Episode Archives

When Political Quotes Are Taken Out Of Context

September 5, 2018 Nic Elliott Podcasts 0:24:38

This week Nic challenges Andrew to guess the context of political misquotes from the past twenty years.

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Why don’t socialists donate to the government?

September 3, 2018 Andrew Elliott Blogs

It seems that every day some virtue signalling celebrity comments on how they should pay more tax. We discuss this very issue in the latest edition of Sounding Board.  If you haven’t listened already, it’s available here.

In it, we analyse statistics from the British Government on how much people actually donate to the treasury. Spoiler: virtually nothing.

It would appear then, that these are just weasel words, designed to elevate the sayer’s status without actually doing anything or backing them up with actions. A couple of days after publishing the podcast, as if by magic, one such person ended up on my Twitter timeline.

This was his original tweet:

Classic virtue signalling. “I’d willingly pay more tax”. I thought I’d see if he actually did.

Well, colour me shocked. No extra, whatsoever.

So there we go. It’s always, always the same:

“I should pay more tax.”

“Great! Here’s how.”

“I didn’t mean just me. I’m not unless we’re all forced to.”

If you ever encounter anyone saying they should pay more tax, point them in the direction of the treasury.

Nikolai Kondratiev, long term business cycles and tax statistics

August 28, 2018 Nic Elliott Podcasts 0:35:40

This week we talk about Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev, the pioneer or long term business cycles or Kondratiev Waves. We also find out if virtue signalling socialists who want to pay more tax actually do, before discussing tax statistics in more detail.

Links:

Nikolai Kondratiev

Voluntary Government Donations – Original FOI Request

Voluntary Government Donations – Andrew’s FOI Request

Daily Telegraph – Households dependent on the state

OECD Government Spending Data

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Please visit our website to download or stream all our previous episodes and to read our articles.
 
 
 
Remember, you can now subscribe on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWzAT–UxzErq_UU5SCUtFg
 
 
Please reach out to us on Twitter:
 
You can find us at the following podcast aggregators, and more:
 
 
 
 
 
 
Please subscribe and leave a review.  We don’t want your money – just share, listen, subscribe and watch!

Regulation, class, education and choice

August 22, 2018 Nic Elliott Podcasts 1:30:15

This week we talk about burdensome regulation in the telecoms industry before discussing different ways of determining a person’s class, whether higher/further education is a good idea and the benefits of consumer choice.

——
Please visit our website to download or stream all our previous episodes and to read our articles.
Remember, you can now subscribe on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWzAT–UxzErq_UU5SCUtFg
Please reach out to us on Twitter:
You can find us at the following podcast aggregators, and more:
Please subscribe and leave a review.  We don’t want your money – just share, listen, subscribe and watch!

Charlottesville Counter Protests – A Success Or A Failure?

August 15, 2018 Andrew Elliott Blogs

On Sunday, August 12th 2018, A second white supremacist rally was held in Washington DC. “Unite The Right 2” was planned as a sequel to the first rally, one year ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, where far right protestors and far left counter protestors clashed violently, resulting in the death of a young woman (and many more injured).

The first rally had hundreds in attendance, possibly up to a thousand. Angry young men with their tiki torches, chanting. This year? Approximately twenty people showed up. Not even a single bus load. They were vastly outnumbered by counter protestors from around 40 anti-racism organisations.

Now, you may think this is a good thing. That the far right have been, as near as makes no difference, eliminated. But have they? Interviews with protestors state that many of their colleagues did not attend due to fear. The protests last year became very violent due to clashes with Antifa, the so called anti-fascist organisation, who have a history of administering extreme violence in their black face masks against anyone (including young women & the elderly) who isn’t far left, and other counter protestors.

So what has actually happened? Has Fascism been eliminated? Of course it hasn’t. It’s been driven underground. Which is one of the worst things that could have happened. This is exactly why we need free speech. Free speech is how individuals and groups improve their opinions. They can air their thoughts, debate, argue and have alternative opinions given to them. They can then strengthen their opinions, or perhaps change their minds when presented with other evidence. None of this can happen now for white supremacists. So how are these people ever going to have their minds changed, now that they can’t speak in public? How can young, foolish individuals ever hope to change their dumb opinions under these circumstances?

