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The 30,000-year wait for NHS treatment It's going to be a great year for think-tanks, here in the UK at least. Wit= h our great public services falling to bits and enormous confusion over the future of transport, welfare, the Euro =8B you name it =8B people have got tire= d of "aspirations" talk and are demanding practical solutions. That's where the Adam Smith Institute came in...25 years ago next year, in fact. And that's what we're good at. So we've a lot of activity planned. I'm sharpening up our forward diary and that will be up at www.adamsmith.org.uk soon. But suffice it to say that in the New Year we have a whole barrage of reports coming out. We're exposing the true nature of NHS waiting lists, for example. Of the 1 million people waiting for treatment, 250,000 of them will wait more than six months. Last year, Brits waited a total of 30,000 years for NHS treatment. Strewth! And we've got a great new report coming out on 'The People Economy'. In the beginning, we had an agricultural economy...land was the big asset. Then a capitalist economy...capital equipment was at the centre of it. Now we have a people economy...it's ingenuity and personality that count. Which means our whole social and industrial policy have to change. It used to be that i= f you wanted to create employment, you could just dip into public funds and build a steel mill. Now, you have to create the conditions to attract peopl= e of talent. Did anyone say low taxes and less regulation? Education is a big theme for this year, and one 21 January we're doing a great piece on the Dutch and Danish education systems. Seems they use publi= c funding to give parents the right to choose between schools =8B state or private. Revolutionary, eh? I wouldn't say... ...that things are all that bad, but I hear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put the economy into his wife's name! Events, events Lots of events coming up too in the New Year. We've power lunches with Time= s columnist Simon Jenkins, on the theme of 'Should the Conservatives go libertarian?' and with ex-prisons inspector Sir David 'Rambo' Ramsbotham on whether or not our prison system is completely rotten. Silly questions, I know. As Adam had it... A seasonal thought, perhaps, from the great economist: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principle= s in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render thei= r happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it." -- Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part 1, Section 1, Chapter 1 I'm sure that many of you are not in the mood to read long e-mails and are looking forward to a well-earned holiday. So I'll just wish you Peace, Low Taxes, and Prosperity... hope you'll drop in to the website in the New Year and see what thrills we have in store! e - Adam Smith Institute, 23 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BL, UK Tel +44 (0)20 7222 4995 - Fax +44 (0)20 7222 7544 E-mail info@adamsmith.org - Web www.adamsmith.org
In December 2004 this page was modified significantly from its original form for archiving purposes.
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