I went to Jon’s launch yesterday in London. His book makes a strong case for lower taxes, fewer areas run by government and less regulation. He condemned the attacks on free speech and increasingly intrusive rules and bans on motorists.
He started his talk by pointing out there are now 8 bn people alive. Over all the years of human history there have been 109 bn in total, now dead. Multi billion populations are very recent. The average age of death was 30 for all those dead, lowered in part by a much higher level of infant and child mortality. he argued 80 bn of those died of disease.The reason life expectancy has shot up so much is the huge advances in medical science with vaccines and antibiotics given us a much longer life. More people now die in older age of inflammatory conditions. Maybe medical science will make more breakthroughs there.
It is free enterprise that has taken scientific and technical advances and applied them to products that prolong our lives. It is that same combination that has given us the car, the plane, the digital Revolution, the food conservation and supply revolution.
The book shows how high living standards and faster growth go along with lower tax rates, controlled public spending and regulation limited to the most important. It is well worth a read. I do not agree with all its challenges to the much loved principle of free healthcare at the point of need or to some of welfare measures the U.K. has developed.
September 11, 2024
‘Multi billion populations are very recent.’ This trend is not particularly welcomed by elites. The Duke of Edinburgh, for one, was constantly moaning about it. He was strangely concerned about wildlife though.
September 11, 2024
@ Peter – the late Duke, father of four, I assume.
September 11, 2024
We also need to ditch Net Zero and have free, fair and unrigged competition in energy, transport, vehicles, schools, healthcare, banking, universities, housing… plus far less red tape in especially in planning and employment.
“The reason life expectancy has shot up so much is the huge advances in medical science with vaccines and antibiotics given us a much longer life.”
To a degree this is true, especially improvements in child birth, fewer wars (in the UK anyway) too and better drains, clean safe water, cars are safer than horses, accident have reduced hugely too with safer tools and methods. Appendicitis was the second commonest cause of death in young men second to accidents, child birth was top danger for women.
September 11, 2024
‘… cars are safer than horses’ That’s a good one! LOL.
It’s even better than your previous assertion than walking consumes too much of the planet’s resources.
September 11, 2024
Peter
Suggest you are not aware of the high incident/accident/injury rate of anyone working with horses, as it is considered to be one of the most dangerous occupations in the UK.
We had a family member who ran an equestrian centre for years.
Even a well trained horse will do as it likes ( kick, crush, stamp, run, trample) if it really wants to.
September 11, 2024
My nephew and his wife own a stable in Bedfordshire.
They have suffered no horse-related injuries. Nephew has crashed his car though.
My uncle had horses on his farm in the West of Ireland. Again, no horse-related injuries to report. Rode the mare bareback on holiday as a child, when the day’s work was finished. No bad consequences despite the occasional tumble. The piebald was a bit more of a handful but no injuries from that one either. Happy times before elf and safety ruled the roost.
September 11, 2024
Horses are surprisingly dangerous, walking and bikes also far more dangerous circa 10x than taking a care per mile.
I did not say that walking (or cycling) consumes too much of the planet’s resources merely than human food is a rather inefficient fuel and that four people going in a small car is far more efficient than four people walking in energy terms and CO2 terms. Plus it is rather quicker and hot showers and clean clothes not needed on arrival.
If human food were an efficient fuel engineers could certainly design a car that used it rather more efficiently than humans do – a steak, chips and claret car. Mind you Prince Charles already claims to have a cheese and wine waste fuelled Aston.
As to planet’s resources:- The oceans contain about 1.4e31 J of fusion fuel, which is 1.3e13 quad, which is enough to supply energy at the current rate of consumption for 26 BILLION years. (the earth is about 4.5 billion years old now). Then we have all the radiated fusion energy from the sun hitting the earth each day and the fossil fuels and other nuclear fuels. Should last long enough I think.
September 11, 2024
Are you going to heat your house with the ‘fusion fuel’ contained in sea water? And what process will you be using to extract these quintillions of joules of energy? I hope that process itself will not be too demanding in initial energy in order to convert this ‘fusion energy’ into energy usable on a day-to-day basis.
September 11, 2024
It will surely come certainly and surely within circa 50 years or less. We have plenty of fossil fuels to keep us going for 200+ years plus other nuclear options.
September 11, 2024
Peter, cars are certainly more convenient than horses and are the source of many of our freedoms. Thus is why they are despised by the uniparty socialists because they have no control.
