Adam Smith Institute

Apart from the obvious fact that the government – like most of us – should be tightening its belt in these uncertain times, its decision to offer £2.5m worth of free theatre tickets to under 26 year olds is a gimmick that will go nowhere to meeting its aims.

Firstly, it should be admitted that some young people simply don’t enjoy the theatre. In fact, a very strong argument can be made that the artistic quality of theatre is at present below that of cinema, an art form that young people go to in droves. Theatre is disconnected from many of the people it could (not 'should') entertain, and with the state increasingly subsidizing the arts, the connection between theatres and the people is being broken down even further.

The arts should be prized away from the state. The first phase should be to introduce a more localized tax system, then letting local communities decide whether or not to subsidize their theatres. Taking the unwieldy hand of state out of the education system would also be a step in the right direction. Competition between schools would encourage better teaching of English and Drama, inspiring students to love rather than loathe the idea of watching a Shakespeare play.

For the second phase we can learn from the masters of theatre: the ancient Athenians. This city-state did not burden its citizens with excessive taxation, forcing citizens to contribute to a general fund to make theatre accessible to all. Instead, wealthier citizens would finance plays out of their own pocket, revelling in the glory that came in staging the latest play by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. Currently, those with more wealth are taxed at a higher rate than the rest of the population. If the next government eases this burden, those with the wealth and interest will be free to give.

Noel Edmonds may be as mad as box of frogs, but his recent stand against the BBC licence fee should be supported. He is not against the BBC per se, but against the harassment surrounding their way of extracting the licence fee. Speaking on a BCC breakfast show at the weekend, he stated:

I worked for the BBC for 30 years. When I was there it promoted the licence fee by saying how wonderful it was. But now Auntie’s put boxing gloves on. I am not going to have the BBC or any other organisation threatening me. I’ve cancelled my TV licence and they haven’t found me. Nobody’s coming knocking on my door. There are too many organisations that seem to think it is OK to badger, hector and threaten people.

Our Director, Dr Eamonn Butler was one of the first to point out the Gestapo tactics the BBC’s latest Orwellian drive to strike fear into homes around the country. A campaign that those in the BBC should be thoroughly ashamed of.

Of course Edmonds should not break the law, but the license fee really should not be enshrined in law in the first place. If the BBC has any value at all, it should be able to survive in a competitive market, if it cannot, it should go to the wall like any other service provider. Without doubt it now fails to fulfil even that most patronizing ideal, 'public service' broadcasting. After all, they put Noel Edmonds' House Party on the television every Saturday night for eight years... What kind of public service was that?

On Friday The Independent led with the article: Art for whose sake? Up for deliberation was the Duke of Sutherland's decision to sell off a highly regarded collection of paintings, known as the Bridgewater Loan. It includes such wondrous paintings as Titan’s Diana and Callisto.

The Independent suggests “ministers might look at whether the tax regime might be further reformed to make it less easy (or desirable) for the holders of these great collections periodically to hold the nation to ransom in the name of art.” What skewed analysis! In fact, we should be thanking individuals such as the 7th Duke of Sutherland for letting the public view the masterpieces for so long. Also, the Duke is offering to sell two of the paintings to London’s National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland for £100 million, paintings that on the open market that could fetch upwards of £300 million.

Of course, taxpayers should not be paying for the works, even at this bargain rate. The solution? Start charging for museums again. This will mean that only those that like what’s inside will be paying to keep it that way. Galleries could offer membership for those who wish to pop in throughout the year, school groups and art students could have free or reduced access and they could even offer the odd day a month in which access is free. Given the right management, there is no reason why galleries could not run at a profit.

If the state stepped away from the galleries, charities involved in enabling access to art would once more be legitimised. Also, wealthy individuals who believe in the value that holding on to works of art for the benefit of the nation will be free to take up their responsibilities. Unpopular? Perhaps. Yet surely the right answer.
 

Chris Wilkinson writing on The Guardian's website on this year's Edinburgh Festival concludes: "No one seems quite sure how to tackle green issues successfully at this year's festival". Oh, I didn't realise that was what the festival was for.

