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If the world is a more dangerous place, it's as much because of people like Richard Armitage: US threatened to bomb Pakistan as it is because of people like Bin Laden.

I hope personally that we will choose to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Commonwealth brothers and sisters who have provided us with many of our residents and not a few friends and colleagues than a regime that even remotely thinks it's acceptable to make such threats.

Interestingly though, this is a similar phrase to one that was alleged to have been used as an ultimatum to the Taliban themselves, BEFORE 9/11, two months before, when they were stalling in talks over a Unocal pipeline from the central asian republics to the Arabian Sea coast.

If you threaten what to most of us seemed like a basket case state and their friends respond with a 9/11, would you really want to threaten a more sophisticated populous and relatively much more influential military one with nukes, even small ones, like Pakistan?

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!

The very observant amongst you will have noticed, I hope, that I've been very quiet for a couple of weeks.  Well, since this marks the anniversary of this Drupal version of my blog, I decided to give it a make-over.  Partly this was prompted by having been nominated in summer for the best designed Lib Dem blog, because the previous "look and feel" was not terribly technically tinkered with standard Drupal theme.  So I wanted to have a play and see what I could achieve "under the bonnet" of Drupal.

So, I've reached the point where I'm into that last 20% of any project that will take 80% of the effort, so I figured I might as well "go live" on the new theme and continue to tinker in the background.  So, things will change a little over the coming days and weeks as I spot things I don't like, but please let me know if there's something not working, or not working as expected.

...shame I'm not waking up to this today:

Lots of things to catch up on over the next few days: my feelings about the new leader and his new team, not least.

You'll notice that the whole idea of static "blogroll" type lists has apparently gone.  All of you to whom I linked are still linked, I just need to go through the various links and tag them with categories and they will then show up in the "related links" slot when you view relevant content on my site.

You'll get the hang of it, I hope! 

Well, who'd have guessed it, the Liberal Democrats could now be in the position of being the only mainstream political party to go into the next election promising a lower tax burden and radical tax cutting measures for most. In today's speech Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne promises tax simplification: but refuses to promise tax cuts.

I wrote that a couple of days ago and and have been holding off writing more for 48 hours or so since I thought that with the Tax Commission meeting next Tuesday it would not be helpful, but today, says The Observer in "Lib Dems plan 2p cut in Income Tax" people are clearly briefing as if the Tax Commission report is done and dusted and only awaiting some formal endorsement from Conference so it seems open season.

There's not one mention in that article about the proposed Progressive Property Tax. So I assume that "the leadership" has decided either that it's best not mentioned or it's not going to appear in the final options. This was proposed as a first step towards shifting tax onto land values and off incomes. And I do hope we get to see the Tax Commission report before my membership renewal, because if there is no move in that direction it's so much easier not to renew than to have to write in and resign!

Here's what ALTER, of which I am secretary, says about the possibilities of a phasing in of Land Value Tax via a Progressive Property Tax:

In this article by a brand new member of ALTER, David Cooper points out that:-

&#8226; the richest 5% own 40% of real estate - &#163;1.2 trillion - but mainly pay <0.005% of it in council tax, but

&#8226; we make businesses pay 4% of the value of the property they occupy in rates and

&#8226; many poor wage-earning households pay >5% of their property value in CT

A 5% Progressive Property Tax (PPT) with &#163;0.5 million tax-free allowance per taxpayer (exceedingly generous!) could raise &#163;30 bn/yr -as much as 10% of income tax revenue plus all the income tax paid by people below National Minimum Wage.

How can that possibly be other than a massive vote-winner? We would not touch the middle-classes, who would gain on balance even taking into account the increase in Income Tax from Local Income Tax.

I can just see the campaign cry:

We would scrap Council Tax, replace it with a fairer local tax based on ability to pay - and by ensuring the wealthiest pay most of all we would also scrap Inheritance Tax, lift millions out of income tax and reduce the basic income tax rate for almost everyone.