One reason they love EVs is because they can be closely monitored and ultimately be stopped if your deemed unfit or anti the narrative.
I saw Starmergeddon droning on again about how the country is broken as they release thousands of prisoners to make way for people like me on the faaaar rite who a decade ago were just normal people. I felt like buying a shillings worth of gas after listening to him.
September 11, 2024
Indeed. I have never in my 60 odd years felt like rioting but in the recent Southport slaughter protest riots the more I heard from two tier Keir Starmer the more I felt like doing so. Both he and Blair clearly want to suppress free speech as they have made clear.
September 11, 2024
@Lifelogic
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
John F Kennedy
September 11, 2024
Safer than horses? are you kidding? Back in the day with hundreds of thousands in the fields, and then similar providing transport of goods and people in cities, the death toll and serious injuries far out stripped 20 deaths per day caused by accidents involving cars.
September 11, 2024
My great uncle was killed by a runaway horse aged 14 in 1914.
Today horse riding is one of the most dangerous sports.
September 11, 2024
I believe clean water and sanitation are way more significant to health than medical advances. Cholera kills far more people than tonsillitis.
I’d like to know how he arrived at his figure of 109bn for the total number of human beings ever. Has he counted up all the death certificates? Likely this is a figure from some computer model that also ran climate change simulations.
Reply He us quoting a study
September 11, 2024
Well we know rough population and typical age of deaths I suppose so can thus compute this roughly. I suppose you have to decided when apes started to count as being full humans.
September 11, 2024
The ape would have to have been super-human, in order to degrade to present day humans. Information theory will tell you that.
September 11, 2024
So Philip Johnston in the Telegraph joins in with the Health Sec. in attacking those rightly demanding a re-trial
“It’s wrong to say that she was convicted on statistics alone, but nothing will convince the ‘truthers’” We are not saying that. We are saying the statistical evidence proved nothing (as any sensible honest stats person will tell you) and the other evidence was almost non existent & largely worthless too. Not even sufficient evidence that any crime was actually committed by anyone.
Good Telegraph podcast on this with the sensible David Davis.
September 11, 2024
Lucy Letby retrial.
September 11, 2024
For some reason I remember the fact that men retiring (aged 65) back in 1974 only had (on average) a year or two left to live. At that time I used to visit various factories and plants in the West Midlands and some (such as Round Oak Steel) were really quite filthy places. I also lived in a small mining community at the time. So I suspect a major reason for improved life expectancy is the very major changes in work environment that have occured with our loss of heavy industry…
September 11, 2024
Indeed and very unfair to men it was too. Women lived circa 3 years longer but got the pension at 60 so perhaps 10+ years of pension and men (perhaps with more industrial injuries too) got it at 65 and so only got 2+ years of pension – this despite having generally paid in more and for 5 more years too.
September 11, 2024
Sounds like he is thinking in the right direection, so no point in getting too picky about fringe detail. I will buy the book and read it.
It is my contention that whatever your political thinking, for real success you need to back it with economic success. It is also most desireable that economic success grows from the native wit and entrepreneurial activity of the people. To achieve such the people need to be incentivised, not bled to death with taxes. Taxes that are the dead hand of government raking off an unearned excessive percentage to invest in negative return.
Our current government will implode, given time. The opposition, so imagined, have only a history of failure to offer. Were it otherwise nobody is minded to believe them. The only party coming anywhere near Jon Moynihan’s thinking are the five elected members of Reform. Apart from making the right noises in the Commons, I hope they are building a strong national base from which, at election time, they can convince and give the electorate what it desperately needs.
September 11, 2024
We need to cut government expenditure hugely as government spend/waste it so appallingly and so much worse than the people they steal it off would have done. Currently they spend mainly waste not far short of 50% of GDP even half that would be too high. On top of this burden they also inconvenience and misdirect the productive sector and red tape and tax and other time wasting & misguided compliance burdens.
September 11, 2024
You hope that Reform are building a strong national base. I did too. Unfortunately what I’ve discovered is the precise opposite. There is no effective regional organisation and the often paper candidates Reform put up at the election have disappeared off the radar. There are lots of individual members looking for direction but being given none. Let’s see if the party conference later this month will change things.
September 11, 2024
+1 plenty of volunteers to stand for election, not so many to work.
