On coronavirus, governments have been the most irrational of us all
Decisions, whether by individuals, companies or governments, are often made with imperfect and incomplete information. This is so obvious as to hardly seem worth stating. But for well over a century economic theory assumed that decisions were made with complete information. Economists knew full well that this was not always the case. The problem was […]
Busting the myth of the selfless bureaucrat
There seems to be a fundamental problem with quangos. Hardly a day seems to go by without some new story of incompetence and mismanagement emerging. Public Health England (PHE) is at least going to be put out of its misery by health secretary Matt Hancock, and replaced with a new agency specifically focused on pandemics. […]
Why you should read the small print on alarmist Covid-19 death projections
Another day, another lurid, headline-grabbing number of deaths to expect from Covid-19. This time, it was a study from the Academy of Medical Sciences. A second wave, we were warned, could kill 120,000 this winter in hospitals alone. To be fair, this study was a projection rather than a forecast. A forecast is what is […]
Priti Patel vs. Philip Rutnam: It’s in Britain’s interest that bureaucracy does not win
The reverberations around the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam, the top civil servant at the Home Office, continue. Priti Patel, the home secretary, is receiving a barrage of abuse. Labour’s John McDonnell has pronounced that he cannot see how Patel could carry on. He raised the possibility that she might be in some way “suspended”. […]