Pushing things underground never works. Look back to prohibition in the 1930s. How well did that work? Or the war on drugs. How’s that going? Pushing opinions underground never works, either. In Britain the British National Party (BNP) were a growing political movement, some years ago. Although labelled “far right”, their policies were firmly in the left wing (mass nationalisation, etc.). They were just extremely racist. The BBC invited their then leader, Nick Griffin, onto Question Time, the popular political programme. There was uproar from the left wing. People went crazy and petitioned the BBC to change their mind as they shouldn’t give such a man a platform. To their credit, the BBC went ahead with the programme. Nick Griffin came on and made himself look like a fool (without any help from the weak panellists also on the programme). Support for the BNP evaporated, almost overnight.

The way to change people’s minds is to engage with them. To converse, to debate, to counter. We should be shining a light on people with white supremacist opinions. We should be inviting them to debates, to share the stage with us. If you don’t think your opinions will stand up to scrutiny from a white supremacist, maybe you should ask yourself why.

 

Entitlements. The new privilege.

August 11, 2018 Nic Elliott Blogs

I’ve just been delayed on my flight abroad by more than 3 hours. It’s actually going to be the other side of 4 hours. With two small children, my wife and I have been feeling the strain and using up the myriad ideas, techniques and distractions that we had already planned for the flight itself to keep the children entertained.

Thanks to the passenger who sat next to me I now know that we’re entitled to compensation as a result of an EU directive.

I could get north of €250 per person for my troubles.

Now obviously if enough of us passengers (customers they kept telling me) successfully claim then the logic is that the airline will learn the hard way and try to avoid such a payout again.

And this is where there is always an interesting discussion of what the market does and does not do.

The EU created this entitlement for me. The market didn’t.

Had the market been left alone completely would I be in the position of being able to claim compensation?

Surely if it’s what consumers want then providers will compete for the best compensation package? As far as I can read of this EU directive while sat waiting to take off, it’s all based on the rules the EU has come up with so it’s a straight and simple entitlement.

And that’s the term I’ve fixed on. Even the pilot said it in his announcement. We will be entitled.

I don’t want to be entitled. To anything.

Ironically I think it’s just as bad, if not worse, than being that other dreaded lefty word: privileged.

Entitlements are just state sanctioned privileges. State designed ones.

Its where the state elites have worked out where we should and shouldn’t have privilege, presumably as a way of “levelling the playing field” or certainly in this case, of bashing corporate greed in the name of the consumer.

Some privileges are earned. Others come by luck. Some by birth.

Theres another form of privilege now and it’s wrapped in the language of equality. The entitlement.

Not born of the market or of hard graft but delivered on a plate by our benevolent masters. Because the world is too scary for it not to be run by our betters.

At least, that’s what they think.

Good news, free speech and the future of the media

August 10, 2018 Nic Elliott Podcasts 0:58:17

This week we collate the amazing progress the world is actually making, before delving into why free speech is a good thing which leads us to discussing the future of traditional media.

Government – everyone thinks they can run it better

July 30, 2018 Nic Elliott Blogs

People who are “literally” communists are basically saying they could have done communism better than all the ways that have already been tried.

Ignoring the fact that all the ways tried so far have all been communism or socialism, it leads me to think that this highlights an important part of why government does or doesn’t work.

For a while we believe that if only the right people come to power that everything will be ok.

“Once our guys are in, things will get better”

But then, it became clear to me at least, that there are a number of problems that aren’t always obvious.

I suppose the obvious one is the maxim that power corrupts.

Another is that the only people who become political leaders are those who want power, which are the people you least want to have it.

But each of them think that they will do it better, only to discover that the same big-state issues will always exist.

One thing it curiously made me think about recently was our monarchy in the UK.

Now lots of people on the right and left in politics think that in a democratic society, it is clear that we should abolish the monarchy.

