The Adam Smith Institute

£850 YOUNG WRITER ON LIBERTY COMPETITION

The Adam Smith Institute is offering £850 in cash prizes for young people writing blog-length articles on The three greatest threats to liberty today. Other prizes include free books on the subject of liberty, and the opportunity to work at ASI and have your blogs posted on our influential website. Deadline is 15 June 2009 but earlier contributions are appreciated.
http://www.adamsmith.org/young-writer-on-liberty-2009/

Also in this e-bulletin:

OUTREACH: ASI in the meeja, and stuff on our superblog DO-TANKING: Seminars, lunches, yoof and other events SUPPORT: Just do it OUR ROTTEN STATE: Let's kill nanny; Westminster pillage AND I QUOTE: Ayn Rand on them and us in politics
But first...

For years, when I listened to Gordon Brown's promises, I always thought: 'Yeah, and pigs might fly.' But then you know what happened? Swine flu.

Now, at least, Gordo has apologized on behalf of all MPs for their expenses scam. Frankly, I'd have preferred him to resign on behalf of all MPs, but it's a start.

MPs have been defending their extravagant allowance claims by saying 'it was all within the rules'. I'm sure that when we inevitably discover that some MP has been showering taxpayer-funded gifts on prostitutes, his response will be: 'They weren't gifts – those girls worked for that money!'



OUTREACH

ASI in the meeja...

As you've probably read in the papers, Thursday 14 May is Tax Freedom Day. That's the point in the year when the average person stops working for the government and at last starts working for themselves – and the Adam Smith Institute calculates it each year. This year, it's actually quite early – but that's just because so many of us are out of work and not paying taxes at all. But then we all have to work another 43 days – until 25June! – before we've paid off the amount that Brown has borrowed just to balance his books this year.

I've been writing on The Rotten State of Britain in the Wall Street Journal, defending tax havens in The Times, and complaining about the surveillance state in the Daily Mail. My colleague Dr Madsen Pirie's been on the influential CNBC network, and other colleagues have appeared on the BBC, in the Daily Telegraph, and lots of other places. You can 'read all about it' on our one-page Dispatches summary.

The new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, Verdict on the Crash contains a chapter by me. My verdict is that it was due to too much intervention and credit-creation by governments, and that they're guilty as charged.

On the ASI superblog

Now politicians want to run our last remaining successful industry – football

With tax at 50%, Tom Clougherty wonders where it would be best to migrate

Why swine flu is so like the financial crisis



DO-TANKING
http://www.adamsmith.org/events

19 May: Power Lunch with Daily Express editor Peter Hill, on Newspapers and the Internet;

20 May: Lunch with John Redwood MP on The Financial Crisis;

24 May: I'm speaking at the Hay Philosophy Festival on Banks, Bonuses and Inequality, and debating Windbag Will (Hutton) on The Limits of Freedom;
http://www.howthelightgetsin.org/

28 May: Lunchtime seminar and buffet with Cato Institute's Dan Ikenson on Globalisation vs economic nationalism;

4 June: Evening seminar with Professor Deepak Lal (President of the Mont Pelerin Society) on The 2008 Crash: Are governments or markets to blame?;

10 June: Power Lunch with Sunday Times editor John Witherow;

17 June: Power Lunch with Independent on Sunday editor John Mullin;

24 June: Power lunch with Sunday Telegraph editor Ian MacGregor.

Yoof

My colleague Dr Madsen Pirie continued his programme of school visits with a talk at Beal School, a comprehensive in Woodford, Essex. And last week the Next Generation Group heard the American-born MP Brooks Newmark talk on Obama's first hundred days at one of their regular monthly gatherings in Westminster.

On 7 July it's the Next Generation Group Thames boat trip with celeb guests Neil & Christine Hamilton. Contact tng@adamsmith.org for invitations.



OUR ROTTEN STATE

Let's kill nanny

Stepladders have been banned from Oxford's historic Bodleian Library because of health and safety fears. The only problem is that students now can't reach the books! (Not that they could probably read them anyway...)

Westminster Pillage

Parliament proposes to set up a new Audit Committee to check out MPs' expense claims. (Let's put Guido Fawkes in charge of it. But I'd prefer not a new committee but a new Parliament!)

A Labour minister was reduced to a burbling lump of jelly on live TV by actress Joanna Lumley. (Mind you, apart from the 'by actress Joanna Lumley' bit, that's not really news.)

Conservative leader David Cameron promises 'compassionate' public-spending cuts. (Yeah, and economic ruin with a smile. I'd say 'ruthless' public-spending cuts might do more good.)

Parliament's Treasury Committee has blamed bankers for making an 'astonishing mess' of the economy. (Physician, heal thyself....)



AND I QUOTE...

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
- Ayn Rand