That said, the clear message that last year's summer floods were the first horseman of the apocalypse didn't slip past the astute Wilkinson:

The most directly and emotionally engaging piece at the festival that touches on these issues is The Caravan at the Pleasance. Strictly speaking, this is not a show about climate change at all. Rather it is a verbatim piece based on testimony from the victims of last year's severe summer floods. Yet while it is always difficult to prove a direct link between any specific weather event and global warming, the suffering that these people have experienced acts as a stark warning of what is to come.

He also writes:

Ironically, the show that might actually have the most positive impact on reducing our carbon footprints, is Charlie Victor Romeo, a piece that doesn't mention the environment once. The script is based on the black box recordings of doomed passenger planes. It's a bleak, depressing bit of work - and once you have seen it, you are not going to want to set foot in a plane anytime soon.

This is typical stuff from The Guardian in its quest to spread fear and moral outrage throughout its readership. On this occasion it achieves this by tying together the loose ends of the Edinburgh Festival into an easily swallowable pill of guilt.

A few days ago on the Adam Smith blog, Callum Adams-Carr wrote that kids were perfectly responsible human beings. They were just never given the opportunity, in today's nannying state, to be responsible. Quite so. And there's more to it: they are never given the opportunity to learn to be responsible either.

We're so worried about the dangers of knife crime, for example, that we try to keep knives out of the hands of children. But that's the point: kids never learn, under the guidance of adults, how to use knives responsibly – and that knives are dangerous. Likewise with booze: health puritans find alcohol bad enough for adults, but to give it to children is positively shocking. Our repugnance of militarism leaves us with a deep suspicion of the boy scouts. The result? Kids form themselves into their own platoons of street gangs, drink specifically to get hammered, and start sticking blades into each other.

The French have it right, introducing kids to alcohol in the home, where adults can teach them its pleasures and its evils. We had it right when we sent kids to the boy scouts and gave them penknives for Christmas. Under adult supervision they learnt to handle these potentially dangerous things. And talking of penknives, the Swiss Army teaches young adults how to use guns – with the result that guns are very rarely used in crime, despite the fact that all adults possess one.

We should be exposing our kids to more dangers. And younger. And in the setting of the family and in the context of the transition from kidhood to adulthood. Then they would be more able to handle the dangerous things that political correctness prevents them from experiencing and learning to control.

"We need a change of approach from the government. Brewing is a major industry, beer our national drink and pubs a treasured part of our national culture." What the BBPA fail to realise is that the government intend to destroy this part of British culture. Pubs are closing at the rate of 27 a week, a pint of beer is taxed at around 80p and the competition from super markets with their more flexible selling techniques means that a part of Britishness is being killed. I wonder if Gordon has noticed, indeed even cares?

The pub trade is facing it’s toughest test in years but it’s being stifled in how to combat it by overbearing government interference. The smoking ban is a prime example, rather than allowing pubs to decide it was deemed necessary to instigate a blanket ban. This has driven many people into the arms of the cheap booze available from supermarkets and the comfortable armchairs of home, away from prying state power (for the time being) where they can smoke and drink in peace. On top of this is the ever increasing tax (2% above the rate of inflation for the next 4 years), on all alcohol, which is resulting in excluding many from their local pubs as they can no longer afford a tipple.

But as the BBPA Chief Executive Rob Hayward points out:

"This is hitting Britain's brewers and pubs hard. It's also creating a large hole in the Chancellor's pocket with the Treasury's tax take also down (£88 million). This must call into question the government's planned beer tax escalator. Where's the logic in taxing more when you're taking less?”

There’s no logic in it, which is why they are continuing with it. Another side affect (unintentional or otherwise) is the destruction of the community. Pubs are no longer focal points for the locals (more so in urban areas) but meeting places for all those only interested in inebriation. A sorry state of affairs that is difficult to repair unless the government removes its claws from the pub landlords back.

