Randomly Selected Article or Link

My personal Òhot-favouriteÓ for the Liberal Democrat leadership, Chris Huhne, has been advocating shifting taxes away from peoplesÕ incomes and onto environmentally damaging activities and resource use.

I've been mulling over the things Chris has been saying about eco-taxes, and in particular about fuel tax increases "hurting" people, and how, in part, he proposes to mitigate that hurt by reducing/abolishing income taxes on the lowest earners. And it struck me that the whole idea is incomplete without LVT (Wikipedia: Land Value Tax) as part of the package.

I'm not an anti-car person. But I believe, following some of what Michael Rowbotham says in "The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics", that there is a significant difference, in purpose and in outcome, between "transport" and "travel" and how both relate to economic circumstances.

Transport, loosely, is "needing" to get from A to B to fulfill some kind of economic imperative - getting to work, getting the kids to school quickly enough so you can get to work in time afterwards, getting goods to ever more distant markets (a function of the deficiency of effective demand in any one "economy"). Travel, loosely, is liberating, experience broadening. Most "traffic" on our roads, in our skies and so on, is "transport" and has a direct relationship to location values - particularly the inability often to be able to afford to live within a more sustainable transport mechanism's reach of one's employment.

(For different reasons...) Holiday air traffic is also transport, not travel, and is directly related also to economic circumstances - if you only have a week's holiday, you want to get to your destination and back as quickly as possible to maximise the time on the beach or whatever. We have lost the notion that the journey is as important as the arrival because economically we cannot take our time about time off work.

Now I'm sure Chris understands all this. And I'm sure he also realises that his remedy for higher fuel duties - of taking those most affected out of income tax - does not go far enough *as stated*. It does not address the *need* for transport traffic. Just makes it more expensive and compensates those who would be worst affected.

One common response to taxing people out of their cars is that "we must have the quality public transport in place" to enable people to switch. But LVT gives us a different, more sustainable solution - of reducing transport needs, not just changing the mode of transport. And, of course, provides a mechanism for sustainably recycling any investment in more environmentally friendly transport infrastructure than these cash revenue subsidies which serve only to line the pockets of the Brian Souters of this world.

The same goes for non-transport fuels. Especially domestic heating and energy. We have the oldest housing stock in the OECD. Our energy efficiency standards have been, for most of the 20th century, woefully inadequate and still aren't that brilliant today. In 1990 our insulation standards were still not as rigourous as Sweden had in 1929! And swapping a higher fuel bill for a few more inches of insulating material is not going to make much of a long term difference.

We need something that will actively encourage not just bit by bit improvements in response to fuel price change (which will happen anyway if Peak Oil has or is about to happen) but to redevelop whole tracts of our housing to things like the "40% House" standards. (Lib Dem member - and former GLD chair of course - Mark Hinnells is part of the team on this). Since such energy efficiency is capital intensive in the cost of the building, it won't work without LVT - under council tax it increases the market value of the whole property and costs more in tax. But with LVT you can effectively offset the additional capital cost which can take many years to recover in cheaper energy bills with lower land cost and an ongoing revenue commitment in the form of the tax liability).

So, the big question is, how do we get this message across that eco-taxes are incomplete without LVT.

Can anyone seriously doubt that this is a huge and unprecedented juggernaut for change in the way we do all sorts of things, from government and trade to personal friendships and relationships?

Africa, however, the cradle of humanity, remains a big concern - for if anyone they are the group that could probably benefit the most from being able to participate in the global village market. Somehow, there feels a need for someone with the vision of Cecil Rhodes to get them going.

Technorati Tags: internet

...who makes it quite impossible for me to even think about joining or voting for the Tory party. Paul Walter today quotes from Ben Bradshaw on Davis:

Liberal Burblings: Davis: "Libertarianism" that is extremely narrow

Today, Ben Bradshaw points out Davis' far from libertarian approach to equal rights:

The notion that David Davis is a libertarian will provoke hollow laughter from Britain's gays and lesbians. Davis has opposed every freedom extended to gay and lesbian people, from the freedom to register one's partnership to the freedom to serve one's country. He has one of the worst voting records in the Commons on such matters. Like most Conservatives, Davis is very selective about whose liberties are worthy of support.

However well they might be doing, however their policies on other issues may be right, when they finally develop them, I would rather cut off my right arm or emigrate than countenance the election of reactionaries who, frankly, do not recognize me, as a gay man, as equal in rights and dignity as any other person.

Now, I know gay people in the Tory party who seem to be quite happy. I know stories, even of David Davis himself about how "some of their best friends are gay" and they are supportive of them. But there seem to be still an awful lot of them whose public policy agenda appears to want to diminish a bit of my humanity, and I can't hack that.

I think I understand the Libertarian Alliance position as explained a bit more by Sean Gabb over the weekend. But for me, there's no way I could vote for Davis or his party regardless of whether the entire election is somehow run solely on the basis of his stand on 42 days and the like. It may sound selfish but it's really not. I care less that his social conservatism focuses on gay people than I do about the fact in my mind that this means he chooses for himself what people are entitled to equality and who aren't - and nobody has that right as far as I am concerned.

Indeed, the Human Rights Act, whilst I personally don't like the way it works and would like to see most of it enshrined in a constitution and bill of rights instead, seems to me to be our sole bastion against such antediluvian attitudes amongst our "rulers".

If I still lived in the constituency of my birth I think I am being told by both Lib Dem and Libertarian leaderships that I should be grateful this man is standing up for some of my rights and they have no better candidate to offer.

...no, good! An opportunity has arisen. Friend and Lib Dem colleague Richard Huzzey, councillor for Holywell ward, has had to step down owing to a fantastic work opportunity he couldn't turn down, so there will be a bye-election in the ward on 12th June. This is a ward which we won last Thursday and the bye-election is two days before the end of the university term so we can get it in with the same electorate.

I'm sure there will be others who want to throw their hat in the ring for it, and there are some fantastic candidates around who either missed out last Thursday or have been hoping for a seat like this to come up and any one of them would make a great councillor for the area. Anyway, it has been pointed out to me that it would be inappropriate, in the event of a contested candidacy, for me to set out my stall so publicly before the internal discussion has been had. And I concur. Whether I go for it or not remains to be seen, but I thought I'd just leave you with thath nice photograph of the nearly not a university fresher Jock from twenty three years ago!

So, should I throw my own selection of snazzy hats in the ring do you reckon? I know one of the other candidates not to get a seat last week previously represented Holywell and may want to go for it himself and others who may be far better suited to it than me may be tempted.  I am sure whoever wins the selection will make a very good candidate and a fine colleague for Nathan Pyle who won the ward on Thursday for us.

In other news, I heard this morning that my Labour opponent last week also complained to my bosses about me working the halls where I live and whether I was getting any special treatment. Maureen, if you (and the Tories) had actually given two hoots about the quarter of your electorate in halls you could have tried weeks ago to start glad-handing and door knocking and certainly delivering, and you would have found no resistance to your presence whatsoever. No point moaning on the day or day before that you've not delivered anything to such a big chunk of your ward!