Applying the Spam Filter
7 March 2013Even if processed meat carries an increased risk of early death, you may still feel it is worth taking a chance.
The Blog
Is it really the case that countries can’t control their real exchange rate?
6 March 2013One of the common objections to government attempts to manage the exchange is that the government can only control nominal exchange rates, rather than real exchange rates. The implication is that exchange rate targeting by governments is futile. See for example, Phillip Booth’s cogent critique of the John Mill-authored Civitas publication A Price that Matters.… [Read More]
Labriut!* What We Can Learn from Israel
5 March 2013*That roughly means “good health” in Hebrew, if the web does not mislead me British coverage of the Israeli elections held back in January often focused on the international and security implications of the vote, as reporting in that region so often does. Therefore, we tend to remain ill-informed about Israel’s domestic policy debates. This… [Read More]
Fact Checking British Influence: Wildly Inaccurate
4 March 2013British Influence have been at it again: presenting opinion as objective fact. In the aftermath of UKIP’s recent vote surge, Peter Wilding attacks UKIP with so wide a scattergun that the entire Eurosceptic project is targeted. He writes, “Leaving the EU would not be an economic liberation. It would resolve none of the domestic failings… [Read More]
Fairness in the Oxford Admissions System
28 February 2013The Guardian has interpreted data from an FOI request an a sign of racial bias at Oxford but the most striking contrasts in the data concern whether candidates answered the ethnicity question at all.
The EU’s trade impact – anybody’s guess?
25 February 2013Last week I examined the claims of Vince Cable, David Lidington and Ed Davey as they heralded the EU’s economic benefits. Their ‘headline’ figures were that 3.5 million British jobs depended on EU membership, and that participation in the Single Market was worth £3,300 every year to every household. They were wrong, their statistics arising… [Read More]
All Eyes on Hinchingbrooke
Last week saw the one year anniversary of the takeover of Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, by the Circle Health Partnership, which represented the first takeover of an NHS hospital by a private provider. It’s a unique and controversial experiment to rescue a hospital that was in dire straits, but it hasn’t been… [Read More]
Why We Need a Long Term Exchange Rate Target
22 February 2013Various Civitas publications have argued that a devaluation of sterling is required to boost manufacturing exports. See, for example, this piece by John Mills Is the pound over-valued? or number five of David Green’s ten-point plan for a modern industrial policy. The rationale is simple: increasing exports will reduce Britain’s large trade deficit, help rebalance… [Read More]
The Clue is in the Question
21 February 2013There may have been valid reasons for jurors to put apparently absurd questions to the judge in a trial involcving public figures.
Thoughts on Fat Taxes
19 February 2013Yesterday the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AOMRC) published Measuring Up: The Medical Profession’s Prescription for the Nation’s Obesity Crisis, its contribution to the on-going debate about obesity as a public health problem. The report noted that a quarter of the current adult population is obese and that current figures foretell serious problems with the… [Read More]