cannot sell to the US, and of US goods they cannot sell to China. It would include EU goods tariffed out of the USA. It would turn us once again into a nation of shopkeepers instead of a nation of shoplifters.