When Party Conference passed the "Moving Ahead" mid-term manifesto in 1998 with the "Tax Shift" statement that has been quoted before here, the stated aim of the Shift was

taking millions of low earning income taxpayers out of paying income tax altogether.

If we merely set PPT at 1%, we will only be able to scrap IHT and have a pretty poor excuse for not taking those "millions of low earning taxpayers" out of income tax:

We thought it unfair to tax the richest 5% as much as the poorest 5% used to pay from their property wealth under Council Tax

And that, dear reader, is just the start. Once the precedent of taxing land values is established and becomes the main base for taxation - as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Milton Friedman et al tell us they would prefer, there are all sorts of savings to be made. So instead of just being able to look at managed government expenditure, such as the health service running costs, in which efficiencies could make a few billion difference, we start to make an impact on the two fifths of government spending - approaching &#163;200bn now, that is just moving money around the country.

Why should the government move money around the country if what is known as "tax competition" does that for us by producing tax incentives for people and businesses to recolonise those areas that have become economically depressed with low land values and therefore low taxes? Think of Hull as the St Hellier of the north, rather than the H*ll-hole of the north...:)

Land Value Tax, replacing Income Taxes, Corporation Taxes, Capital Taxes, transaction taxes and nearly every other economically distortionary tax that does not itself achieve some stated behavioural aim such as taxing tobacco to stop lung cancer or fuel to stop us choking ourselves, is the best opportunity since 1909 when Lloyd-George first tried it. This was the measure in the Peoples' Budget that led to the Lords rejecting it and the eventual re-election of the government and emasculation of the powers of the lords in the Parliament Act of 1911. Ask yourself why. Why on earth would the vested interests of the landed and powerful give up most of their birthright to rule to avoid a tax? Because it's progressive, that's why.

Income tax funding government expenditures, especially on infrastructure and supply side measures really involves a massive shift of money from me and the millions like me, to those who happen to own land in the right place to reap the benefits of that particular infrastructure. Land Value Tax ushers in an economy in which the government can in fact spend new money (not debt) into existence on the "full faith and credit" of the people of these islands, and simply recoup as much of that expenditure as is necessary to avoid economic instability from those whose asset wealth gains as a result of that expenditure.

To me, there are no half measures here. Any tax policy that makes a step in that direction must be rooted in the philosophy that taxes that put people off working and earning are economically destructive and should eventually disappear. If we don't use the opportunity of the Tax Commission to do start this process, we will all lose.

Technorati Tags: land value tax, lib dems, localism, taxation

Up and down the country local authorities, independent retailers and residents complain that rents are squeezing out interesting independent retailers and creating "Clone Town Britain".

Well, I have an idea. This week the Co-operative Group agreed terms to acquire Somerfield supermarkets. There are some, say management, which directly compete with existing Co-op shops and so one or other may be up for sale. One of these is in Headington in Oxford where there is a fairly recently refurbished MidCounties Co-op store on one side of the road and a Somerfield on the other.

Some people are all excited that someone like Waitrose might step up and buy it - and in a sense there could be no better buyer as far as the Co-op goes - the other end of the market and a sort of a worker co-operative in its own right.

But as I was in a social enterprise meeting earlier today my mind wandered to Headington supermarkets (!) and I wondered if, given it is the Co-operative who have bought them, there might be mileage in proposing a sale to a more local group - perhaps a permanent base for an indoor/farmers' market, or a space which, like the Covered Market in town, could provide "protected space" for independent retailers we wanted to see revived in Headington, set up say as a secondary co-op or a community land trust type structure (or even bought by MidCounties from Co-op Group) enabling local people a say in its management, policies and ownership.

It would require some work of course actually to work out whether the relatively recent decline of independent fresh food retailers in Headington for example has been, as often claimed, because of rent and rates issues where such a facility might be able to help by lowering the cost of access. But if it does seem viable would it be worth trying?

Or would Waitrose or Sainsbury still be a more attractive offering?