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Written by Dr Eamonn Butler
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Monday, 15 October 2007 |
Nigel Stapleford, Chair of the Postal Regulator Postcomm, braved an
Adam Smith Institute Power Lunch yesterday, despite the fact that many
of us round the table would like to see him out of a job.
We already have large unregulated parts of the business, such as bulk
unaddressed mail, and it is growth in these sectors that is now driving
the market, while the traditional person-to-person letter with a stamp
stuck on is succumbing to email and other technologies. Why should the
tail wag the dog?
And the mail strike is making the public start to wonder whether the
mail really is safe in state hands. It's a debate which will hot up.
(We're going to do our bit – economist Nigel Hawkins will soon publish
a report for us which looks at the prospects for further privatization,
including Royal Mail. And of course Alastair Darling's pre-budget
report was done on the assumption of £30bn worth of asset sales, so the
temperature's rising.)
Sure, some state-owned carriers like Swedish Post are efficient. But
it's a lot easier when they break out of state control, like TNT and
Deutsche Post. And sure, politicians demand that letters should be
delivered to the Outer Hebrides for the same price as round the corner,
for which you need an army of posties. But that need not thwart
competition – why not put this 'universal service obligation' out to
tender, and if local businesses – perhaps even Royal Mail managers
themselves – can do it better and cheaper than the present monopoly?
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Written by Tim Worstall
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Monday, 15 October 2007 |
Around here we pretty consistently argue for the legalization of all
drugs. Partly for moral reasons (it's your body, use and abuse it as
you wish) and partly for more practical reasons. Legal substances would
be, for example, subject to greater quality control and thus more
regular dosages. Which is what makes this news from the normally so
pragmatic Dutch so depressing :
The Dutch government will ban the sale of hallucinogenic
mushrooms, the justice ministry said yesterday, rolling back part of
the country's permissive drug policy after a number of incidents,
including the death of a teenager who had eaten them.....Psilocybin,
the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under
international law since 1971. However, fresh, unprocessed mushrooms
continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands on the basis that it
was impossible to determine how much of the naturally occurring
substance any mushroom contained. Mr Van der Weegen said that was also
why the system proved unworkable. "The problem with mushrooms is that
their effect is unpredictable. It's impossible to estimate what amount
will have what effect."
Making them illegal will not do anything to aid this problem, far from
it, it will make the problem worse. As it does with heroin, with
cocaine and all the others, a goodly part of the physical harm caused
by such drugs is in the inaccuracies of the dose being taken. Further,
to make illegal something that grows in the fields of the country (a
particularly fine crop used to appear on the rugby pitch at school) is
going to present certain problems with enforcement.
We used to use a phrase for things that were particularly
incomprehensible: Double Dutch. Making something illegal, which will
increase uncertainties over dosage, in the name of protecting people
from uncertain dosages, seems a useful time to revive the phrase.
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Written by Tim Worstall
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Sunday, 14 October 2007 |
There's one way of looking at it :
The MPs says that the problem lies with the Charter of
Fundamental Rights – which is part of the treaty – and which says:
"Every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours, to
daily and weekly rest periods and to an annual period of paid leave."
And there's another way:
British workers could lose their right to work more than 48
hours a week and have to forfeit lucrative overtime because of the EU
Reform Treaty which Gordon Brown is due to sign next week.
Around here we side with liberty and freedom: it's what being a good
little liberal means. Thus we tend to take the latter view of the
various working time directives. If consenting adults wish to work more
than 48 hours a week, what business is it of the State's to make it
illegal for them to do so? The whole notion rather betrays two inimical
ways of looking at the world. Adults may only do what we, the rulers,
think is good for them, or adults may do as they please, subject only
to their effects on others.
My own vehement opposition to the European Union (I am so extreme
as to insist that its very existence, whether the UK is in or out of
it, is a problem) is based in part on the fact that the entire ethos
seems to be that former one: that adults should not be allowed to do as
they wish, that only one vision of society is to be allowed, the one
that the State will insist upon by law.
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