Couples are waiting later and later to have children due to the cost of living in many areas of the country – of which housing plays such a massive part. It is certainly encouraging to see action is being taken to reduce some barriers to building, but this should be done with more haste.
The Prime Minister must make up his mind whether or not to see through a policy to stop the small boats – now an issue of profound symbolic importance.
If you appoint Duncan Smith to the post she now holds, as Cameron did in 2010, it follows that you must fund his plan fully.
Tom Clougherty is executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, whose latestreport ‘Hanging London out to dry: The impact of an EU Financial Transaction Tax’is published today. Legend has it that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. It’s rather less poetic, I know, but G20 politicians are doing much the same thing by discussing a […]
Tom Clougherty is executive director of the Adam Smith Institute. Taxing secret Swiss bank accounts held by British citizens is an easy win, and a helpful contribution to reducing the budget deficit, right? Well, perhaps. But I find it hard to muster much enthusiasm for the agreement announced by the Treasury today. In reality, this […]
Tom Clougherty is executive director of the Adam Smith Institute. The Adam Smith Institute is well known for advocating lower taxes to encourage economic growth. So perhaps you’d expect me to be happy that Ed Balls had come around to my way of thinking, and proposed a tax cut to stimulate the economy. Well, you’d […]
Tom Clougherty is executive director of the Adam Smith Institute. Congratulations, Britons! Today isn’t just a bank holiday, it’s also Tax Freedom Day, the notional day in the year when you’ve collectively earned enough money to pay the country’s annual tax bill, and can start earning for yourselves. So light up the barbeque, pop open […]
Tom Clougherty is executive director of the Adam Smith Institute. David Cameron’s conference speech was a missed opportunity. He should have used it as an opportunity to move beyond the furore over child benefit and the grim talk about cuts, and lay out a positive, pro-growth agenda for the Coalition Government. Instead, we got more […]
Tom Clougherty is Research Director of the Globalisation Institute. The Department of International Development is a body with a noble aim: “eliminating global poverty”. Sadly, DFID has not been an unqualified success. It remains wedded to outdated and discredited ideas about development such as believing that pouring money into government budgets in poor countries will […]
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