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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- IN THIS BULLETIN... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE TAX BURDEN: At last people are beginning to feel it... WHITEHALL AT WORK: Some of the bungling which that money pays for... COSTING JOBS: Nice work, if you can get it, in the public sector... EVENTS: Westminster health briefings, bigwig lunches, Next Generation, etc REPORTS AND ARTICLES: Scrap bureaucracy! Stay nuclear! End codemaking! REGULATION: How did we ever survive without it? Just back from a week's holiday in Wales: some days it hardly rained at all, so everyone seemed in good spirits. They told me that from the top of Mount Snowdon I could see further than America. I couldn't believe it. "Oh yes," they said. "If the clouds ever clear, you could see as far as the sun!" And I wondered why there wasn't more celebration locally to mark the 100th birthday of the comedian Bob Hope, who of course has Welsh ancestry. But as they told me, "No Welshman is a hero to his Valley." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FEELING THE TAX BURDEN, AT LAST --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LATE DATE: Tax Freedom Day fell on 2 June this year, and the majority of national media -- including the Times, Telegraph, FT, Mail, Express, Sun, Scotsman, not to mention TV and radio, ran pieces pointing out that we now work 155 days of the year solely to pay the tax-collector. The wide interest may well reflect the fact that people are now much more conscious of just how much they are paying in tax. A recent YouGov poll found that when asked 'Should we have a tax increase so that more money can be spent on public services?', only 30 percent agreed, while 59 percent disagreed -- a big reversal on a year ago. Meanwhile the Treasury tried to trash our story, saying that we'd included business taxes which weren't of course paid by individuals and so shouldn't be counted. Phew! Economic illiteracy at the top, or what? For all about Tax Freedom Day, including celebratory e-cards, go to: http://taxfreedomday.co.uk RED SAVES GREEN: While we're on the tax theme, take a look at the useful website called Red Reminder. Their slogan is 'Red Reminder Saves Green Stuff' because they send you emails on tax, VAT, PAYE and company returns before the Revenue send you a reminder and a fine. You can reach the site from the red box we've put at the foot of our frontpage: http://www.adamsmith.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IN A WEEK'S WORK FOR WHITEHALL: Read more news on www.ePolitix.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Despite a 650-million-pound government anti-truancy initiative, the number of pupils truanting has risen by 15 percent since 1997. - Meanwhile, an Ofsted report says that the 800-million-pound Excellence in Cities scheme for schools has had no effect on pupils' results. - Network Rail, the renationalized rail track administrator, has announced losses of 290 million pounds. Would've been cheaper to pay off Railtrack! - Houses in the catchment areas of good schools cost 50,000 pounds more than others, as parents scramble to escape the worst of state education. - The amount of money spent by the government on wining and dining has tripled, to 17 million pounds, since Tony Blair became prime minister. - The Audit Commission has warned that hospital managers may not have the skills needed for NHS reforms to work. - The commission that chooses "people's peers" costs 120,000 pounds a year to run, but has selected only 15 people, none of them in the last 2 years. - Gordon Brown's plan to abolish stamp duty in "disadvantaged" areas will cost four times more than the 50m-a-year estimate, say the LibDems. - On the day the Party Chairman warned that Labour was at a crossroads in its reform plans, Steven Byers called for more limits on the reform process. - Data to be released in July is expected to show that violent crime has soared by 20 per cent in the last year. - The cost of mapping "right to roam" land has doubled to 13.5 million pounds, threatening local service budgets. - The 9 million "school travel co-ordinators" campaign to encourage walking to school is having very little impact, according to London University. - The Guardian says that the government's drugs strategy is failing, with 7.5 million crimes a year committed by drug users. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- COSTING JOBS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dip in to the Guardian's enormous weekly public-sector jobs section. It's like leaving the world of productive activity, and entering a universe of community liaison advisers, anti-social behaviour consultants, and social inclusion co-ordinators. We've just completed a survey of this leviathan, showing an annual total of 30,000 jobs, with a total salary bill of -- well, I'm not going to tell you until it's published, but many hundreds of millions of pounds, plus perks of course, and at higher average salaries than those of us in the private sector can expect. Nice to know one sector of the economy is booming, at least. Watch this space to get the full dreadful details. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MEETINGS: Full list on http://www.adamsmith.org/policy/news/forward.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELEANOR LAING MP gives the lecturette at the next meeting of the Next Generation Group on 1 July. For more about the group, visit: http://www.adamsmith.org/tng/index.htm (but don't be put off by the talking picture of Boris Johnson!) ----- Prisons inspector ANN OWERS has just warned that the UK's jails are on the brink of chaos as a result of severe overcrowding. She shares her findings with us at a Power Lunch on 9 July. Other lunchtime events include: MARK MARDELL, BBC Westminster Correspondent, 10 July (*** Please note the new date for this, if you've signed up or are thinking of coming***) LORD POWELL, ex-Downing Street Foreign Policy expert, 17 June DAVID BELL, head of Ofsted, 16 July SIR JOHN EGAN, the CBI President, 23 July Contact events@adamsmith.org for information about these meetings. ----- And we also have a series of Westminster breakfast seminars on health policy, sponsored by Standard Life Healthcare and LCS International Consulting, with noted experts including: PROFESSOR ARA DARZI (Health Dept surgery adviser), 1 July SIR IAN KENNEDY (CHAI Chairman-designate) 7 July SIMON STEVENS (Downing St adviser) 14 July Grovel to Matthew Young (asiprojects@matthewyoung.co.uk) for invites. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- REPORTS AND ARTICLES --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUTTING COUNCILS: On Friday we publish 'Better Science at Less Cost' by Tim Ambler of the London Business School, which is going to infuriate (all) bureuacrats and (some) academics by suggesting that the Research Councils should be scrapped. Find out more on our education issues page: http://www.adamsmith.org/cissues/education/home.htm HYDROGEN REALITY: There's much talk of emissions-free transportation using hydrogen cells. Trouble is, where does the hydrogen come from? In another blow to the government's energy policy fudge, our experts show that you still need nuclear power to create this clean fuel. Read it on: http://www.adamsmith.org/cissues/industry-and-employment/hydrogen.htm OWNERS IN CONTROL: After the Glaxo shareholders' revolt against executive pay, and new proposals to rein in golden handshakes for failed bosses, our governance expert Elaine Sternberg says that we need real shareholder control, not more codes of practice and regulation. Read more at: http://www.adamsmith.org/cissues/industry-and-employment/home.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SURVIVING WITHOUT REGULATION --------------------------------------------------------------------------- My friend the excellent Adrian Pepper of Pepper Media sent me a nice email about how lucky those of us brought up in the 50s and 60s must be to have survived. The gist was that we had no childproof lids on our medicine bottles, we ate bread and dripping, cycled with no helmets, raced home-made go-carts downhill, sat unbelted in the front seat of the car, had fights, climbed (and fell out of) trees, walked to school.... Yet this generation produced some of the best risk-takers and problem-solvers ever, with the last 50 years seeing an explosion of innovation and ideas. How might today's ultra-protected generation compare? E-mail me for the whole thing: survival@adamsmith.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- AS ADAM HAD IT... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people." (The Wealth of Nations, Book V Chapter II Part II.) Remember that when you reflect that Tax Freedom Day in the Euro area is a whole ten days later than ours! e -- Dr Eamonn Butler Adam Smith Institute, 23 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BL, UK E-mail butler@adamsmith.org - Visit us online at www.adamsmith.org Tel +44 (0)20 7222 4995 - Fax +44 (0)20 7222 7544 To unsubscribe, visit www.adamsmith.org/lists.htm
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