Julian Critchley, who used to be the director of the Cabinet Office’s anti-drugs unit, has come out and said that drugs should be legalised. In his opinion, the government’s current policy on drugs and enforcement of the laws has “no significant, lasting impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs”. He argues that, contrary to what many believe, there would not be a large increase in drug use as a result of legalisation and his argument makes sense: “The idea that many people are holding back solely because of a law which they know is already unenforceable is simply ridiculous”. He describes the actual effect as similar to what is happening with tobacco. “Tobacco is a legal drug, whose use is declining, and precisely because it is legal, its users are far more amenable to government control, education programmes and taxation than they would be were it illegal.”

Which brings me to a point my colleague made a few weeks ago about the black market in which drugs operate. Drugs are big business and a lot of revenue is generated that isn’t counted in the legal economy. Bringing drugs out of the underground and into the open market would provide a boost in GDP and employment, while also reducing the incentive for drug dealers to use theft and violence as tools of enforcement.

Besides bringing the previously diverted funds back into the economy, legalisation restores the citizens’ right to choose for themselves what they deem acceptable to put into their bodies. Thanks to the media and advertising, people are extremely well-informed of the effects of abusing any type of drug, be it marijuana, cocaine, alcohol or tobacco. People should be allowed to use this knowledge to evaluate for themselves what is appropriate. 
 

It has begun already! The dark veil of boredom is slowly settling over the world of sport and – though interspersed with the occasional twinkling of light – the Olympics continues to rank as one of sport's worst abuses of taxpayers' money. One only has to look at Athens in 2004 and observe how the Greek government managed to throw away $10billion. The Beijing Games will probably cost around $40 billion, although the estimates vary widely. Meanwhile the estimates for the 2012 London Olympics keep spiralling ever upwards, currently around £10 billion.

All of us could spend the money better than any bureaucrat. Perhaps, in extremis, we would even pay to watch the Games so as to actually make it a viable sporting occasion. When compared to that other quadrennial event, the World Cup, the Olympics comes up woefully short on value for money. Even the South African World Cup in 2010 will only cost $3.7 billion – and that's mainly due to it being completely unsuited to host a World Cup and needing to upgrade its infrastructure. The difference is that the World Cup continually makes large profits and thus justifies the investment.
 
The modern Olympic games is little more than a political junket that deigns to include the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 2012 all the best hotels will be booked out for visiting dignitaries, roads will be specially adapted so that they may travel without incident and, of course, they’ll be able to watch the Games without the burden of purchasing a ticket.

It’s time for the UK to set an example. Short of giving the Games to Paris and letting them enjoy the invasion, we should petition the IOC to stage the qualifiers around the world throughout the following 4 years so that only the best from each region qualifies for the finals. For the finals of all the events are the small twinkles of lights in the sea of dirge that is the modern Olympics and they really should be the only things that we have foisted on us!

The English language is rife with words that can be used to insult and abuse: one of its myriad of beauties. You only have to read Shakespeare to see how the English language can be shaped so as to hurl insults. A word often heard today is ‘chav’ and its use has drawn the attention of the left wing think tank, The Fabian Society. They believe that we should not be allowed to use the word, mainly because for them it has certain connotations. Their editorial director calls for a ban of the word due to its use by the middle class in a derogatory way. According to Mr Hampson it is, ‘sneering and patronising’ and ‘betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred’.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term ‘chav’ is defined as:

In the United Kingdom (originally the south of England): a young person of a type characterized by brash and loutish behaviour and the wearing of designer-style clothes (esp. sportswear); usually with connotations of a low social status.

Sadly though, this type of behaviour is now imitated through all levels of wealth, indeed sometimes even worn as a badge of honour. To tar all of those in the lower economic strata with the same behavioural brush, as the Fabians have done, is deeply offensive, whilst also smacking of simplistic 19th century policy analysis more usually associated with Marx. As Tony Thorne, a language consultant for Kings College London, says, "Chav is like 'skinhead' - it describes a type of behaviour and appearance that's very identifiable."

Perhaps newspeak is the beacon the Fabian Society is using to guide them: the fictional language that George Orwell invented for his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. A language cleansed of depth and beauty and politicised by a dictatorship. If the Fabians wish to try to attach economic implications to word usage they are free to do so. Much the same as the rest of us should be allowed to freely use the word how and when we so desire.
 