September 12, 2024
A week ago they held an event for the 70 NEW Chairmen/women of NEW Constituency Branches they’ve already recruited. With more still being appointed. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
September 12, 2024
They’ve had six years to get organised, ignoring the 2021 name change from the Brexit Party. Still no proper local organisation.
September 12, 2024
Not really. They thought the job was done in 2019 – standing candidates down so Boris could ‘Get Brexit Done’. So a good few years missing from the six years. Now it is clear the Tories are a lost cause, the building of a real national party can take place.
September 11, 2024
@ Agricola – reform Uk – They are building local bases nationally!
September 11, 2024
Well the DUP have 5 MPs and they are a much more experienced and quality outfit than Reform. They were pivotal in scuppering the May disaster.
Moreover they are true conservatives.
September 11, 2024
I totally agree with you Lynn , being an Ulster man! I think an alliance of Reform and Ulster unionists would achieve a lot against the communists of the Labour party! Form an association with the Conservatives and we could have the commies dead in the water
September 11, 2024
Did you see the Trump debate last night? And you seriously favour him as the president of the USA. It was embarrassing to watch. The mind boggles.
September 11, 2024
All those benefits that improved standards of living from the time of the industrial revolution onwards depended on people willing to take risks with their time and resources, a favourable environment and the application of financing capital to develop their ideas. Once upon a time the UK was a leader of this revolution. Not any longer. Enterprise is penalized. The tax and regulatory environment is hostile and about to get worse. Finance capital and it’s owners are leaving the UK in droves. Marx and Alinsky are triumphant. Locke and Smith are in retreat. The dead hand of the Labour party was all too evident yesterday as OAPs took the punch and offenders left jail early to the sound of popping champagne corks. I see no way back to an in inventive, fast growing economy.
September 11, 2024
Were the early releases British or foreign criminals?
September 11, 2024
The article appears to imply Moynihan has unearthed a new route to economic prosperity, he hasn’t. I’ll stick to The Wealth of Nations and Thatcher’s regurgitation of such time served wisdom.
Private enterprise, the mashing of a free intellect with the sweat of physical toil is the only route to material wealth, all else is political snake oil.
September 11, 2024
We know what is needed for growth – far less government, far lower taxes, freedom of choice, less red tape. The problems is how do we ever get a government in power that actually does this? The last one we saw was Thatchers and even that failed to do anything like enough. The Starmer government’s every single policy is vastly anti-growth (other than relaxing planning).
September 11, 2024
Have you read the book?
Think you are talking about Labour’s endogenous and other growth theories as snake oil?
September 11, 2024
Capitalism, free market and non-state intervention will win every time …its not rocket science …but beyond labour and the tories
September 11, 2024
DOM, +++++ I do agree
September 11, 2024
“The reason life expectancy has shot up so much is the huge advances in medical science with vaccines and antibiotics given us a much longer life.”
———-
In part. It also shot up because of the huge improvement in nutrition of the masses, civil engineering which gave us clean water and better sanitation, and improved housing.
All of these are under threat by the Net Zero lunacy and the deliberate intention of the Globalists to drastically reduce our standard of living, which Starmer is enthusiastically implementing with the support of the Not-a-Conservative-Party.
After the abuse of the Covid jab coercion (which I resisted) and the Government’s refusal to admit to the deaths/harms caused by them, I don’t intend to ever have another “vaccine” and I don’t believe a word any Government Minister or the Big Pharma-funded medical profession has to say on the subject of health.
September 11, 2024
I’m with you all the way Donna.
September 11, 2024
Sounds like a book to read.
On vaccinations, nearly all diseases that are mass vaccinated were falling drastically before mass vaccination started. There is a powerful argument that clean water, sewage treatment, nutritious food and good hygiene did more for disease control than vaccinations.
Engineers and farmers!
September 12, 2024
And despite the denials of a link, it is obvious that there has been an explosion in “spectrum” disorders in the last 35-or-so-years. I believed my GP when she “advised” me that there was nothing to worry about and my sons should have the MMR and they had it.
They wouldn’t now.
September 11, 2024
As always, a focus on ‘growth’ as some sort of panacea. When this is challenged – as it basically means a growth in consumption – the response is ‘ahh, no, we mean growth in GDP per head’. Which, given we really don’t want to consume more, ought to mean less work for the same output – I.e. more leisure time for all’. It’s strange that the working week used to get shorter – 1950s to 1970s – but, since the Tories’ economic miracles in the 1980s (strangling the unions, privatisations, deregulation of ‘the city’ etc.), the working week has got longer and longer and job security is a thing of the past.
