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Thieves tried to grab a diamond necklace from U.S. entertainer Liza Minnelli while she was honeymooning with her new husband David Gest. The Oscar-winning star was the victim of an attempted robbery when the car in which she was a passenger stopped at traffic lights in Holland Park, west London. That should boost the British tourist trade – not! March 22nd, 2002 | Comments are closed
 March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
“We just got a message from Saddam Hussein. The good news is that he’s willing to have his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons counted. The bad news is that he wants Arthur Andersen to do it”. March 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Take a look at a fine article defending the ancient British sport of foxhunting by former Labour MP Brian Walden in today’s Daily Telegraph titled Ban on foxhunting would be a triumph for the mob. I cannot do better than Walden in laying out the case as to why a proposed ban on hunting with hounds is a monstrous attack on liberty, which libertarians, be they meat-eaters or hard-core vegans, should reject. March 15th, 2002 | Comments are closed
This morning a contact of mine called up to say he was attending an event discussing the so-called Tobin Tax, which is a levy on foreign exchange transactions named after the Nobel Prize Winning Laureate of 1981, James Tobin. The tax is proposed by such politicians of usually leftist anti-market hue as French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who favour the tax as a way of reducing the massive flows of foreign exchange business and hence, they hope, in reducing the power of global markets. It is a vain hope. For starters, any attempt to tax foreign exchange deals would be a massive boost for the offshore tax-haven market, already booming as investors wisely choose to domicile their businesses there to avoid paying tax. It is an idea that has, in my view, very little chance of taking form. It would be a particular blow to the City of London, which boasts a vast foreign exchange market on which many jobs depend. Anyway, on Monday Professor Tobin, a former adviser to President John F. Kennedy, passed away. One should not speak ill of the dead, and on the whole my impression of Tobin is that of a distinguished economist. But let us hope the foolish levy that bears his name passes away also to the great dustbin of bad ideas in the sky. March 13th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Perry’s comments on George W. Bush’s economically illiterate steel tariffs below are surely a reminder that conservatives (with a large or small c) are often the worst defenders of free enterprise. How on earth can Dubya, for whom I have a fair amount of respect, talk about free markets any more with a straight face? Looks like the worst kind of vote-grubbing measure to me. Clearly bound to have an adverse impact on other sectors of the economy as well as sour relations with other parts of the world. Bush has given the euro-weenies a stick to beat him with – and this time they have right on their side. Bush’s move is clearly related to next November’s Congressional elections. George, get a copy of Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” and wise up! March 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Yours truly and fellow blogger David Carr attended an awards ceremony hosted by Privacy International for its annual Big Brother Awards at the London School of Economics. When we got there my heart sank. Ok, one or two mates from the Libertarian Alliance were in the room, but my worst fears were aroused when I saw a bunch of twerps sporting George W. Bush face masks. Oh God, I thought, we’ve got the usual mix of muddle-headed Blame-America-First lefties, peaceniks and other delusional types. But, I have to report that the evening turned out better than I, or I am sure Mr Carr, could have expected. As well as handing out these “awards” to such bodies as the Department of Education (UK) for various infringements of privacy, Privacy International also handed out genuinely positive awards to those who have protected or advanced the course of liberty over the past 12 months, including the right-leaning Daily Telegraph. It was a genuinely wonderful moment as various lefties hissed and cringed as Telegraph reporter Stephen Robinson went up on stage to pick up the award for the paper’s A Free Country campaign. The Telegraph has opposed state ID cards, supported decriminalisation of some drugs, opposed threats to trial by jury, and also opposed the ongoing encroachments on British liberty from Brussels. I think something very important happened last night. What we saw were a bunch of peaceniks forced to acknowledge, through gritted teeth, that there is such a thing as a non-left libertarian movement that is passionate about freedom, determined to protect it, but also savours capitalism. I think this is a meme that is going to continue infecting the body politic.  