 
 

Recently, quite a few people who occasionally use Wikipedia have told me that they have noticed that this useful online encyclopaedia is left leaning in some of its entries. I always assumed this might just reflect the same bias in the media as a whole. But I was wrong. The bias does not emerge by default but is vigorously enforced, as this story on Wikipedia global-warming propaganda shows.

Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers, sums up the situation well:

In theory, Wikipedia is a "people's encyclopedia" written and edited by the people who read it; so on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion.  But on global warming, Wikipedia offers consensus, Gore-style -- a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit.

Solomon undertook several attempts to edit the Wikipedia page on global warming and to delete mistakes for instance about British scientist Bennie Peiser, only to find his entries eradicated time and again. Obviously in the people's encyclopaedia there are two classes of editors: one with genuine imprimatur and another that may be censored. Solomon discovered that network administrator William Connolley, a ruthless enforcer of the doomsday consensus, uses his authority to ensure Wikipedia readers see only what he wants them to see.  Any reference, anywhere among Wikipedia's 2.5 million English-language pages, that casts doubt on the consequences of climate change will be bent to Connolley's bidding.

There are other examples of course. Just look at the pages Roe v. Wade or Intelligent Design and make up your own mind.

An attack of the funnies over at the BBC with them claiming that this year’s Euro 2008 could be the last one watched on “free-to-air” TV. Now call me obtuse but I’m shelling out £139.50 per year so I can watch everything but the BBC. To me that’s not free TV. I suppose there are pockets of the population that watch TV for free, something I will not begrudge the elderly, but for the BBC to claim that they are “free-to-air” really does take the biscuit.

I sincerely hope that UEFA does indeed win its petition to the EU Commission and are then able to sell the rights to future Euro Championships. They already sell the rights to the European Champions League and these are shared between ITV and Sky Sports in the UK.

It is time to end the listing of protected sports events and  force the BBC to face up to the fact they do not have a monopoly over these sporting events; and nor do they belong, “to the people”. They are the property of the organizing body and should be respected as such. If the BBC wishes to air them they should be made to compete for them in the open market, paying a fair price.

But then would that be a fair use of the licence fee tax we are all forced to pay?
 

....But Martin Kettle has written a very good column indeed on the influence newspapers have on the opinions of the populace and the way that they vote.

The big error of politicians is to believe that newspapers change the way people vote.(...)Newspapers exist for many purposes. An important one is to sell papers. By and large they aim to satisfy their readers, not alienate them..(....) The Ipsos Mori evidence actually suggests the very opposite. It sits comfortably with current fashionable notions of voting as a cultural choice rather than as a choice based on supposed rational self-interest. People choose a newspaper that suits and reflects them culturally. One of the ways it reflects them is political stance - though it is by no means the only one, as politicians like to believe.

Quite simply, newspapers reflect the already extant thoughts, opinions and prejudices of their readers rather than shape them: that's why people buy a particular newspaper in the first place. The academic research does seem to back this up (at least on the grand scale, there is of course a little bit of movement, as Kettle says, around the margins):

Consistent with their theory that media bias is mainly driven by customer tastes, they find that reader ideology explains significantly more of the variation in media bias than the identity of its owner. This finding holds up even when they take account of the possibility of reverse causality. Places with more churchgoers (a trait unlikely to be affected by newspaper bias) tend to have more right-wing newspapers. Conversely, cities with fewer churchgoers tend to have more left-wing newspapers.

Now this isn't really all that new, it's a confirmation of something that many have thought for some time. But what does make it interesting is that we might finally be able to put to bed this contention of Polly Toynbee's:

The malevelovence of the media is underestimated by social researchers. Historians leave its deformations to footnotes. But it helps explain why an ever more prosperous, secure and healthy country is so unhappy and fearful.

Here's an example of its influence: an overwhelmingly rightwing bias helps explain why Eurobarometer finds the British the least sympathetic of EU nations towards the poor, more likely to blame them for laziness.

Of course, we have to translate Polly's "rightwing bias" to "vaguely not social democratic" given her own stance on the political spectrum but once we've done that we can go on to point out the error in her thinking.

