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Paul Walter reminds me of the fuss created by this supposed request for the new-ish mosque in Oxford to broadcast an amplified call to prayer. Paul has some links in his post, but to recap, it has now managed to engulf two bishops, Rochester ("no-go areas") and Oxford ("my area, shut up, Rochester"), Peter Hichens ("I really don't mind Muslims so long as they only help me rail against modern decadence and don't wake me up") and, I understand, our own dear leader ("the sound of the divine, aagh, beautiful"). And many acres of newsprint, many billion pixels and several trees have been employed in railing against or jumping to the support of Oxford's beleaguered no go areas.

Well, I heard what I believe is closer to the true story today. Apparently, no such "request" has been made. What happened is that a well known local figure in "inter-faith relations" a retired Christian minister who did things like organize an interfaith cricket match after 9/11 and similar things, thought one day what a jolly good thing it would be to have the call to prayer sung out from our new city mosque. He went to the Imam and suggested it and they agreed to present a petition to the council. A petition, get this, apparently of two, yes, more than one, less than three, signatures - that of the interfaith dialogue chappy and the Imam himself.

The Imam had not consulted or particularly mentioned it to anyone else, and speaking to a couple of Muslim city councillors seems to confirm that there's been no popular movement, nor do they feel they want one, to get them the call to prayer - the responses seemed to be along the lines of - "do you think we're stupid, we know when we're supposed to pray and don't need reminding".

So, whilst it has stirred up an interesting debate, which however has occasionally turned into naked bigotry, it's all apparently based on virtually nothing at all. I can't help wondering whether the local story of a bunch of primary school parents getting upset about Halal meat is related to the anti-muslim hype that's been dredged up in some quarters by the non-story of the call to prayer.

...and just hope that it's not one of those which has some kind of direct link to landfill.

I've voted. Huhne, Campbell, Hughes in that order. And I'll tell you why.

When Charles resigned, I felt I wanted to have a say not just in the outcome of any election, but in trying to make sure the person or people I really wanted for leader put him or herself forward. Especially as, at the time, there were stories that everyone was going to rally around Ming and not even hold a contest.

So I had a choice of 61 MPs and I chose to write to one, Chris Huhne. And thankfully he took my advice...:) Ignored any deals he had done. Saw that he had the right qualities to give it a good go, and stood. So I've been there for him all along. Had it not been Chris, I would have supported John Hemming, or written to try to get someone like Nick Clegg to stand instead.

You see, I think there is a malaise in British parliamentary politics which, regardless of how well intentioned they may be, people who have been stuck in that Westminster place for some time have become inured to somehow. They may be fiery campaigners with great records in opposition and so on but it's always on someone else's terms.

A couple of years ago I saw that nice Mr Oborne on a Newsnight being agreed with by some Labour and Tory MPs that British politics had lost its sense of ideological battle. That because of the total and utter victory of monetarism and free marketeering in the seventies and eighties that nobody any longer dared to challenge as the pre-eminent economic order parties were reduced to competing for the national equivalent of the PFI contract for deckchair management aboard the Titanic and that nobody was up on the bridge debating whether to steer away from the ice-bergs.

These ice-bergs are ever present, and none of the existing parties really has an answer for most of them - the pensions crisis, the rise of China and India, global poverty, systemic debt, how to pay for public services fairly, how to put the planet first without screwing up our economic prosperity. And so for me it's a case of "Out with the old and in with Chris Huhne". For Chris, as an economist who at least sponsors plurality of economic debate, is prepared to listen to counter-intuitive possibilities, is the only person of the three I believe who stands a chance of promoting this real underpinning radical shake-up this whole country needs and to help people understand a possible different system.

And so, despite my abiding admiration for Simon, perhaps especially after what he's been put or put himself through these past weeks, my instinctive sympathy with the message he spreads about looking after the poorest and keeping hold of the mechanisms that allow us to do that - NHS, state education and the like, my second and third preferences are really based on the fact that I don't really want either Ming or Simon as leader, and I'm guessing that with Ming, if Chris doesn't win, we will get another chance to select a newer face in a few years time, long before we would if it were Simon that beats Chris.

So no positive messages for either Ming or Simon there. I just think there is a gaping opportunity to break free from the poverty of contemporary British political discourse and carve out a brand new politics, in a brand new economic landscape, that stands a chance of beating these pressing problems which, if we carry on as now will consume all our resources and not move us ahead. That opportunity is particularly open in the immediate future, but no doubt by the time we are a year or so beyond another general election, they will still be pressing and there will be still an opportunity to repent our folly and choose a new broom.

