I have finally worked out to link to specific items in stephenpollard.net. Stephen Pollard is a man whom Samizdata.net readers should all be told about if they haven’t been yet. In addition to having his own blog, he also contributes regularly to this blog on European health issues run by the Centre for the New Europe (although linking to stuff in that is truly complicated and I won’t attempt it – just scroll down). And he’s a mainstream journalist of renown.
Two recent postings that get inside his head well are this, about Milton Friedman, and this, concerning the demonstrations last weekend, which also appeared in The Times. Here’s the conclusion of the Friedman posting:
Milton Friedman’s influence on the Left extends well beyond the NHS voucher. The congestion charge, introduced in London on Monday, has been lifted straight out of the professor’s 1951 essay, “How to Plan and Pay For the Safe and Adequate Highways We Need”: “[on] a crowded road…it would be desirable to discourage traffic…the people who drive on a road should be charged…in proportion to their use of the service”. As Ken Livingstone has put it: “I nicked the idea off Milton Friedman”.
Third Way, Shmird Way. Stand back, Tony Giddens; step forward, Milton Friedman, guru of the Left.
I also liked following this link, to a report about the events of June 7th 1981. Clue: CND ought to have liked it, but I’m guessing they didn’t.
I’ve been near pissing myself watch IDS and UK Conservative types trying to get on the opposite sides of these issues to preserve their politic difference.
It’s positively Biblical. “The Right Shall Be Left and the Left Shall be Right…” something like that.
The funny thing is that Friedman is such a demon on the left, I think they have genuinely no idea how many of his ideas they now accept as self-evident.
And Friedman predicted the Euro would be gone in 10-15 years.
If Britain doesn’t get its collective head out of its arse soon, it might be replaced by riyals/francs/marks.
Any of the 3 would be extinction.
I think what Tennessee does is more in line with what Friedman had in mind. 100% of the fuel tax goes to the state’s highway department and they don’t get funding from any other tax source nor is any of the fuel tax used for other gov’t projects. Your use of the roads is determined by how much fuel you buy. The tax is rebated for off road uses for farm tractors and such.
Nice article