ASI Bulletin: No Prime to Die
Anonymous Business Confidence Survey, New Research & More!
Complaints to me, praise to all your friends
IN THIS ASI E-BULLETIN:
ASI Business Confidence Survey: If you’re a business leader please fill in and share!
New Research: Overseas Territories, the hospitality industry & stronger sanctions.
Events and Stuff: Foreign Investment, China, Internships, Books and more!
But first…
Nigel Farage says people should help save Judeo-Christian culture by having more children. (To which Elon Musk responded: “Hey, I’m doing my best,” to which Boris Johnson added: “Me too!”) But with parents now moving their families abroad to escape VAT on school fees, I fear Nigel’s plan will flounder.
The Home Office is to cut spending (as they announced on their £11m-a-year social media feed). The Foreign Secretary seems to think that the prospect of white smoke over the Sistine Chapel is racist.
Amazon has taken on the James Bond franchise. (Forthcoming titles, which will be announced with the slogan: Bond Returns—And Orders, include: No Prime to Die, Dr No Password?, Quantum of Dollars, Plunderball and For Subscribers’ Eyes Only.)
But I digress...
ASI BUSINESS CONFIDENCE SURVEY
We’re running an anonymous Business Confidence survey, looking at the UK’s business and investment landscape. If you run a business of any size, whether it’s a small start-up or a FTSE company, we want to hear from you! So please spare 5 minutes to fill in the survey.
We want to give a voice to private sector frustration. Any contributions or shares with your network of business leaders and C-suite executives would be very valuable and much welcomed!
RESEARCH
Profitable Peripherals: The UK's Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories (CDOTs) have been unfairly maligned as 'tax havens’, but they're essential to the British economy and act as a major export market and a source of investment capital. We should use them to boost growth by promoting them as technological innovation hubs taking them into trade agreements such as the CPTPP.
Last Orders: Night Time Economy Adviser Sacha Lord says pubs are closing every day, jobs are being cut, pints are getting more expensive and there’s no end in sight. We need a nightlife- and hospitality-specific VAT cut, a rethink on the tax burden facing businesses and greater focus on cutting energy costs.
Sanctions Solutions: Our Degrade and Deny, author James Gillespie says that economic sanctions only work if they disrupt bad guys’ ability to achieve their aims—not by mere virtue signalling. We need a new joint unit for sanctions and counter-threat finance to make sanctions work.
EVENTS
At our recent Enlightenment Evening, Lord Harrington explained why the UK is lagging behind its peers in terms of foreign investment. It was standing room only, but you can watch his full talk on our YouTube channel:
The Next Generation
In March, we’ll be welcoming Ruby Osman, a Policy Adviser and China expert at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. She’s one of the UK’s leading Pekingologists and has even interviewed Henry Kissinger! She’ll be talking about China’s posturing as the new advocate for free trade and economic globalisation and how the UK should respond.
Global Enlightenment Forum
On the 12th April, we’ll be hosting the Global Enlightenment Forum, a whole-day academic conference centred around the origins, growth, proliferation and application of Enlightenment thought and philosophy to the Arab and non-Western world. We’ll be welcoming an exciting range of speakers including:
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (life peer in the House of Lords and Adviser to the Board of Trade),
Professor Nicholas Cronk (Professor of French Literature and European Enlightenment Studies at St Edmund's Hall and Wolfson College; Director of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford),
Dr. Dmitri Levitin (Fifty-Pound Fellow in History at All Soul's College, University of Oxford),
Professor Ali M. Ansari FRSE (Professor of Iranian History at the University of St. Andrews; President of the British Institute of Persian Studies),
Professor Nahyan Fancy (Al-Qasimi Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter),
Noreen, Rachel and Walid, winners of our Enlightenment Essay competition.
INTERNSHIPS
Gap year internships: Yes, you could invest several months of your gap year working with the most talented policy team in Westminster. Check it out below- the deadline is 25th April.
The sooner you apply the better. Our policy is to interview and accept strong candidates we like as they emerge, and spaces are extremely limited, so all spots may be gone before the deadline.
Summer Internships: We have two-week internships for talented young people who want to find out more about how public policy is made.It’s very competitive, so get your application in before the 25th April deadline! As above, our policy is to interview candidates as they emerge- and spaces are limited!
OTHER STUFF
Recently we hosted the second meeting of the Fighting for a Free Future Book Club. Chaired by Steve Baker, the group aims to help young people grapple with the aims and principles of a free society. More info on that here.
If you’d like to support our book club, just £100 would help us put on a session for 25 bright youngsters to learn more about the great classical liberal thinkers.
We were a significant presence at the 4000-strong ARC conference this week, making the case for liberal, free market economics. Plus we sold lots of our ties and copies of my Condensed Wealth of Nations and Madsen Pirie's Philosophy of Conservatism. Get your own copies on our website!
Working with the Economic Research Council, the Adam Smith Institute is proud to bring you Chart of the Week - a new educational initiative to explaining big stories with a single chart. This week, we looked at how Brits are living longer than ever before.
VIDEOS
We’ve got a new video on our growing YouTube channel:
Everyday, new innovations are promising to make our lives easier and business more efficient. But why do these advancements often lead to more consumption and not less? Watch the video below to find out.
And in case you missed it, why not check out our video on the problem with Trump’s tariffs and why protectionism is doomed to fail:
And I quote…
Sorry, I forget who said it, (Yes, it's an age thing—Ed.) but given our Business Confidence Survey and the general depression around the economy, I thought this was appropriate:
“Things are so bad that even the people who don’t intend to pay have stopped ordering.”
Bye for now,
e
Eamonn Butler
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