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Joined April 2008
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Adam Smith Institute retweeted
If reports are correct, tomorrow we will see a short-sighted, illiberal, and potentially more harmful social media ban for under-16s.
As I said on @TimesRadio two weeks ago with @Jo_Coburn - politicians have no idea what they are doing, and neither do the lobby groups. 👇
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Jun 13
Our brilliant Research Associate James Hodgkinson joined TalkTV’s Evening Exchange yesterday, delivering a compelling rebuttal of both the triple lock and calls for compensation for WASPI women. 👇
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Jun 13
He has also written for The Critic this morning! ✍🏻
Jun 13
The next time a minister stands up to defend a multi-billion-pound vanity project that they say is “transformative”, perhaps the operative question is: “have you fixed the Wi-Fi yet?”
✍️ |🦊 |James Hodkinson
thecritic.co.uk/signal-failu…
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Jun 12
Jacob Rees-Mogg has always been a politician known for his style, but he looked especially fashionable participating in a @Bloomberg debate on Brexit this week.
Perhaps it was the sight of his ASI tie, which can be found below.👇
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Adam Smith Institute retweeted
Jun 12
Zack Polanski was right that you can buy vegetables for less than 7p in this country, but wrong about what that says about our supermarkets.
The fact that produce is so cheap proves what Adam Smith observed: competition drives prices down, delivering value to consumers.
Jun 12
.@viggoterling went looking for the infamous 7p vegetable.
The closest thing he found was a loose carrot at Sainsbury's for 6p. Far from proving exploitation, the sixpenny carrot is evidence of something else entirely: brutal competition.
thecritic.co.uk/zack-polansk…
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Jun 11
This country has run a deficit every year since the triple-lock’s introduction.
Most now see how unaffordable our state pension has become, even @resfoundation .
Burnham should be focussing on proactive reforms, not retrospective budget-busting payouts.
Jun 11
Labour's magic money tree is back! Andy Burnham makes £10BILLION pensions compensation vow to 'WASPI' women and hints at student loans relief trib.al/bHdUnI3
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Jun 11
Read more about the how fiscally untenable the state pension has become.👇
adamsmith.org/research/up-in…
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Adam Smith Institute retweeted
Jun 10
This feature already exists voluntarily on iOS. If parents want to enable it, they certainly can. The Government could even run an ad campaign.
But imposing these rules on adults will further destroy anonymity and result in British users losing services.
Jun 8
Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all.
signal.org/blog/pdfs/2026-06…
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Jun 10
We agree — and raised the alarm about this when we suggested redrafting the then Online Safety Bill.👇
Jun 9
This is what the UK spyware proposal means.
There must be government spyware on every mobile device. It shall watch everything that happens, including always watching the screen, looking for things the government disapproves of.
When anything is flagged by the software as something the government doesn't like, the software must block it from being sent or displayed (in realtime).
The user of the device must not be able to shut this watching and blocking off. The only way to shut it off would be to ask the government or its proxies to do so for you, at their discretion.
Therefore the whole device must be locked down. Administrator rights and the decision of what software or operating system to run or not to run must be taken from the owner/user and handed to the government and its proxies.
Apple and Google are themselves working hard to lock down the devices they are involved in to shut out competition and establish a duopoly.
The UK government says it is "working closely" with Apple and Google and currently they synchronise and coordinate their communication on this subject.
The UK government is now proposing to mandate what would otherwise be illegal anti-competitive practices.
@GrapheneOS on the Apple and Google duopoly:
x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2053…
Statement from @signalapp
x.com/signalapp/status/20640…
@ReclaimTheNetHQ on the state spyware:
reclaimthenet.org/starmer-ca…
The government announcement:
gov.uk/government/news/new-p…
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It seems pretty reasonable to us.
Jun 9
Version of AI tool too powerful for public released to public bbc.in/4xfGSlq
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Adam Smith Institute retweeted
Jun 10
Thank you to @callumtprice and @iealondon for speaking with me about the @ASI’s Tax Freedom Day.
Watch below 👇
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Jun 10
Join us for our next Next Generation drinks on Tuesday, 7th July!
We are thrilled to welcome Denys Demko, Economic Secretary at the Embassy of Ukraine in the UK.
Denys will unpack how competition can help both the UK and Ukraine strengthen their defence capabilities.
🔗 👇
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Jun 10
An admirable response to Britain’s high-skilled emigration crisis. At least 1.7m university-educated Britons lived abroad in 2015/16, the most in the OECD.
But the Government must think carefully before committing taxpayers to a scheme that could cost upwards of £100m a year.
Jun 10
Rachel Reeves will reimburse British firms £5,000 per foreign worker in a bid to make the country more attractive despite the UK’s growing youth unemployment crisis
🖇️ telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/w…
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Jun 10
Instead, ministers should focus on reforms that benefit all employers, not a Whitehall-selected few: reversing the hike to Employer National Insurance and repealing the Employment Rights Act.
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Jun 10
The ASI has written a paper exposing some of these issues, which you can find here. 👇
adamsmith.org/research/knock…
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Adam Smith Institute retweeted
Jun 9
Claude is great, but @ASI is even better. Back in 2024, @DuncanMcClement and @jasonhausenloy did these sums for us.
They found that ‘liberalising restrictions would boost the welfare of every person by 6.5% if limited to London, or by 11.7% if extended to all cities.’
Putting Anthropic's just-released Fable model to work on the toughest problem known to mankind, fixing the United Kingdom.
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Jun 9
Our Head of Communications & External Affairs @marchong_joanna was on @TimesRadio yesterday discussing the under-16 social media ban.
Listen to a snippet of what she said below.👇
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Jun 9
A blanket ban on social media is not be the solution for any age group.
As Joanna rightly highlights, Australia is struggling to enforce its own ban, with a survey having found that 61% of 12–15-year-olds still have access to at least one of their social media accounts.
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