Again, I'm starting a new post to respond to some very interesting comments by Tim Carpenter. My inept attempt at a Drupal template means it's almost possible to follow a thread of comments and especially given this is going to be another long response I think it deserves an airing on its own.

For anyone coming new to this debate, it follows on from my original "three point plan" for equity and economic justice and some clarifications and responses I gave yesterday to comments on that original by Tim Carpenter, Head of Policy at the Libertarian Party UK.

Tim, thanks for taking the time to respond. However I think we are, as a colleague used to say to me "talking past each one another". Paul Lockett has put it all a deal more eloquently than myself , and for that, and if I have caused any confusion, apologies.

I am a geo-libertarian (of the "geo-mutualist" variety if you will). The main thing you seem not to have appreciated is that in calling for the "Single Tax" I mean just that - the community/state can only take economic rent on the land resources within its jurisdiction and has no call on incomes or trade. As I understand it this is the "purist Georgist" position.

The ideal 'state' would be limited to collecting the rent and distributing it all as a dividend to citizens for the reasons Paul outlined. "Commonwealth" - you are right, it's lazy, I should put a space between "common" and "wealth"! Economic rent from the finite natural resources we all require to share is "common wealth" and should be collected as such and distributed as fully as possible whilst every other tax is a tariff.

Tim: "1. When I say who defines the value of your land, you say "why does anyone need to decide", yet immediately go on to talk about collecting the tax! Someone DOES decide the taxable value and that affects the actual value. Can you not see that?"

No, the market sets a location's value. It does it all the time at the moment. And it will continue to do so in an LVT system. Even in a "100% LVT" system. If a location is appreciating in value, buyers will be prepared to pay a premium over last year's rent bill and vice versa, in a falling market sellers will effectively have to be prepared to pay someone to take the rent bill off them. The following year's rent bill will reflect that premium or discount by going up or down respectively.

Tim: "2. As you should know, we aim to eradicate income tax., so the comparison does not hold."

See above - I'm a single taxer. No income tax here either. It is a tariff on employment and trade. Though I would say that if a local community decided mutually to have a local tax on incomes or sales to finance some mutually agreed local project it would be doing so in competition with neighbouring communities that perhaps were not or were charging a different rate or a different tax. Tax competition is good, in itself, isn't it? Also I am aware of some "single" taxers who would justify retaining some income tax at least temporarily in order to try to address the "embedded" historical advantages of monopoly ownership. I don't.

Tim: "The problem comes when some local area under the influence of whomsoever, adjusts taxation on land they wish to gain access to because a new development is coming. So, building a road, whack up the value of land next to it. Farmer has no CAPITAL to develop it, so has to sell it for a knock-down price because he HAS to sell to meet the tax bill. If this does not concentrate land into a few hands, I do no know what would. This is just one example of the potential risks."

This appears to be Churchill's "market gardener" bogey, or, to others, the "poor widow" bogey. If you look at it under the current system, that same farmer, in similar circumstances is perfectly able, regardless of the squalor growing around, to sit on that land, not paying anything and watch its value "ripen" until the value, created merely by excluding others from what they need to use, is so great it becomes irrational not to sell. That process is outright extortion.

In fact, under an LVT system, land values at the margin would tend to move much more incrementally in any case. In the absence of other restrictions - zoning, green belts etc (it is your policy to remove those restrictions once an LVT system proves practical isn't it?) - you would not get these large leaps in hope value. I would actually retain green belts and such like for a while after LVT was implemented so that it can have its greatest effect in turning existing urban land to its most efficient use before going for sprawl. But I am prepared to be convinced on that. After all, we know that at relatively low densities compared with what planning guidance seeks nowadays, it would take up less than three quarters of one per cent of the non urbanized land in England to build the three million new homes predicted to be necessary over the next twenty years.

But once a point of equilibrium was reached between supply and demand rents at the margins of production would move slowly and via the democratic influence of the market. If that market and the community that makes up its participants eventually get as far as that farmer's land and all that remains to bring it in from the margin to profitable development is to develop a road, the farmer will have had plenty of opportunity to see it coming long before the tax bill becomes an issue for him.

Tim: "3. Living costs - if you have CBI as described you would still keep the most expensive parts of the Welfare bureaucracy - the entire means-testing apparatus. Housing benefit would probably remain in all but name."

I disagree. But I don't think what you understand me to have described is what I think I have! ie, in particular, that I am not paying for CBI out of income taxes, but out of the community collected rent on economic land. Land at the margins tends as I said towards a nil value. More people will be able to own their home because they will not be borrowing twice as much as the value of the capital good (the building) in order to pay the land value in up front capital. Renting a basic home at the margins ought to be achievable out of the Citizens Income.