We're not all raving right wingers (ie, not social democrats) because we've been mesmerised by the press into not understanding how much better off we would be if ruled by La Toynbee's latest enthusiasms. The British press is ravingly right wing (ie not social democrat) because the British people are ravingly right wing (ie, not social democrats) and thus unlikely to be enthused by whatever is today's arrogantly paternalist plan and thus there's no way to sell newspapers trying to tell people about it.

I recently wrote on the apparent retreat of a commonality of culture within the UK and how the government was the primary cause through its obsessive enforcement of the twin doctrines of multiculturalism and political correctness. One factor I failed to address was how immigration has also impacted on culture. Dr Butler highlighted the issue of immigration, emphasising that there is nothing to fear from it, bringing more benefits than anything the state can hand down. The main reason is because immigration is purely natural. Unfortunately for us, the state’s interference has meant it has come at a cost for residents.

Culture and immigration go hand in hand, one only has to look at the history of America to see this. The same is true for the UK. Through the ages our culture has been built upon an inflow of foreigners, from either conquest or the movement of the persecuted. Britain’s culture has been changed by all of these. Due to the sudden nature of these shock waves, immigration has been often been seen as a threat. However, we now have a majority of the populace that is far more accepting of differences and this dynamism gives us a competitive edge making us more attractive to inward investment.

The 21st Century has bought with it a seasonal form of immigration based on economic need. What we are witnessing is an apparent transfer from overseas of temporary pockets of differing cultures. As seen recently with the Eastern European wave, the threat they pose is not cultural, as they are not seeking to impose upon us. When they return home, leaving some of their culture which enriches our own.

Compared with immigration and multiculturalism where new non-assimilated and unknown cultures are incorrectly given a moral superiority via the state we should allow a more natural flow of people. We need to remove the state from both immigration and culture, as all it has achieved is hate.

I'm quite impressed by Right On, the Daily Telegraph's 15-minute weekly television show. It's all very professionally produced. It features a two-minute segment called Heffer Confronted in which the rotund and politically incorrect pundit is confronted by (the slightly less rotund and almost as equally politicially incorrect) Iain Dale. There's also a discussion with leading politicians on a current affairs issue (on this one it's Alan Duncan MP) and a short section of snippets from the Westminster gossip factory.

I think this will work and will grow. Iain Dale's 18 Doughty Street internet enterprise was a really good try at pioneering the unknown terrain of online television. But I guess that few people want to watch five hours of political stuff on their computer screen each night. And if you just dipped in, you never knew exactly what you'd get. I'm sure the way forward is something like the Telegraph have done - a few short snippets that you can select from, and play the bits that really interest you. I imagine the choice will expand as the Telegraph gets to grip with the format. Worth a look.

While the proximate cause for the rising distaste for the Beijing Olympics is the way that China treats Tibet, I think there’s something else. My local market stallholder expressed it the other day as "all those Chinese in rows and ranks of uniforms – makes me shiver".

What he pictured was an old cliché of Maoist uniformity. I rather liked the “rows and ranks” which I think was expressed tautologically, but actually captured the sinister uniformity and hierarchical inequality of communist China rather well. Today, the cultural mores of post Mao capitalistic China are quite different, with the creative chaos of Western clothes and accessories prevalent. But he did bring back to me the scene when London’s 2012 Olympics were announced. The British delegation leapt in delight and hugged and wept, but what struck me then was the contrast of their individual abandon with their corporate uniformity. If my memory serves me right they were all uniformly dressed in formal business suits in a rather drab beige.

For me, this is the lurking cultural mistake behind the Olympics. Sports people suffer from some of the blind intensity of totalitarians. Sure, they celebrate excellence, but it is not a spontaneous excellence, rather a planned excellence that is generated by a rigorous collective effort. This deliberate construction of performance has strong echoes to the way it is achieved through the controlled statist methods of the communist regime. As such, it becomes culturally unreal, a freak show that ordinary mortals see through.

All over Britain teenagers – most between 15 and 20 - are being recruited into our Olympic effort for 2012. These half-formed athletes will be sponsored and trained up to excel on our behalf in the Stratford wasteland. What a contrast with the ideal of individual self-discovered excellence – spontaneous achievement by those who take part because they have found that they can excel. [Click read more to continue]