The gathering crisis in the UK

> - Stop setting prices by government diktat for medical professionals' salaries and procedures. Stop preventing private enterprise from building competing clinics and hospitals. Enable public health insurance to go towards the cost of private treatments in order to reduce lines.

Our system doesn't work like that, but we see that system in action in other countries and it doesn't seem to work very well, our health care costs are 1/5th of the US for better outcomes (e.g compare infant mortality) and we had the one of the fastest Covid vaccine rollouts in the world thanks to our centrally controlled health care system which is free to everyone at the point of use.

> - Stop requiring licenses for all manner of jobs that don't need them. You shouldn't need a license to cut hair, be an interior decorator, and all manner of work that expensive licensing requirements do nothing to help

You don't need a license for any of those things in the UK. Pretty much the main things you need actually need a 'license' for are Electrician, Doctor. Gas plumber. Many other professions are regulated and in some cases you legally can't call yourself a member of that profession without registering and passing exams etc, but you often don't need to use a regulated professional.

> - Radically increase the speed to approve new housing and transportation development. Do a single environmental review, get 1 round of feedback, then move forwards

Whatever it is the French and Spanish are doing, we should copy that. Their costs are about 1/10th of what we are paying for HS2 and they get things done really fast. I think that the French Government has a dedicated department for building high speed rail lines that has been doing it continuously since the early 80's so they have a lot of institutional knowledge on how to get this done which we don't have here. Their rail lines are still built by private contractors but in relatively small sectional contracts to increase competition in the construction market and I think the French government exercises more control of the overall design process than ours has the capacity or knowledge to do.

> - Reduce import taxes and establish free trade agreements so goods breeze through customs from trading partner countries

I believe the UK government hasn't yet imposed border controls on items coming into the UK from the EU yet, because they have failed to set up the system, so this is already happening. But you are right that it would probably make sense to rejoin the EU customs union, then we would get all the free trade agreements back that we just lost. Then you might as well rejoin the EU to get a say in how those deals are negotiated...

> - Increase legal immigration to expand the consumer base, expand the labor supply, and allow entrepreneurial foreigners to come in and start new businesses

Agreed. There are shortages of skilled workers in many sectors of the economy at the moment. There's a huge shortage of people to look after the elderly. A lot of companies I deal with are struggling with shortages, people have given up even answering their emails in many cases. Things that used to take one email or phone call are now taking 10 calls and 10 emails over the course of months.

> - Drastically reduce corporate and income taxes to promote productive economic development

This won't affect a lot of people who are already not paying much in tax and who can't or soon will not be able to afford their electricity and gas bills, you would need to abolish income tax for a significant proportion of the working population (say everyone earning under £20k so what's that about 25-30%?) to offset just the rising energy costs. If you want to stimulate the economy you need to have workers earning enough money to have some disposable income. E.g. the NHS employs about 1/10th of the working population of Britain, they have received real terms pay cuts over the last 13 years, therefore 1 in 10 workers has less disposable income to spend in small businesses like pubs and hairdressers thereby depressing the economy; Britain's economy has been stagnant since 2008 this is one of the reasons why. Thousands of years ago, in a crises, the Mayans dispensed grain for the population from their central repositories. The government needs to do the same thing (metaphorically) now to prevent economic hardship. Also, reducing corporate income tax doesn't stimulate growth, it suppresses it because it makes it easier to take money out of businesses instead of reinvesting it in making the business more productive; If a business buys something, it doesn't pay tax on the money it earned before it buys things it pays tax on profits after the cost of the things it has bought have been deducted. Buy new machines; tax free. Pay out to shareholders; not tax free.

Tabloids have only existed for 150 years or so. Before them, most newspapers thought their role was to help voters and investors make good decisions.

I don't recall the NRO or the military using the shuttle much. The shuttle flew for NASA projects. No NASA, no projects.

Brings a whole new meaning to "Singapore on the Thames" eh

But the last decade has been especially bad, and the last two years even worse than that.