With so many pulled out of poverty anyway by not having punitive benefits withdrawal regimes that reduce the marginal value of doing even the smallest amount of paid work and by the reduced costs of living owing to tariff eradication and the better off keeping more of their own money, the capacity of private charity or local mutualism to assist the much smaller number of people that would be needing top up hand outs above their CBI would be much increased.

Tim: "4. Income. You need to clarify here - are you saying that COMPANIES have 40% more or that wage earners do? Be under no illusions, if you have CBI, income tax will be enormous. I worked out once that if we went for CBI with no other tax changes but a cull of QANGOs, income tax would need to be about 64% flat from the very first penny (IT is currently £140bln, 7k x 50m = £350bln pa). A HUGE disincentive to working especially at the lower end. Result: black economy, unproductive citizens, more companies shutting down and a growth in imports (and do not say "cheap imports make us richer" because that only holds if we are simultaneously exporting a greater amount of higher value exports)."

I hope you'll agree that that objection is moot given I am not talking about income taxes at all. My calculation of the CBI cost at £5200 pa for adults and a decreasing proportion for under-18s to 20% for 2 year olds is around £285bn. £245bn if only the adults. I reckon there was about £200bn a year's worth of economic rent in residential land alone at the recent peak of the market. I don't think it is beyond belief that there's another £85bn in commercial, industrial, retail and, possibly, agricultural economic rents.

Tim: "5. Movement to low tax areas: A company will consider workforce supply as a prime consideration, not just rental costs. If that were not the case, expensive London would be empty. People pay top dollar for London rents because of a massive pool of labour - they can gain access to many cheap or more chance of snaring the best. To think LVT would make a company move out to a depressed area? Those places are already cheap. Why doesn't it happen now? Limited skilled labour pool. As you say the Government does it now and did it in the past (remember the Hillman Imp?) and it creates quasi-soviets. If LVT has an influence, it might IMHO move a few companies, deter some from even setting up where they need to and the rest of the companies will be bled paying higher rates just to keep near the labour pool they require. In the case of London, the move will be to New York or Hong Kong and we all lose out."

There are so many issues in this paragraph I can only assume again that I have failed adequately to have explained my position. At the moment businesses pay rents, yes? In an LVT system they will still pay rents. The only difference is that whereas currently the entire rent, that which accrues to both the building and the site or location goes to the current landowner, ie it is enclosed, privatized. Under an LVT system, the same rent is due (assuming they were paying the market rent originally), only the portion of it that accrues to the location goes to the community and that attributable to the building to the building owner. There's no corporation taxes, no more employee taxes. There's no increasing of rent or rates; there's no bleeding anyone. Except those, as landowners, who have bled the rest of us for centuries.

Areas of low land value will also be areas in which it is cheaper for employees to live (lower LVT for them too). For a business operating at the edge of profit it would seem to me to be quite an attractive move. But one that remains in London because their key skills are there is not penalised by that. Indeed, if sufficient other businesses do it who do not need to be in London for optimal profitability do move, costs will also likely fall for those left behind, increasing their profit, distributable to capital and labour.

I think there is, in particular, one form of LVT that could have a significant effect in this regard...the auctioning of air-space, via "landing slots" at airports. Making more efficient use of regional airports would draw business into those areas. I'm likely to propose this to our regional conference this autumn as part of an "anti third runway at Heathrow" motion. Interesting choices of examples though - Hong Kong of course is famous for having state owned land - everything except the Anglican Cathedral is leasehold and that has been used to raise revenue in a form of LVT and keep income taxes low. Modern valuation tracking and billing systems would make that far more efficient and not prone to some of the problems Hong Kong suffered by having too infrequent valuations.

In China before Mao took over, I understand that Chiang Kai Chek's regime looked into LVT as a way of staving off the rise of Mao's totalitarian collectivism. And in the former Soviet Union, Gorbachev I believe looked into LVT as a way of capturing the value of natural resources and in not implementing it allowed the so called "oligarchs" (really "kleptocrats" in my opinion) to enclose the revenue from that vast pool of common wealth.

I'm getting a bit tired here! I'm going to call it quite at this point and maybe think some more about the issue of mutualism. I think Paul answered the point about the "state as landlord" objections quite satisfactorily and there's no need for me to repeat it. But for fairness, other readers can read Tim's further points in the comments on the previous post.

Tim: "p.s. your page has a script that my browser asks me to kill due to risk of resource hogging."

Yes - I only notice this on older machines or slower network connections - I never experience the problem at home or at work. I think it must have been an advertising panel I have just removed, but if others still experience the problem let me know and I'll have another look.

