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The most common incidents I have to deal with as a warden in a hall of residence are fire alarms. We wardens go to bed at night - we all have day jobs - so we have a pager each that goes off to wake us in the event of a fire alarm.

Previously we had no discretion but to phone the fire brigade before we went to investigate the incident and organize the evacuees before the brigade arrived. Nowadays at the fire service's request we go and investigate first, so it's very much in our own interests to discourage frivolous fire alarms.

And one of the stories I tell was of one case where the brigade was so pissed off at having been called out to some drunken teenager breaking a fire alarm glass and running off that they not only called the police, but kept everyone outside, at 2 am on a freezing December Sunday right in front of an emptying student club night venue, for an hour while they wandered around checking every bedroom in the block for hazards and non-evacuees.

It seems this kind of just desserts is no longer to be tolerated by the fire service:

Firemen sacked after student call:

Three firemen have been sacked after students were kept out in the cold for almost three hours following an alarm.

The incident occurred in Glasgow in November when firemen from Cowcaddens' station responded to a late night call at student flats in Calgary Street.

The students said that although there was no fire, they were kept outside their accommodation from just after midnight until 0300 GMT.

Oh well!

Since this is about to become a full blown party debate in the Lib Dems, it might be worth highlighting that an online debate has begun today at the Economist.

There was a flutter of interest in the Guardian and Times today (interesting to see the difference in emphasis) about some ideas being put forward to the Tories' Tax Commission by the Bow Group. The report in PDF format is available alongside this discussion on ConservativeHome. Not surprisingly, since the press release promoted this aspect in particular, discussion has focussed on what the author describes as "land value tax". But the report as a whole has a whole load in it, from raising income tax thresholds to £11,000 and imposing a flat rate tax of 38% on all earnings above that, to restricting pensions contributions relief to 38% but on just £4,400 worth of pensions contributions a year, from what I can work out. Go read it - it's interesting, considering we Lib Dems are also in the process of making tax policy.

However, despite all the furore over the "land value tax" proposal, it should be noted that it is not, in fact, a Land Value Tax, and it is certainly not intended to be a step towards Henry George's "Single Tax". A hard-core Georgist like myself of course could simplify even Mr Wadworth's attempt to simplify the gargantuan tax system into just one point - replace all other taxes with taxes on land and resource use! You pay for what you take, not what you make.

But in particular the Bow Group proposals are for a straightforward flat property tax, as Tim Worstall points out. That is fundamentally different from a Land Value Tax, in which only the value of a site is taxed, and not the value of any buildings or any other improvements built on that site.

The arguments Mark Wadsworth makes for efficient use of land are far less evident in a straightforward property tax on the whole combined value of land and buildings. It does nothing to actually encourage efficient development - improving a property will result in a higher tax bill as the whole value is taxed. With a Land Value Tax you can make the most efficient permitted use of land without affecting the tax liability of the whole site. One house might pay £20,000 a year on the same site as ten flats each paying £1,000 a year for example.

But the document covers a whole lot more than this that would have been eminently worth reporting - the flat tax of 38%, the raising of thresholds to £11,000, changes to child benefit, pensions provision and many others. I welcome the fact that the Bow Group chose to promote the discussion on property taxes, I think, and if they want a proper LVT will help in whatever way I can, but it's not currently based on Henry George's/David Ricardo's ideas on economic rent and cannot properly be called a Land Value Tax.

Technorati Tags: conservatives, land value tax, politics, property tax, tax shifting, taxation, tories

On one of the last Daily Politics of last "season" they had Ken Clarke and a couple of others talking about school dinners. The whole issue is back on the menu this week as we hear of parents delivering non-school dinners to their children in schools to get round the supposedly more healthy food on offer inside.

The thing that struck me about Ken Clarke's argument was that he said "we must allow choice" in school dinners. That it would be wrong to impose a healthy diet essentially to the exclusionon of other less healthy choices that the kids voted for with their taste-buds.

Well, I cannot remember ever having a choice at school (and I had three meals a day there until I was eighteen). And I'm pretty damned sure that Ken Clarke's grammar school twenty and more years before mine would not have offered a choice. I am sure we had one dish, or a plated salad if ordered, or a specific and usually unappetising looking thing if you had a registered special dietary requirement (and in all that time I don't remember one person being adversely affected by the seeming plethora of allergies we hear of nowadays).

I realise that nowadays there are more kids allowed to decide for themselves not to eat meat and so on, and sure, they should be catered for. But what's the problem with one vegetarian and one meat based choice and that's it? Since when did eight year olds understand what was good for them enough to be offered some range of different foods every day?