COWPERTHWAITE

Bravo and well done James Delingpole for his 'Television' review Rallying cry in the 13 Nov Spectator and his salute to Sir John Cowperthwaite:

"Yet, as Durkin showed, this has not been the Hong Kong Chinese example. There, thanks to the groundwork of perhaps the 20th century’s most able and farsighted administrator — a British civil servant called John Cowperthwaite — Hong Kong has been run since the 1960s on impeccably classical liberal lines. The top rate of tax is 15 per cent; the poor don’t pay any. The economic growth it has experienced as a result has been spectacular, but not to the detriment of the poor (who remain perfectly well looked after) nor to public services such as the transport system (shinier, cleaner, vastly superior to our Moscow c.1950-style Underground because — true Arthur Laffer principles — low-tax regimes bring in more to the Exchequer than high-tax regimes."

John's son Hamish and I grew up together in Hong Kong and he remained my most faithful friend. Our fathers were also close and power houses in the government.

It's good to see him still recognised.