Labour will create an acute, artificial shortage of rental accommodation and a privileged class of subsidised tenants.
J P Floru is a Westminster councillor and Head of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. Follow J P on Twitter. “They call it austerity. I call it balancing the budget”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a book launch a few days ago. The principle of living within one’s means is familiar to many […]
J P Floru is a Westminster councillor and Head of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. Follow J P on Twitter. Were allegations against “senior politicians from the Thatcher era” simply too good to be checked? During its endless navel gazing this weekend, the BBC never contemplated that possibility. Why? Because most BBC staff are […]
By JP Floru. Lord Heseltine proposes to shift £49 billion from national to local government to encourage investment and growth. His report No Stones Unturned is a classic tale of “government knows best”: of politicians taking economic decisions about which they know little; and of a belief that local politicians are somehow better suited at this than national ones. […]
Lettre ouverte aux Français – Open letter to the French (translation below) Le message de bienvenue du Premier Ministre Britannique David Cameron aux refugiés Français après l’annonce de l’introduction du taux d’impôt a 75% est une constatation de fait plutôt qu’une nouvelle. Depuis des dizaines d’années, des centaines de milliers de Français se réfugient chez […]
By JP Floru. When the state runs a queue, it goes wrong – and queues are inherent to state monopolies. It’s not just the Border Agency at Heathrow – have you been in a post office queue recently? And have you ever been in the queue to enter Parliament? I used to work for an […]
By JP Floru. Did you know that only about 39% of households in England and Wales have a water meter? Everybody else pays a fixed sum, irrespective of the amount of water used. Are we surprised that the demand for water exceeds the supply? Why bother closing the tab? It’s a free for all for […]
By JP Floru. It has nothing to do with Cameron riding horses or Osborne being the 18th Baronet of Ballintaylor and Ballylemon. Labour front men and women were and are from privileged backgrounds too: Blair was a boarder at the independent Fettes College; Harriet Harman has been called “a public school educated minor aristocrat”; Ed […]
By JP Floru. More than one year ago Business Secretary Vince Cable announced an end to the practice of “gold-plating” of EU Directives. Sadly this does nothing to reverse the gold-plating of the past. According to Open Europe, the acquis communautaire – that is the total body of EU legislation – is now 170,000 pages […]
The idea that government are competent enough to decide who deserves to be well-paid, and who doesn’t, is a prime example of statist hubris. It should be condemned to the dustbin of claptrap ideas, where it belongs. Sweeping, generalising laws are inept to cope with the millions of decisions involved in determining pay. Believing that […]
JP Floru is the Director of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. The left’s most common defence is that “real communism was never tried”. It serves to counter the most common attack on it, namely, that is simply doesn’t work. Who will fish if, as is the case in Cuba, the fish is state property? In fact […]
JP Floru is the Director of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. When money is short reality kicks in. A few years ago people were flush with cash and didn’t mind spending more on health and education. They duly elected Tony Blair. Labour came, spent, and departed in ignominy. Nothing improved, but the cash is gone. Strapped-for-cash […]
J P Floru is the Director of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. In the Pantheon of Socialist Fallacies, income inequality features at par with outraged mutterings about so-called health inequality; the idea that Capitalism is “a system that was invented”; or the belief that “The Rich are always becoming Richer”. In a study published on Monday, […]
JP Floru is the Director of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute. Diageo, the world’s largest spirit maker, has announced that it will stop basing staff in the UK because of the 50p tax rate. CEO Paul Walsh explained that Diageo can pay its staff less in (for example) Singapore, where they only face 10% income […]
That Boris Johnson feels the need to mobilise civilian enforcers is clear evidence that a second harsh lockdown does not command popular support.