When the state watches you, dare to stare back March 5th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Bravo David Carr! I must say I agree that the word liberal, often used as a term of abuse across the big ditch, needs to be rescued. To my mind, the term connotes open-mindedness, freedom, skepticism about overweening plans for the betterment of mankind, endorsement of the free market and respect for privacy. Thanks to Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the “reforms” of the British Asquith government before the First World War, however, it has taken on an altogether more interventionist meaning since then, both in the U.S. and to a lesser extent, in the U.K. David is quite right to note, too, that liberal means something closer to what I hope it does mean when used in Continental Europe. I think this issue of terminology matters because of the need by genuine liberals to distinguish themselves from conservatives, who may buy the economic side of liberalism but reject the social/cultural part, such as Britain’s Conservative Party. Vive la liberte! Tom Burroughes (tom.burroughes@reuters.com) February 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Well, in the light of the recent crime problems in the UK and the punishment of people for trying to defend themselves, perhaps our police should have a new motto: “Crime is not our business”. February 22nd, 2002 | Comments are closed
He still doesn’t get it, does he? ‘Sophisticated’ Chris Patten, the EU Commissioner about whom I waxed indignant the other day due to his attack on George W. Bush for labelling certain states as evil, has not only defended himself today he claims he is not anti-American, but also repeats the daft idea that U.S. and the EU must deal with terrorism by tackling poverty, human trafficking and autocratic regimes without actually saying exactly how, or indeed reflecting on how such ‘jaw-jaw’ approaches have failed in the past. Surely the point is that countries such as Iran or North Korea are poor because they are closed societies, and so are not likely to be improved by disbursements of aid from the Western taxpayer (has the EU approach improved things by giving money to Yassir Arafat?). Patten is playing a dangerous game. He gives the impression that he is privy to Bush plans for some kind of crazed military rampage throughout the globe even though so far the US has not shown its hand and certainly not to the likes of him. It is hard to escape the suspicion Patten’s depreciation of US ‘unilateralism’ is as much due to annoyance of being left out of the loop in matters that are none of his business anyway. The EU political class must stop talking about the US as if it were some kind of immature adolescent incapable of acting intelligently without the input of their wisdom. Apart from being downright rude and bad diplomacy, it reveals a profound ignorance. I don’t know what goes on inside Patten’s head but I can help feeling he has not grasped the degree to which Americans have been shocked and changed by September 11th. Get out of the Brussels bunker, Mr Patten, you are not doing yourself or anyone else a lot of favours right now. February 15th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Let me commend to you an admirable article by Dinesh D’Souza in the U.S. technology and investment publication Red Herring, on how technology helped abolish slavery and emancipate women, called Technology and Moral Progress:
D’Souza makes many valid points and Red Herring is well worth a regular read for those interested in what is going on in tech but who don’t want frivolity. The link to their site can be found in the sidebar. February 14th, 2002 | Comments are closed
A bit of a no-brainer question, I suppose. An outstanding article in The Times of London today by Michael Gove demolishes the haughty conceits of European Commissioner Chris Patten. Patten, some may recall, was the UK’s final Governor of Hong Kong, who carries the dubious honour of being the man who handed that fine capitalist piece of the planet to the Chinese Communist Party. Patten’s beef with the recent “Axis of Evil” speech by President Bush is that it was, er, frightfully “simplistic”, definitely the mark of a vulgar west Texan and definitely not the sort of thing one would hear at an Oxford dining table or a Brussels drawing room. The important thing, he implies, is to be “sophisticated”. You know, like the French. Patten also questions whether the governments of Iraq, Iran and North Korea can be characterised as “evil”. For a Roman Catholic, it seems a bit rum that this man has such trouble with the concept. I wonder if Patten has the remotest idea of how arrogant he and his like sound to our cousins across the big pond? Hopefully this is another blow to America’s unwise support for the EU as an institution. If Patten helps show the EU mindset for what it is, then I guess we should be kind of grateful. February 13th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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Taking the tube (London’s underground rapid transit system) last night was a nightmare. A delay on one line meant no trains at a rush-hour period for more than 20 minutes. Chaos. Angry crowds. A scene sticks in my mind. A young London Underground staffer, dressed in usual garb of garish blue jacket and hat, was shouting at a vexed young man in a suit, telling him to wait at a certain point. She was using the manner of a particularly authortarian school-marm. Ask yourselves, gentle reader, could such a thing occur in a privately run business, like a food store? I think I know the answer to that one.