Where are the benefits of all this growth?
September 11, 2024
Per capita growth. Do I really need to say more.
September 12, 2024
Do you need to say more? Clearly! Just spouting ‘per capita growth’ is completely meaningless. Which of us are to produce more? And what are we to produce more of? Let’s have a little detail on this miracle of ‘growth’.
September 11, 2024
…..and give us greater prosperity and survival potential.
Trouble is we have big government to contend with, and once they get hold of a revolutionary creation of some kind they want to control, limit and subdue it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do away with 90% of authorities with their petty rules and live with less restrictions on our time and personal resources. That area, seriously is where we need the next revolutionary innovation.
September 11, 2024
💯
September 11, 2024
Firstly all prisoners should be released after serving ten years unless they are a continued danger to society – it serves no purpose in holding people for longer except to maintain the prison and justice industry. As regards “Return to growth” many people have various ideas about this but they are not in a position to follow through. Some countries leaderships are more flexible in their thinking and get an idea like bringing in lower corporate tax rates to encourage FDI – also the other great stand out is duty free shopping in the airports – as is the tax free economic industrial zones of which we were to have many but I don’t see it yet. Seems to me that brexit was a wasted effort on so many fronts because behind it all there was no real planning by government only slogans.
September 11, 2024
‘Spending and regulation limited to the most important’.
Population control?
That is highly important.
It badly needs regulation and a reduction in wasteful spending.
September 11, 2024
Some sympathy at Mr. Starmer’s plight might be due perhaps given the book’s synposis tells us: –
“When Tony Blair’s government came to power in 1997, public expenditure in the UK was 35 per cent of GDP and on a declining path, and taxes were 31 per cent. At the end of Rishi Sunak’s 2024 Conservative government, expenditure was at 45 per cent of GDP, and taxes are 36 per cent and rising – yet still nowhere near sufficient to cover public expenditure. The government’s net annual borrowing is now an unsustainable 4.4 per cent of GDP, with our overall national debt rising steadily.”
September 11, 2024
So I was right to call for a second Ludwig Erhard at the BEIS – but instead we had Kemi and all those who came before her.
September 11, 2024
The growth in population is the biggest problem the Earth faces, both for food supply and increasing emissions, as David Attenborough pointed ot some years ago. He was shouted down from all sides and never mentions it now, but I doubt whether his opinion has changed !
Growth in population has led to wars and mass migration which is giving Western Countries such problems.
Sooner or later we in Europe will have to take very much firmer and coordinated action to stop economic migration from Africa. That might even require the take over of some ports on the North African coast so that our navies can intercept boats and return them to that continent. That seems to be the only way of stopping the flow of African and Arab economic migrants from streaming into Europe. Once returns are firmly established, the flow will stop. If it is allowed to go on, the whole cultural status of Europe will be changed. London and several cities such as Rotterdam and Malmo are perfect examples of what is going to happen if it is not stopped. As present European countries are arguing with each other over returns across their own borders when the problem needs to be tackled at source.
If he wins, Trump will undoubtedly move quickly to bring a complete halt to illegal migration across the Southern US border, which Biden and Harris have singularly failed to do, with dramatic consequences. Starmer is repeating their mistake here.
September 12, 2024
Agree about population growth and population movement being the real problem
September 11, 2024
Make no mistake, from the UN downwards the intention is planetary de-growth, particularly for the democratic West. They do not want GDP/capita to grow but only government employment and wasteful spending to justify high taxation for easier control of the populations.
Net Zero, justified by the false concoction that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused a climate crisis, when the science is that this is impossible because of IR saturation and which is not evidenced by the planet’s climate history, is the perfect vehicle for de-growth through impoverishment and the rationing of energy, food and transport.
For instance, renewables have been selected to reduce CO2 emissions because they are expensive and intermittent. If CO2 was really an issue they would have selected nuclear energy. Transitioning to expensive and impractical evs and heat pumps is to ration and reduce consumption for they know full well that our local grids do not have the capacity for these replacements to operate without rationing.
Check out the government funded Cambridge University Department of Engineering’s UK FIRES Absolute Zero report for how the final Net Zero destination looks :
https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/content
Or the NGESO’s 2050 Future Energy Scenarios (FESs) with their requirements for what is euphemistically called “customer engagement” and “behavioural changes” to achieve Net Zero.
