Randomly Selected Article or Link

So, once again Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan police commissioner, is targeting the Hampstead dinner party set and its use of cocaine. Apparently he's going to have "smartly dressed" officers posing as dealers in the sort of bars and clubs where posh people get their coke. He wants to stop it replacing wine at smart middle class dinner parties.

Now, fair's fair, his officers have long made life hell for poor users of cocaine and its sister freebase-cocaine, or "crack", so it's probably about time this law officer enforced the law more equally for all. But the lines he's using (sorry! I couldn't resist that) are that middle class coke use is not a victimless crime, that people in north London estates die to perpetuate the supply of coke and that the cocaine plantations of Columbia are now the land mine capital of the world.

So, do we finally have the appalling admission that the law itself, rather than cocaine use, is causing this killing? Why doesn't he do something about that, speak out on that? After all, he has shown himself and his organisation very capable and willing in the past not merely of enforcing existing laws, but in lobbying for changes in the law relating to terrorist activities that threaten all our civil liberties.

Cocaine has been used in a variety of forms, safely for the most part, for thousands of years. The peoples of its native growing area, the Andean mountains of South America, have chewed leaves as a pick me up since they arrived there. It helps them to cope with high altitude living by increasing circulation and therefore take-up of oxygen. It was used in tonic wines, toothpastes and popular drinks were named after it.

It was only scheduled as a proscribed drug a little under a hundred years ago, and the history of that is tainted with the sort of legal institutional racism Blair keeps saying he is against in all its forms - that it made "negroes" frenzied sex fiends.

The history of heavy addiction, and the dangers to health of tainted and constrained supplies all stem from its prohibition as a useful stimulant, not so much from any inherent danger in the drug itself. It is time a liberal world addressed these issues. If we're not going to prohibit absolutely everything that could possibly ever have any kind of effect on peoples' bodies or minds why should we choose these few substances? Cocaine use has been around for far longer than chocolate or coffee.

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

News that the German and British governments have been paying for information almost certainly illegally obtained in order to chase people who try to stash their money overseas should worry us all. Obviously in this case the amounts of money potentially liable for tax are quite large numerically, although small in proportion to the total tax take - though the fact that it is merely around one fifth of one per cent of the total UK tax take we're talking about should alter our opinion about people who try to beat the system when everyone else has to pay. But it is the means employed that are of concern - paying what amounts to a criminal who has liberated customer personal information from the Liechtenstein bank at which he or she worked.

In a world in which it is ever easier for us to trade with overseas companies and individuals, to live in one place and earn in another and to invest in overseas assets, all of which are a good thing, I have warned previously that governments could try to get more authoritarian about chasing money allegedly stashed away or earned elsewhere:

This means ever more intrusive government, clinging desperately to current understandings of money, income and taxing that income as the only progressive way. We are already seeing huge bites taken out of our civil liberties because of immigration fears, terrorism and taxes.

And of course there is an alternative; that we switch to taxing only things that are impossible to hide - like land, which happens to have the added advantage of being value that the occupier does not create, rather than capital wealth or income which the worker or investor has created.

You might think this is just a bunch of rich people getting what they deserve from HMRC, but their willingness to engage is what amounts to industrial espionage to do so is disturbing and is a message to us all, whether we just trade with Americans on Ebay who then send us "gifts" tax-free or decide to retire to Spain, or further afield, whilst keeping a retirement job working online for a UK employer.

In her defense of the surveillance state (sorry if I've misunderstood but that's what it sounds like!) at CCTV conspiracy mania is a very middle-class disorder there's one little sentence that gives it all away. She says:

There is a sad lack of voices to praise the benign state these days.

Maybe that's because there is no such thing as "the benign state", now or at any point in history that immediately comes to mind.

Well, I was getting a bit worried. Royal Mail never seem to deliver to my door, and despite a great big notice to the contrary continue to deliver my mail to the adjoining student flat to which I have no access. So only last night, when the students next door decided presumably to have a bit of a clear out, did I get my leadership ballot paper, together with a final demand to have my flu jab on 15th November, two months of Prospect magazine, my Co-op dividend vouchers (too late I think now to have my divvie turned over to the Community Fund), and the calling notice for the Headington and Marston Lib Dem branch AGM on 28th November (so my apologies are too late, but rest assured as candidate for Headington Hill and Northway next year I'm not completely disinterested in the local branch!). Grrr!

So, along with a stern letter to the local Royal Mail delivery office my completed ballot paper will go out in today's post. I noticed incidentally, I'm sure it must have been discussed to death at the time, but while I was looking for an address for my delivery office, I noticed that there's new speed limits being introduced courtesy of Brussels on 1st January such that all vehicles over 3.5 tonnes are restricted to 56 mhp. What's that all about then? Can anyone imagine how frustrating it's going to be trying to drive up a motorway when Norbert Dentressangle going 56mph is trying to pass Eddie Stobart going at 55mph? This measure will, I predict, cause more deaths than it might be aimed at preventing.

Still, no doubt this means that my ballot paper will be flown from Oxford to ERS in a private Post Office jet or something. Or just arrive three weeks on Saturday after going by road as the truck driver will have to take several days off at High Wycombe for exceeding his legal hours at the wheel.

And yes, I have voted for Chris. I'm a bit confused at this stage of the contest though - at the beginning many people were talking up Nick because of his presentation skills and energy, and yet each time there's another hustings or radio or TV debate it seems that more of the same people feel that Chris has done better on both counts. So I'm no longer clear who is voting for whom and why, frankly. But I continue to say that for me, "it's the economy", and Chris's background on that is key to me. Neither appear liberal enough for me, but that doesn't matter too much - I've got plans for changing that!

Personally, I think we'll rue the day we put presentation before the economy, if that's how it turns out next weekend.