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I know the Lib Dems are always on about how terrible it is that other parties plagiarise our own policies and take the credit, and I thoroughly approve of today's "Making it Happen" announcement and policy document at least as to direction. But might I humbly suggest that when our people are scrambling around in the bowels of government looking for these savings that seem to have been promised by every aspiring government since Nebuchadnezzar they could do a lot worse than to shamelessly borrow these fellow travellers' ideas on demolishing the QUANGOcracy.

There. £64bn savings. Done!

So, he's back in the news again. I was amused a few weeks ago to see a regular sketch in a comedy show (was it the new Harry Enfield one, I can't remember?) where every time there is a Metropolitan Police press conference they give figures on the amount of officer time they've spent arresting Pete Doherty.

And it is a bit of a joke. I wonder if any of our MPs (or perhaps our putative mayoral candidate) might take up the idea and see if the Metropolitan Police could produce figures for just how much the police and courts service have spent hounding this pathetic specimen?

Was this sort of thing what Sir Iain Blair meant when he said he wanted to go after the "dinner party cocaine set"? I have to say I always assumed that was aimed at former Bullingdon Club members in glittering Notting Hill and similar socialite snorters.

A couple of weeks ago there was a justified story from the Tories about how inspectors were going to peer into every house to check whether it had double glazing or gaudy wallpaper to add to the council tax valuation. I blogged flippantly about that one.

Now today there are lots of media (e.g. Telegraph: "Council tax to soar 300% for homes in nice areas" and BBC: "Council tax 'to be crime based'") who have picked up on another Tory criticism of what appears to be going on in Northern Ireland. That the government have invested in sophisticated computer systems to include all sorts of neighbourhood factors - like crime rates, good schools and so on - in "council tax" revaluations.

Now, a few months ago we had the Bow Group produce ideas for the Tories' Tax Commission that included a more progressive property tax which, whilst still based on the full value of both land/location and buildings and other improvements, was clearly a step towards proper Land Value Tax/Site Value Rating. But since then, I've managed to fathom out very little of what exactly it is that the Tories would do with local government tax-raising. Maybe someone could enlighten me.

Because today's criticism, as Tim Worstall points out, hits out at attempts to make the valuation of site values more accurate. If you don't want to value peoples' buildings (and I don't) then if you want any kind of property tax, you'll want to be valuing their location and land value. A non-intrusive process. In some circles it's called "landvaluescaping". There is considerable evidence that you can quite accurately revalue sites based on changes in the neighbourhood, and in particular in the services provided that affect that neighbourhood.

So, for example, you can predict quite accurately what will happen to land values (and therefore house prices) if a new school in built, , or a bypass added, or a train service doubled. And the sort of neighbourhood profiling these systems being criticised today do are essential in that, both to provide reference points and to model new inputs. As a side issue of course they can be used to shift resources to places where existing inputs don't seem to be having the desired effect of quality of life.

So, all this system does is help value sites. That's what the ratings system did, but without computers it was extremely slow to update and got out of kilter with actual values. So what do the Tories actually want to do with Council Tax?

I thought the example quoted, of a chap in Belfast complaining that his house, which he bought for £50k in 1983 would only be worth £300k now because he had done no work to it whatever and he was worried that because his neighbours had spent thousands improving theirs it was worth £550k, was quite interesting:

Michael Kelly, 64, has been left perplexed, struggling to comprehend the estimate he received for his 2007-8 rates.

ÒIÕm currently paying just over £1,000, but in 2007-8 my bill is going to go up to nearly £4,000,Ó said Mr Kelly. ÒI get by on a civil service pension of £100 a week Ð how am I supposed to afford it?Ó

The only explanation he can think of relates to the computer and its failure to appreciate the difference between him and his former neighbour in Myrtlefield Park, Belfast. Mr Kelly, a retired civil servant, bought his Victorian semi back in 1983 for less than £50,000.

But his next-door neighbour spent thousands of pounds on a new roof, kitchen, bathroom and plumbing system, selling the house last year for £550,000.

Mr Kelly is now less than delighted, because he thinks the sale allowed the computer-assisted officials to value every house on the street at more than half a million pounds.

ÒI would be lucky to get £300,000 for my house,Ó he said. ÒItÕs in the same state it was in 1983. Now, because of this crazy system, I may have to sell up and leave. It is a disgrace.Ó

Just where, sir, do you think your extra £250k of value came from, if you didn't lift a finger in 23 years to improve your home? Answer: the very social, public and commercial inputs that this sort of software is meant to track. Why should you benefit from those inputs to such a huge extent without it being reflected in what you pay to be located there?

Over at ConservativeHome they're spinning the line that "Green Taxes" such as those that might be recommended by the Gummer-Goldssmith review might hit the poorest hardest:

Green action mustn't punish the poor. Green taxation - like the congestion charge and VAT on domestic flights - can fall most heavily on the poorest.

Zac Goldsmith: Green taxes
must not appear to be the rich
telling the poor what
they cannot have!

According to our figures I think they need to look either at who would be most affected, or who they are calling the poorest. It would of course not surprise any of us to find that they don't really count the really poorest as poor, just the "lower middle classes" from whom they want some votes. But, if they do mean the lowest rungs of the British wealth ladder, then according to the line that Chris Huhne, Green Lib Dems and other have been pushing it is not in fact these people who would be most affected.

33% of households do not have access to a car. Most of these are the least well off households. If money from the congestion charge puts more into public transport these people gain. Similarly I very much doubt that the very poorest, if they travel terribly far at all, travel by air, internally or overseas. These are the "National Express" customers if anything. It would cost me more in time, money and effort to get to a cheap flight airport before flying as it would be to get a coach service to my destination. And on overseas flights, it is the well off and moderately well off who can afford to take multiple breaks a year. The European city weekend break several times a year is not the stuff of the Housing Benefit claimant (unless he's also an MEP I suppose).

However, they are right about one thing, yet fail to address it. Green taxes will hurt the poor the most if the poor are always driven to living on "marginal land". For it is they who, as well as having to keep up their housing costs, will have to commute because housing prices near where they work or socialize are unaffordable to them. Only Land Value Tax, as I wrote in one of my first ever blog posts, can change that and give people a real choice as to whether to live closer to work or commute with the attendant higher travel costs that green taxation will bring.

The Tories therefore, like all the other main parties including the Lib Dems, signally fail to address the biggest environmental tax issue of all - the taxation of location values.