Dr Butler's letter in the Guardian

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Baroness Scotland should not lose her job for the mere technicality of failing to take a photocopy of her cleaner's identity documents. But she should lose her job for pushing this law through parliament. Plainly, it is a law with regulations so complicated that even the UK's top law officer cannot follow them. And a law which empowers a quango – the UK Border Agency – to issue large fines that could ruin unsuspecting, struggling small businesses.

Dr Eamonn Butler Director, Adam Smith Institute

Published in The Guardian here.

Gordon Brown: Statesman of the year?

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The UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown picked up the World Statesman of the Year award at a ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York today, in recognition of his handling of the global economic crisis as it unfolded a year ago. I'd have thought the fact that he might have been disqualified by the fact that he (along with the American authorities) caused the crisis in the first place, by engineering a protracted boom on the basis of low interest rates and lots of government borrowing. And that his 'handling' of the crisis amounted to throwing even more money at the problem. In that sense, he has simply bought this honour...with our money!

ASI at the Labour Party Conference

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Next week the ASI will be hosting a fringe event at the Labour Party Conference on the title: “Is the cure worse than the disease? The unintended consequences of regulation." Speakers include John Fingleton (Office of Fair Trading), David Smith (The Sunday Times) and Stephen Sklaroff (Finance & Leasing Association). If you would like to find out more, click here. If you are not going to be in Brighton we are also holding an event on the same subject in Manchester with Mark Hoban MP (Shadow Financial Secretary), John Fingleton (Office of Fair Trading), Paul Mason (BBC Newsnight Economics Editor) and Stephen Sklaroff, (Finance & Leasing Association). Click here to gind out more about this one.

Time flies

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time-flies

If you ever wonder where your day went, this might help.

The wit of Wilde

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Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

– Oscar Wilde

Take your pick

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take-your-pick

Charity sneerathon

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charity-sneerathon

Guardian readers of the world unite... Dan Brown has just released a new book.

The death of facebook?

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the-death-of-facebook

Junksmith thought Twitter would be the first to fall, but with news like this....

Great?

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great

Public sector pain

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public-sector-pain

The government should lop 5% off every budget and every public salary for a year, no exceptions and no argument. It would be crude but fair, the price paid by a public sector that has done well over the past decade at the expense of the productive sector of the national economy. It is an expense that the nation cannot at present sustain.

– Simon Jenkins, 'Crude, but fair. The public sector must take the pain', The Guardian.