In this guest post, originally published on the Victorian Commons website, Professor Simon Morgan of Leeds Beckett University, the principal investigator on the Letters of Richard Cobden Online resource, shows how Cobden’s letters can shed light on his role as a constituency MP. The publication in 2023 of the Letters of Richard Cobden Online, an open access database […]
Last week doctors and Green MPs were criticising the use of private hospitals to cut surgical waiting lists. This week the numbers show that patients are winning from private care: Partnering with the private health sector is delivering better access and shorter wait times for elective treatment, Health Minister Simeon Brown. “Ensuring Kiwis have access […]
New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors. Brian Easton writes – Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological. PPPs […]
It appears that Trump wants to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s with a global trade war. That is going to be very bad news for workers, consumers, taxpayers, manufacturers, farmers, and exporters. But there are two bits of good news. At least for small slices of the populations First, lobbyists will get rich as […]
This was the post I was planning to write this morning to mark Orr’s final day. That said, if the underlying events – deliberate attempts to mislead Parliament – were Orr’s doing, the post is more about the apparent uselessness of Parliament (specifically the Finance and Expenditure Committee) in holding him and the rest of […]
Yes. they say that age is “just a number,” but it isn’t in one sense: the bigger the number, the closer we are to taking The Big Nap. But in the birthday/anniversary sense, yes, it’s significant—though only because humans evolved with ten digits. And Eric Clapton has one of these anniversaries: he was born on […]
Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell has a simple proposed members’ bill to amend the Bill of Rights Act to have equal suffrage extend to local government. Equal suffrage is a fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will […]
TweetHere’s a note to a new correspondent. Mr. P__: Thanks for your feedback on Phil Gramm’s and my piece, in yesterday Wall Street Journal, on trade deficits. You believe that I “and Sen. Gramm omit that every US trade deficit means Americans are consuming more than they are producing, a habit that is unsustainable.” With…
World Athletics is supporting female sport: It sounds so simple that you wonder if there’s something you’ve misunderstood. In order to “doggedly protect the female category”, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has announced that his organisation will become the first to introduce cheek swabs or dry blood tests to verify an athlete’s biological sex. These are […]
In a decision that could well find itself before the Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld California’s ban on “large capacity” magazines. In a rare move, Judge Lawrence Van Dyke offered a video dissent to the majority opinion.
Bill Maher’s latest news-and-comedy shtick (8½ minutes) deals with “Trump Devotion Syndrome”: the sycophancy that imbues the cowards of America who don’t want to offend the Orange Man. Lots of Presidential rump osculation here! Putting his image on Mount Rushmore and on American currency? But of course! Oh, and there’s the “transgender mice” he mentioned. […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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