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One thing I've noticed consistently over the past few years of flooding events in Oxfordshire, and because a friend now lives in the village of Islip I notice it more is that the River Ray, a tributary of the Cherwell which it meets in the village, is often first on the list of Environment Agency highest level flood warnings.

So what? you may ask. Well I often hear people say that the speed with which rivers flood nowadays is down to agricultural practices that make it harder for land to hold water and so it quickly flushes off and into the watercourses and rivers. But the Ray "drains" (as much as it can) the flat fenland of Otmoor. The land is not, largely, cultivated. It is mostly grassland grazing and, when we used to go across it with the beagles, it absolutely soaked up water, and becomes quite boggy across a great swathe of Otmoor. It's quite similar to Romney Marsh.

Now it may be like a great big sponge that is perpetually full and only takes a little extra to fill the dykes and cause the Ray to flood, but it seems to me that it ought to be one of the last to flood, unless the reason for flooding is little to do with agricultural practices and more to do with the amount and intensity of bouts of rainfall.

Which is correct I wonder?

Incidentally, it also drains much of the area that would be built on under the eco-town proposal for "Weston Otmoor". Bonza!

I was pleasantly surprised today to see that on the southern regional slot on the Politics Show on BBC1 they had an article looking at how the Lib Dems would introduce Land Value Tax - portraying it indeed as a "silver bullet" (Paul, and the BBC, have a great deal more confidence than I have in this respect!). Cllr Paul Bizzell of Vale of White Horse, where they carried out a paper based exercise nearly two years ago now into how it would affect an area of about a ward to the west of Oxford city, was explaining it, and did quite a good job - as he should!

County Council leader, Conservative Keith Mitchell was the "anti-LVT" interviewee, castigating it as a "left wing tax" that is designed to blight our beautiful country and to redistribute wealth - something, he said, that "we are not all in agreement with". So I've fired off a nice letter to Kaiser Keith:

Keith,

Much as I respect your views I think you should perhaps investigate the history of Land Value Tax's supporters:

Adam Smith:

"Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. ...Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.

"Ground rents seem in this respect a more proper subject of peculiar taxation than even the ordinary rent of land. ...Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign. ...Nothing can be more reasonable than that a fund which owes its existence to the good government of the stae should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds towards the support of that government."

Milton Friedman:

"There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise -- and yet we need taxes. ...So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

William F Buckley:

"It's mostly because I'm beaten down by my right-wing theorists and intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with the Single-Tax idea. What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation. Anyway I've run into tons of situations were I think the Single-Tax theory would be applicable. We should remember also this about Henry George, he was sort of co-opted by the socialists in the 20s and the 30s, but he was not one at all. Alfred J. Nock's book on him makes that plain. Plus, also, he believes in only that tax. He believes in zero income tax."

And not least that greatest son of Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill (albeit a Liberal at the time):

"I have made speeches by the yard on the subject of land value taxation, and you know what a supporter I am of that policy.

"It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies -- it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all forms of monopoly.

"Nothing is more amusing than to watch the efforts of our monopolist opponents to prove that other forms of property and increment are exactly the same, and are similar in all respects to the unearned increment in land."

Henry George was himself no socialist. Remember that the aim of us "single taxers" is to abolish all taxes on incomes, capital, profit that arise from human effort and hard work. It is unashamedly classically liberal and owes far more to the work of people whom the "right", and especially the libertarian right, would now look on as their predecessors than the "left" would - people like John Locke, David Ricardo, Malthus.

It is possibly a common fate of a good idea that it gets rubbished by all-comers who don't understand it. Georgists are castigated by the "right" as dangerous socialists, even communists, and by the left as loony neo-liberals. We must be doing something right!

It's worth noting that one of the biggest current proponents of LVT in print, Fred Harrison, has been published on it by the IEA, hardly some left-wing think tank. Though I suppose within your own party it is the looney left Bow Group who are promoting the idea, after a fashion.

Sincerely,

Jock

While we're in the business of announcing what laws we would shred given half a chance, I want to make a plea for every other Lib Dem shadow cabinet member to take a long hard look at the laws which govern their respective portfolios and choose a few to shred. We could even make it a new "target" - ten pieces of legislation each to be added to the bonfire in the next six months (and so too in the manifesto) could be our spokespeople's primary "Key Performance Indicator".

For me, there would be nowhere better to start than the oxymoronic Department of Communities and Local Government. In fact, for preference I'd like us to propose doing much the same to that as we do the DTI - abolish the thing completely. It's simple, snappy and at a stroke would massively increase the quality of our democracy in the UK. Westminster and Whitehall have, in my opinion, absolutely no business overseeing local government, let alone tying it up in tight knots that our local representatives cannot escape. Why on earth do we have to persuade the member for Bolton West about aspects of running our own localities when we have elected another fifty local people to do just that? If government is by the consent of the people, my consent to be governed on local issues is clearly given to local councillors, not MPs.

If there are things that absolutely every locality in England has to do the same way, then make it a national function - Housing Benefit could be directly administered by the same Department for Work and Pensions systems as other benefits, for example. Though as an aside one might prefer pensions and other benefits to be devolved to local authorities as they were when they ran the poor houses and the parish rate paid for the upkeep of those no longer able to work and when city corporations could borrow to provide affordable housing, all based on local needs and local costs of living.

So, come to think of it, there's an idea for Mr Laws - let's do away with the DWP too - there were a whole raft of local ballot measures passed this week accompanying the US mid-term elections that set state based minimum wage levels. What possible fairness is there in insisting that someone can live on the same level of dole or pension in London as they can in Yeovil, say?

C'mon, if we want to be a liberal party root and branch, let our wonderful local representatives do what we elect them to do. Our democracy would be far saner and far more interesting if we did.

Hot on the heels of news yesterday from the Oxford Mail that Oxford City Council need to look at how other places are run, citing Lib Dem run Cambridge City Council, comes news that our Central area committee have approved a scheme to license people who hand out flyers that end up littering the place (though only in the city centre it appears, despite the problems elsewhere in the city).

They could look at how Cambridge does this. Perhaps OX1 could run it as a profit sharing business that puts the money gained back into the advertising venues and street improvements?Œ