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One last post on this, not because I care, but because I report "news" in this instance...

It was to be expected I suppose that the events of the past few days would be mentioned in Vince Cable's talk at the Oxford East constituency dinner this evening, and he didn't disappoint.

So for all of those out that are talking of splits in the party and and bad feeling, his message was quite clear.

There are no splits. We are (except perhaps for me) the most united party on the whole issue of Europe. There were differences of opinion over tactics; whether abstaining was going back on a manifesto promise, or rather whether abstaining specifically on the treaty rather than the constitution was going back on such a promise. Some people took that position. Those who resigned the front bench before voting did so with good grace and no rancour towards Nick or anyone else.

He did seem to me to suggest, but I'm sure not say explicitly, that the regrets are over the events of the last couple of weeks as a whole. The profile that by implication Nick has given to this one issue. For me of course, I think that's just the new boy not quite realizing in time he was being set up by the Tory Euro-shambles to take the fall for their own irresponsibility on the issue. And perhaps a regret that Nick was backed into a position in which he felt it was right to make it a three line whip issue.

Cameron has not faced such a media backlash for his massive rebellion because although it was a front bench position to abstain from Bill Cash's amendment, he had not insisted on whipping it - but the rebellion was larger than ours and shows up the Tory incoherence on Europe.

The parliamentary party are only too aware that they have caused headlines for the wrong reasons and are apologetic for that. But todays newspapers...

Property "guru" (well I say guru as I understand she participates in one of those DIY developer programs on a TV channel I don't receive, probably thankfully) Lucy Alexander reflects in the Times today on some of the potential effects of the Tory plans to try to take most family homes out of Inheritance Tax by lifting the threshold to £1m:

The property boom under Labour has created a generation of accidental property millionaires, many of whom are forced in later life to sell their homes to avoid imposing a punitive inheritance tax burden on their children.

Under the Tory proposals, the inheritance tax threshold would be raised from £300,000 to £1 million, knocking £280,000 (40 per cent of £700,000) off the tax bill for £1 million-plus homeowners. Will these now choose not to sell and instead, in time-honoured fashion, leave their homes to their children when they die?

Bless 'em. These poor APMs ("accidental property millionaires") are clearly now left in a dilemma few of the rest of us can actually comprehend. But the solution is all in the name...ACCIDENTAL property millionaires. Of course no doubt Ms Alexander, echoing Mlles Beeny and Allsopp, would say it is all down to the skill of the purchaser some years, perhaps decades, earlier that they had spotted an "up and coming neighbourhood" and bought into it when it was good value and have just sat back and enjoyed their "investment".

"Ricardo's Law:
House Prices and the
Great Tax Clawback Scam"
(Fred Harrison)

Well of course as property professionals they have to sell the dream, and Mandy Rice-Davies Applies; they would say that wouldn't they? But in reality it's absolute rubbish. When one spots an "up and coming neighbourhood", if one has been so assiduous in looking for a home, it's up and coming because other people want it, because there is public and private investment going into the local infrastructure and environment. It's yours and my tax money often enough that has been ploughed into an area and filters out like gold in a panning tray in the form of increased property values - as we shall perhaps one day see again when all the property around new Crossrail access points shoots up in value as a result of our billions of public investment.

Now I have said many times before I have no problem with the handing down of wealth from one generation to another. I do not share the notion of J S Mill that wealth ought to revert to the state upon death. If one has offspring, one works for them as much as for oneself. But what one passes on to them on one's death ought to be honestly and fairly gained. Not the result of hoarding what others need as a particular location gains in popularity and value because of the commercial and public economic activity that builds up around it.

If we taxed the land properly, the house buyer would perhaps be paying less than half what they have to today for their home, leaving them the opportunity to save their spare money in truly productive financial assets to leave to their heirs instead of the accumulation of other people's tax and economic activity and need for a place convenient for their work or their children's schooling or their college campus in the case of Oxford.

And how on earth are the non-Tory media and the other political parties letting the Tories get away with this scam of a tax cut for the tiny minority as if it's some beneficent gesture of redistribution? It's quite the opposite - the enclosure of the returns to public, commercial and community investment. Protectionism for the already privileged.

Why?

Is the internet not the twentieth century's greatest example of "voluntary co-operation"? At least the late twnetieth century anyway. Why do we need "governance". It can be a beautiful thing. Like the lack of planning policy that went into Edinburgh's New Town?

Yes, there are examples, pretty egregious ones at that, of countries where human rights are not respected anyway further attacking peoples' rights for speaking out on the internet, or restricting their access, but one of the beauties (if we exclude the gazillions of spam email messages and viruses) is that it has provided an infrastructure that has been used time and again by clever people - for good and bad - to get round attempts to limit what they can do.

But if we try to tame the internet, and to extend some kind of official governance to it, aren't we officially entrenching the idea that it's there to be governed, for governments to interfere in?

My theory is that this forum is more about our governments. They are shit scared that the potential for the internet to bring about person to person interconnectivity, allowing people to organize in groups other than the geographical territories they manage, will bring about their irrelevance.

Should we also be worried about the corporate "colonization" of the internet that has gathered pace over the past five years or so? Well, yes and no. Actually, for most traditional corporations using the internet it's not about pushing the small guy out, but competing with them like they never have had to previously in a medium in which the little guy, more flexible and quicker to change, has a head start on. Pound for pound spent on it I'm sure small businesses are "better" at the internet and getting better all the time. And the internet could be the best way of levelling the playing field, democratising capitalism.

It is surely the very fact that the internet is not governed by nation states - that it is still a "land" of pioneering sprits pushing the boundaries - of trade, of communication, of knowledge transfer - that gives it its strength. And that's what scares those who would rule us.

Leave it alone! It has more power to break those regimes that abuse us than any supranational body that's incapable of preventing some of its member governments doing just what they please anyway.

Sir,

As a former and in a few days hopefully future local councillor my heart leapt as I read Danny Kruger today (Telegraph | Opinion | If councils had real power, people wouldn't dream of voting BNP) accurately diagnose the problem with local government and accountability. But I'm afraid it sank again when he listed his tax options. He recognized Local Income Tax as a tax on an economic good - work, but his preferred option, Local Sales Tax is similarly a tax on an economic good - trade. Being fair, he does propose LST should replace an existing bad tax on trade - VAT, but it doesn't improve it just because it is local. But he neglected a most obvious possibility, a tax not on homes or buildings, but on land values.

Land Value Tax (usually known as Site Value Rating when in a local context) taxes an economic bad - the underuse of our most precious resource, land, within the planning framework. In 1909 Churchill spoke about those who hold land at below its best permitted use knowing that one day the social and commercial interactions around it would increase its value with no effort at all on their part.

SVR recaptures and recycles the value of investment, both public and private sector, that goes into making a site valuable. It would help stabilize land values and take the speculative hype out of the market that excludes so many from basics such as home ownership. The Institute of Economic Affairs has recently promoted LVT for transport infrastructure funding in "Wheels of Fortune" by Fred Harrison, and Conservative MP David Curry is a supporter. It taxes a monopoly - every site is a monopoly of different factors affecting its value - from being in a good school's catchment area to being next to the new Jubilee Line extension station or Olympic investment.

If Mr Cameron wants verdant sustainability, LVT/SVR is the obvious choice, and indeed is a must in an era of "eco-taxation" to provide people with real choices and control their tax liabilities. Whether local or national, it would automatically create a movement of economic activity from overheated areas, with high land values and therefore high taxes, to underperforming areas of low value and tax, allowing significant cuts in government redistribution mechanisms as the "market" in tax takes over those functions.

Sincerely,

Jock Coats