But this is where our constitutional monarchic system has its genius. It’s responsibility without power. It’s power that you aren’t allowed to use. That you must not use.

It’s an argument I heard once that totally converted me to a monarchist. That and the three word argument that I have heard a few times against a democratically elected head of state: President Tony Blair.

If only our government had the same mantra. That it was their responsibility to hold on to power but not to wield it, in favour of it being wielded directly by the people.

That they were custodians of power, there to stop others from taking advantage of that power.

It’s very unlikely to happen, but we need to recognise where the British system of government has got things right, and a head of state there to make sure nobody becomes head of state is pure genius.

US Free Trade, Low Tax Tories and DExEU

July 22, 2018 Nic Elliott Podcasts 0:45:27

This week we discuss Trump’s tactics with tariffs to obtain free trade, we ask why there are so few low tax conservative politicians and talk about the recent changes to the Department for Exiting the EU.

As mentioned in segment 3, here are the links promised:

Paper Money Collapse by Detlev Schlichter

Detlev blogs at the Cobden Center.

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Please visit our website to download or stream all our previous episodes and to read our articles.
Remember, you can now subscribe on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWzAT–UxzErq_UU5SCUtFg
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You can find us at the following podcast aggregators, and more:
Please subscribe and leave a review.  We don’t want your money – just share, listen, subscribe and watch!

Why is it now rare for a Tory to advocate low taxes?

July 21, 2018 Nic Elliott Blogs

I suppose I’d just got used to it.

Hearing big state, high-tax talk from Conservatives.

Theresa May with her interventionist, remainer views has always surrounded herself with advisers that think the same as her – see Olly Robbins, who has masterminded the circumvention of the Department for Exiting the EU, or basically anything written by Nick Timothy, her former co-Chief of Staff.

In fact, it was the Conservative manifesto itself for the 2017 snap election, written by Timothy, that is the best evidence to date that it’s no longer a mainstream Conservative view to believe in smaller government and lower taxes.

It was all bit Ed Miliband-lite.  What politicians and pundits like to call the centre-ground of British politics is now a very much lefty position.

Of course, nowadays, if you step one pace to the right you are deemed a fascist, whereas there are a seemingly infinite number of steps further and further left, never getting to the police state that the rest of us know lies in that direction too.

This was put brilliantly in this article by Douglas Murray in the Spectator.

Left and Right don’t really cut it any more – and I’m sure I can be accused of saying that because I don’t exist on the left of this crazy spectrum.  I believe, though that the new order is one of freedom versus totalitarianism.

And on the side of freedom are those of us who believe that people should be as free as they can possibly be to not have government run their lives for them.  As free as possible to spend their own money as they see fit.

What the politics of 2018 has lost (and it happened long before 2018), is a sense that small state, low tax economies work.  And not only work, but excel like no others.

Is it up to people like me with no following, no journalistic or political ambitions, to point out the success stories of Hong Kong under John Cowperthwaite or Germany under Ludwig Erhard?

There aren’t enough of us out there showing that when you lower tax and lower regulation and state intervention, that living standards improve, economies grow, and people get happier as a result.

So it was a surprise to me this morning to read that none other than Gavin Williamson, our young, hapless Defence Secretary, had in cabinet this week advocated lowering taxes in order to increase government revenue.

I wonder how well that went down.  Cabinet room lead balloon is what I’m thinking.

But it shouldn’t have been an unpopular idea.  It should be Conservative party policy.

And it should always be Conservative party policy.  It shouldn’t be floated occasionally by one of the cabinet, it should be a de-facto view.

Liz Truss has been making the right noises recently, and there is enough press chatter about Sajid Javid to indicate that he also could be on the right side of this.

But there aren’t enough of them.  Too many of the Conservative party are statists, just like on the left.

Without a Thatcher figure to slam Hayek’s Road to Serfdom on the table and say “This is what we believe in”, and actually sell the policies of low tax, low regulation, small state conservatism, I fear it will become more an more a minority view – deemed crack-pot even.

We have facts and evidence on our side – why is this Conservative government not using them?