We need a referendum on Net Zero.
September 11, 2024
PS : It is obvious to everyone, including the Far Left although they will deny it, that it is only possible to know the truth when there is freedom of speech. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
So the fact that the BBC, our state and licence fee funded broadcaster, refuses to allow any discussion on CAGW and Net Zero means that at best they are afraid of discovering the truth, or, at worst are deliberately hiding the truth.
September 11, 2024
Sir John, thanks for the brief summary, I look forward to reading the book.
It sounds as though Jon M is presenting the merit of small government. Who among us would argue with that?
Small state will always present a lower burden on those paying for the costs of society, i.e. the tax payers.
September 11, 2024
Recent governments seem obsessed with increasing the population via immigration. They look at the country’s GDP which this raises but they fail to look at the GDP reduction per head or the increase in crime, required housing, public services and NHS demand. Other countries like Japan have managed their population reduction without the need to import an ever-increasing number of foreign workers so it can be done. Our country gets poorer year on year and this government plans to strip the middle classes of their wealth and give it to foreign entities against the people’s wishes. How can they justify taking money from pensioners but giving billions in climate and foreign aid to corrupt governments abroad? Until my generation the UK was left in a better condition by our forebears, now we are in steady decline. We as a country are turning into the likes of North Korea or Russia with this totalitarian government that releases violent criminals to make way for people whose only crime is to speak their minds on social media. Every crime perpetrated due to these early releases is on the head of two-tier Starmer and his cronies. I hope people remind him of this each time it happens. Never have I been so embarrassed to be British.
September 12, 2024
+1
September 11, 2024
“His book makes a strong case for lower taxes, fewer areas run by government and less regulation. He condemned the attacks on free speech and increasingly intrusive rules and bans on motorists.”
Isn’t what most of us mean as Conservatism! something that has been lost in the Parliamentary Parties in this Century. Now banned as terrorism by Starmers storm-troopers
September 11, 2024
8 bn people, and less than 0.0009% are harassed by government preventing them living and earning and held back by punitive punishment as a result of NetZero Laws not practised or employed elsewhere.
September 11, 2024
I will buy and read the book. Perhaps a copy should be sent to every MP; who knows, they might surprise us by reading it and applying it. But it is simple: low tax, low cost, and reliable energy are the foundations of a thriving economy.
Sadly, neither the current Labour government nor its conservative predecessor understands this simple truth.
They have also forgotten they are the servants of the people, not our masters.
September 11, 2024
The concept of “the much loved principle of free healthcare at the point of need ” seems to me extremely muddled, conflating two independent features (‘free’ and ‘freely accessible’).
It is perfectly possible to have a contributory system in which access to treatment is freely and immediately granted to every insured patient, a system that these days it can be handled electronically.
‘Free’ as in ‘without cost’ is nonsense. I cannot travel to a specialist or hospital without paying on the spot for a bus or train ticket, or showing I have already done so in advance.
Having seen at first hand a myriad abuses the NHS management blithely tolerates – people flying in from remote countries and being immediately treated by the NHS without question – I am extremely keen on challenging the whole system. It is moribund – as is by the way our purblind benefits system.
September 11, 2024
‘or showing I have already done so in advance. Why should everyone not also show similar proofs when applying for NHS treatment?’
September 11, 2024
What does he propose to replace free healthcare? Which country is his model? Certainly a system which is funded by general taxation in which know-nothing Arts graduates have created their own massive job creation scheme in which doctors and nurses are at the bottom of the pyramid must be the very worst in the world.
September 11, 2024
Excellent performance SirJ on GB News tonight
September 12, 2024
You can’t control budgets. With silly fiscal rules as if The government is a household.
The budget deficit and national debt represent the ” savings desires ” of the public, businesses and foreigners who save in sterling.
If you stop people saving using silly fiscal rules by trying to run budget surpluses or balanced budgets. It just pushes households and businesses into debt. They have to rely on more bank loans or Quickquid rather than rely on their savings.
On aggregate It is the House holds and businesses that end up in ” deficit ” spending more than their income. As the government tries to persue a surplus or balanced budet.
As the Office of National statistics clearly shows using ou
The UK sectoral accounts
Here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/quarterlysectoraccounts/apriltojune2022
Why when Osborne was trying to control spending and run budget surpluses ( austerity) we had the lowest household saving ratio since records began. Had to reverse his persue of surpluses and very quickly run budget deficits again.