Liberal Vision

Healthcare in the USA

In honour of Barack Obama’s healthcare bill I made a (de)motivational poster:

If you want to know more about Barack Obama’s healthcare reform go to http://healthcare.cato.org/

Does Cameron’s “favourite think tank” give us a glimpse of Tory Britain?

I dont know if many of you have heard about the delightfully mental report “Cough Up” by Policy Exchange. The report concludes British government have got tobacco tax pretty much spot on – well, they don’t tax tax cigarettes quite enough – citing a whole list of “costs” to society including litter collection, house fires and employee absenteeism, as well as, of course, the cost of treating tobacco related diseases etc….

Well if  Policy Exchange truly is “David Cameron’s favourite Think Tank” then heaven help the sovietised state we can all look forward to come May 7th, should he get into power. So much for liberal Tories – looks like central planning mentalism will be the order of the day if this lot have any influence….

“Cough up”? Throw up more like.

I started to write a suitable repost to this ridiculously poor report (you usually only get such ill-thought through documents from the Government rushing to get some cock up off the front pages),  then was alerted to Mark Littlewood’s excellent post over on the IEA blog.

He makes a number of excellent points – not least the following…

 “… The question isn’t how much smokers cost the NHS – but how much less would they cost the NHS if they didn’t smoke. The Policy Exchange research assumes they would cost nothing. But dying of Alzheimer’s as an ex-smoker (or non smoker) in your 80s is going to cost much more than dying as a chainsmoker of heart disease in your 50s. And that doesn’t start to factor in the saving made on state pensions by smokers having the courtesy of dying many years younger..“

Click on the above to read the full IEA article in all its glory.

Let’s see the Tory response……

UPDATE: There is another truly marvelous piece written  by Dick Puddlecote - delightful title to his post “That Policy Exchange Nonsense”. A must read!

Tags: Cough up, David Cameron, IEA, Mark Littlewood, Policy Exchange, tobacco tax

ID Cards still very much on this Government’s agenda

Some of us, myself included, have a tendency to think that we, and NO2ID, have won the ID card battle. We should all be under no such illusion. The fight is still very much on.

Earlier this week there was a little-reported matter of  Meg Hillier, the Home Office Minister, suggesting that Gordon Brown’s government may ask U.K. banks – specifically Govt “owned ones” – Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc - to subsidize its national identity-card program, paying for documents for poorer customers to attract business… “attract business” yeah right. And rather curious given that I was sure that the Government was leaving the banks to run their own business’. Apparently not.

Prior to that there was the little matter of Ms Hillier writing in Progress online (a New Labour Pressure Group) that ID cards are a “service” that will empower the country’s citizens – and specifically help fight social exclusion. Hmm – the Labour use of the word “service” is about as twisted as its concept of  term “choice” – don’t these people own a dictionary? Or are they just writing their own?

Now we hear that Pensioners could be forced to carry identity cards to qualify for free bus travel.

Well, we learned a long time ago not to believe a single word (or indeed number) this Government comes out with. But its a timely reminder to us – not to let the ID cards issue fall off our agenda – its certainly not fallen off the Government’s.

UPDATE: I am reminded that you can keep abreast of Government sneaky action on id cards at NO2ID’s newsblog.

Tags: Home Office, ID cards, Meg Hillier

Hung Parliament and the value of the £ – part 2

Well, Nick might have thought the discussion about hung parliament and the value of the £ had been put to bed with his comments last week. Not so. Here is a short extract from Tuesday night’s Newsnight – an interview with Lord Steel and Terry Smith (from brokerage Tullet Prebon).

Rarely have I seen anyone praise Vince Cable as highly as Mr Smith. But note the recurring theme we are hearing from many on the business side of UK plc – that the cuts being proposed by ALL three main parties are simply insufficient for the scale of the problem.
Come on Nick, let Vince off his leash to tell it as it really is.

Tags: hung Parliament, Liberal Democrats, Lord Steel, Newsnight, Terry Smith, value of £, £sterling

Labour has taken 13 years of diabolical liberties with Britain

Hat tip: If you have not read it, I urge you to read Simon Heffer’s piece in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. I dont agree with everything that Simon says on a regular basis, but he has it bang on right with his piece on how this Labour Government  have taken the piss with our civil liberties….

He says..

“A danger of the Government’s having made such a mess of the economy is that one risks forgetting all the other horrors for which it is responsible. Between now and the election I shall make a point of discussing some of these other factors that an intelligent voter should want to consider before casting his or her ballot. Despite stiff competition from matters like Europe, immigration, law and order and the near-destruction of our education system, one is perhaps worse than all the others: the insidious and at times quite terrifying assault on our civil liberties“……. 

“….(This) Government has created 4,300 new offences since it came to office. Many of these are either absurd (such as making it a crime to use a nuclear weapon) or they duplicate laws on the statute book. Some would say this highlights the ignorance of those who govern us. Maybe it does; but I would argue, too, that it shows their insatiable hunger for control” …..

“…….We live in a country where harmless people taking pictures of cathedrals are warned off by police invoking anti-terrorism laws; where the same legislation is used to regulate the positioning of wheelie bins; where smoking is banned even in public places whose owners wish to allow it; where the hunting of vermin is banned even on the land of those who wish to have it hunted. All these invasions of individual autonomy have taken place since 1997…”

That’s all straight from the Heffer’s mouth ….. read his full piece here.

Tags: civil liberties, Daily Telegraph, Simon heffer