Slowly but surely, economic and demographic pressures, combined with a decline in scientific and educational achievement, will condemn Europe to becoming first a military, then an economic, then an educational backwater, and finally even a cultural backwater. Remember, academic and scientific excellence soon follow economic prowess and China already produces 3 million graduates a year, 250,000 in engineering. In Britain, we can’t even find enough people to teach physics in our schools.
So now it's proposed that we should tax the banking system to destruction – the same one that we spent billions bailing out. This is a ruinously destructive course of action that will plunge us all into penury.
Sir John Major was guest of honour at an Adam Smith Institute dinner at St Stephen's Club in Westminster. Sir John has done a great deal of travelling since he left the Commons, and has seen the tremendous advances made by India and China, and by some Middle East countries. His remarks on the world's probable future development and Britain's place in it were thus extremely well-informed.
He stressed in particular the importance which the rapidly-developing countries are giving to education, and the urgency of ensuring that in the UK, too, education is accorded the importance it needs to secure Britain a place in the forefront of research, development, and economic expansion.
Sir John's speech was a tour de force, showing complete mastery of his subject, and he contributed both eloquence and insight to the lively question and answer session that followed his remarks.
If you seek a reason for the decline of civil society, it is here. The attempt to regulate, to corrall, to approve, deprives us of that oxygen of liberty necessary to build a society. We may no longer be subjects, but we are becoming less free.
Sir John Major was guest of honour at an Adam Smith Institute dinner at St Stephen's Club in Westminster. Sir John has done a great deal of travelling since he left the Commons, and has seen the tremendous advances made by India and China, and by some Middle East countries. His remarks on the world's probable future development and Britain's place in it were thus extremely well-informed.