Hat tip, though I hate to say it, to Yellow Peril for this story: LibDems soften on axing council tax - [Sunday Herald]:

LibDems soften on axing council tax

By Paul Hutcheon, Scottish Political Editor

SCOTTISH Liberal Democrats are backtracking on plans to replace the council tax with an income-based alternative, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Nicol Stephen’s party is softening its support for abolishing the successor to the poll tax because it does not want to jeopardise a third coalition deal with Labour. Senior LibDems believe the policy, which could increase the bills of middle-class Scots, is not worth a huge political fight.

The development is significant as the introduction of a local income tax was presumed to be a key plank of the party’s electoral strategy for next year’s Holyrood election.

The issue separates the LibDems from Labour, who remain staunch supporters of the council tax, and was thought to be a factor preventing another coalition deal.

Of course they are perfectly able to vary policy in a properly federal party where different areas may demand different tactics, and this is great news, if true. Scotland has led the way on land reform and voting reform. Land Value Tax would be the natural extension of the community land ownership laws they passed. I hope ALTER and the Labour Land Campaign can maybe get together and persuade our respective party groups north of the border to go for a Site Value Rating for local government in Scotland.

Glasgow, I believe, has the lowest rate of home owner-occupancy in the UK - LVT with a homestead allowance could help spread home ownership.

Glasgow is also the city that, at the turn of the last century, was being squeezed by surrounding landowners till the poor people squeaked as highlighted in several speeches on Land Value Tax by one Winston Churchill - and he made one of his best known speeches on the subject in Edinburgh.

It was predominantly Scottish ex-patriate business-men and colonialists of course who took Land Value Tax to places like Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand - implementing overseas the solution to the problems of a feudal landowning system they had laboured under and escaped from back at home.

Let them now lead the way and prove to the rest of us how it can be done!

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