The Oxford Mail today reports that a Second Councillor Quits Lib Dems:

Sajjad Malik has thrown Oxford City Council's ruling Liberal Democrat group into chaos after becoming the second councillor to quit the party in six weeks.

My first reaction on hearing the news yesterday is probably unprintable, but after seeing the Mail's report today and Malik's statement that:

"I don't owe them anything, they owe me everything I am the man who made them alive in East Oxford. They were dead and buried before I joined them.

...I nearly drowned on my morning mug of tea. The astounding arrogance of the man! But then that seems to be the way with defectors, in the main. The world seems to revolve around them in their smug self-important way. Malik should perhaps be reminded that before he arrived on the scene we had won his ward both at city and county levels (albeit with one defection of our own after we had started to win the ward in our own right) and had taken one of the two seats in the 2002 all out elections, and pretty well reckoned, by another Labour member opining to me, without reliance on any Asian vote that he might have brought with him.

On the other hand, this is also the man who schedules month long holidays in April - perhaps not realising that the campaigning teams that got him elected are at their busiest then. The man who so wanted to be a Lib Dem MP that he organises to go on a new candidate development course and then fails to turn up (wanting to be an MP whatever one's abilities is a sure sign to me of an overdeveloped ego - then not turning up is just downright rude and disrespectful!)

And then it seems his new friends' New Labour spin machine takes over, because what follows is just so much bollocks it could only be concocted by a committee of crowing colleagues:

"I have been shocked by the way in which the Lib Dem minority administration has quickly turned their back on the city council's commitment to build much needed affordable homes in an urban expansion and on the agreed scheme for recycling plastics and green waste. I believe these new Lib Dem policies do not represent the interests of the community in my ward and I will continue to oppose them strongly from within the Labour group."

Malik knew when he was elected, indeed when he joined the party (because I explained it to him) that we were against Labour's knee-jerk response to Oxford's housing shortages of just piling more new housing on the edge of Europe's biggest council estate. He has never, it appears, taken the trouble to try to understand how the party's policy on affordable housing, such as the Community Land Trust project I'm involved with, might address the same needs more sustainably.

Equally he will also have been as involved as he liked in discussions about why Labour's unilateral plan for extending recycling, which prompted many negative comments on the doorsteps in May, should be reviewed and properly consulted on before imposing what for many people seemed impractical on the householders of Oxford. If he didn't understand that point of view, perhaps he should have said something at the time to his colleagues.

These were part and parcel of the messages that made us gains in May and landed him in the administration group (the notable exception being his own ego-riven ward amidst the fiasco he helped to orchestrate). If he's so spineless as to have to run away from "infighting" instead of standing his ground (and after all, the first anyone knew about this was yesterday so he clearly hadn't taken the trouble to take his worries to colleagues), Labour are most welcome to him - again.

But the Mail concludes with perhaps a salutory lesson from previous Oxfordshire defectors, and ones who will be remembered long after Malik is just a footnote, that even the rich and famous ones seem not to be able to hold onto their seats for the party they defected to:

Nationally, Shaun Woodward was elected as a Conservative MP for Witney at the 1997 election, but later defected to Labour.

And in Wantage, former MP Robert Jackson switched to Labour before retiring at last year's General Election. The seat is now held by Tory MP Ed Vaizey.

In the longer run, Oxford's Liberal Democrats will, I am sure, be better off without such pompous-arsed hyper-inflated egos - there aren't many more to winkle out!

Technorati Tags: oxford, politics

I've never been to party conference. The autumn one is always in our arrivals week at university. But I spent half a day at Harrogate in 2006 supposedly staffing the ALTER stand.

So, having received a nice letter the other day from an oldish chap with scary eyes and named after a newsagent chain, I've booked up to go to Harrogate in Spring 2007. I'm not a local party rep - I presume that's no problem. But what about accommodation? I have booked a room in the Holiday Inn on the conference site, but it's a tad expensive (though it is a twin so could probably share with someone if they could suffer me for a couple of nights). Where do any others of you stay when in Harrogate? The White Hart I like but it's already full that weekend it would seem, and so is the Crown, but there are plenty of other rooms still available nearby which are cheaper than the conference centre hotel and, being Harrogate, have probably got loads more character.

But does that matter? Is one likely to see one's hotel for more than a few minutes before falling asleep? Is the conference hotel a load of hassle (security and so on) to stay in? Or are there benefits in terms of bumping into important people on the way to the shared bathrooms...:) I thought the bar (downstairs by the entrance) I visited was a bit too much like an airport lounge on the day air traffic control go on strike.

My big four-oh is two days before conference so I might like to let my hair down a little more than usual, so I suppose I might want somewhere away from the conference centre for that.