Notes from a future where Britain has solved the housing crisis April 16, 2024 In ten years’ time, high house prices and low supply could be a thing of the past. Kristian Niemietz offers a despatch from that brave new world… The year is 2035 and according to provisional figures released today by the Office for National Statistics it is the tenth year in a row during which house [...]
Attitudes to the NHS are finally catching up with reality March 29, 2024 The NHS has always been mediocre to poor in terms of measurable medical outcomes regardless of funding or public adulation, says Kristian Niemietz Public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to the lowest levels since records began, according to the latest edition of the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA), which was released this week. 52 per cent [...]
Book review: A vital tome for those fighting for capitalism March 9, 2023 Imagine someone programmed a Twitter bot which, every time somebody describes a problem of some sort, responded with some variation of “I think you will find that the root cause of the problem is capitalism!” That bot would easily get tens of thousands of likes, retweets, and supportive replies every time. Anti-capitalist platitudes, no matter [...]
Could the NHS lose its halo as waitlists push people towards private practice? April 19, 2022 Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS waiting times have increased sharply. In early 2020, there were about 4.4 million people on some kind of NHS waiting list. In early 2022, that figure had soared to 6.1 million. In early 2020, fewer than one in five patients waited for longer than 18 weeks. Now, [...]
Socialism is on the rise in the UK – we need radical free-market solutions to issues like the housing crisis to fight it July 8, 2021 Last Friday, an underwater oil pipeline burst in the Gulf of Mexico. Spectacular images of a burning oil patch, which looked a lot like the “eye of Sauron” from Lord of the Rings, quickly went viral around the world. What had gone wrong? It did not take long for Twitter to reach its verdict: the [...]
DEBATE: Should London have rent controls? April 7, 2021 Dr Kristian Niemietz, head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affair says No Rent controls are a lot like socialism. Both have been tried dozens of times. Both have ended in failure every single time. And both remain insanely popular nonetheless. In both cases, supporters will insist that, far from having failed, the [...]
DEBATE: Should people be able to pay to get the Covid-19 vaccine privately? December 17, 2020 As the NHS rollout continues, should people be able to pay to get the Covid-19 vaccine privately? Kristian Niemietz, head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs, says YES. The Covid vaccine is not a consumer good like any other, and it should not be allocated like one. It should, in the main, [...]
Uber’s back and its rivals will just have to deal with it September 30, 2020 Having scraped by on short-term “emergency licences” for about two years, Uber, the California-based ride-sharing app provider, has been given a “proper” licence to operate in London again, after winning in a crucial appeals case this week. For now, this marks the end of two years of legal limbo. In 2017, Transport for London (TfL) [...]
DEBATE: Should we pay more tax to increase funding for the NHS? February 6, 2018 Should we pay more tax to increase funding for the NHS? Dr Clare Gerada, medical director of the NHS Practitioner Health Programme and former chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, says YES. The NHS is our most treasured national institution. But it is clear that current funding is not keeping pace with need. Year [...]
Shooting the messenger: Rent controls have always and everywhere ended in failure September 14, 2016 Rent controls are back on the political agenda. Their reintroduction is now official Labour Party policy, and the Conservatives will probably follow with a somewhat milder version in due course. It is easy to see why: according to a recent Survation poll, two thirds of the public support rent controls, with most of the remaining [...]
