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So, we're going to get to hear later today what Dave means by "localism":

BBC NEWS | Politics | Tories offer votes on council tax:

Councils should hold referendums if they want to bring in "high" council tax increases, Tory leader David Cameron is due to say. If people voted against a rise, they would get a rebate the following year, he will add in a speech in east London. This would replace the current system of central government "capping" bills in England and Wales...Mr Cameron is expected to say he wants to improve "democratic accountability".

Under the plan, there would be a "trigger threshold", above which councils would have to hold a referendum. In England this would be set by Parliament, with the Welsh National Assembly deciding the level for Wales. Bills sent out to households would ask whether they supported any "excessive" increase, with a referendum form attached. In his speech in east London, Mr Cameron will say: "All politicians in opposition talk about giving more power to local councils. But all governments seem to end up centralising power.

Right - so how are we going to reverse that, I wonder? Oh yes, we'll decide at Westminster what's excessive and force local government to hold a referendum. Like that's decentralizing? Not only that, but a post hoc referendum which will, it appears, do nothing to tell a local authority what it ought and ought not to be spending money on, and after the budget is set.

It seems to me that this is a man making a bid for power on behalf of his party. Power which, in this country, will allow him more or less to do as he pleases with local government. And yet not only is he not making any visible attempt actually to do something about what he describes as and the Taxpayers' Alliance found in summer polling to be the most hated tax, but he's taking the current system and adding another layer of Westminster control over it.

Dave, it's this simple - you cannot make local government more accountable without making it raise more of its own money. The very fact that your Westminster cronies set the levels of central funding that goes to councils means that council up and down the country have to make up for shortfalls with disproportionate council tax changes. If you want to set them, and local people, free, you need to trust them to raise their money and trust local people to boot them out of power at local elections on the whole of their record.

This has got to be one of the most inept, unimaginative, populist policy pronouncements yet from Dave, displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of something he has repeatedly said is at the centre of Tory policy - localism. I do hope the speech is better than the press release.

In an article intended to solicit opinions under the heading "Should the Government attempt to curb house prices?" The Telegraph yesterday posed some very pertinent questions about the potential effects of government tinkering with house prices. Amongst all the various responses online at least - that it's all down to immigration, freeing up planning to release more land (presumably except anywhere near where the author lives), hitting second homes, buy to lets and so on - not one mentions the real solution - Land Value Tax.

But the questions they ask need to be answered by Land Value Taxers, particularly "Single Taxers" such as myself - those who propose eliminating all other taxes as far as possible and collecting the entire value of economic land as the sole revenue source for government (or, as I would prefer, for distribution as a Citizen's Income following the elimination of the state!). For what we propose would indeed reduce house prices and so put at risk what many home-owners and property investors see as their rightful wealth.

We have to offer responses as to why first, it's not their rightful wealth, that they have done nothing to earn the uplift in values they have enjoyed, and second, that the wealth itself is a chimera and their "loss" can be compensated for.

Anyone with an eye on the property market knows the issues as set out:

First time buyers are being forced into record levels of debt to get on the proper ladder, new figures have shown, with houses now less affordable than ever.

According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the average house buyer needed to borrow 3.37 times their income in May - the highest figure recorded.

Rising interest rates, continuing house price increases and an average stamp duty bill of £1,458 are all combining to price first time buyers out of the market. They now account for just 35 per cent of all mortgages taken out by people buying a home.

But I want specifically to address the questions they ask:

Should the Government attempt to make homes more affordable or should the market be left to its own devices?

Land does not and cannot operate as a properly free market. Unless you can find a way of creating unlimited amounts of it, and all locations have equal access to all other locations, locations are effective monopolies.

Is it reasonable for young people to expect to be able to buy their own home? Do homeowners who have benefitted from the boom deserve their windfall?

Should the Government ease planning restrictions to increase supply of new homes? Should stamp duty thresholds be altered to give first time buyers an easier route into the market? Should there be restrictions on second homes or buy-to-let mortgages?

Or do young people simply have to make the best of a bad situation? Should they live at home longer, as young people do on the continent? Should we accept that it is no longer feasible for us to be a nation of homeowners? How would you feel if the Government took action which reduced the value of your home?