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Spotted this on Guardian Unlimited today: Mac adverts on behalf of exploited Chinese workers

You know those artsy Mac adverts where a couple of people explain why they have a Mac against a white background - well a group has done one highlighting the plight of workers in the electronics manufacturing industry in the far east mostly. As you watch it, of course, bear in mind that since Macs basically use the same bits inside as any other PC they're not particularly worse than anyone else - just that the slightly "holier than thou" (I'm a Mac user - I can say that) advert style is easy to spoof.

But it puts me in mind of another one of my unrealised "inventions" - the "Fair Trade PC". We get Fair Trade clothes, footwear, foods. We can try to buy locally produced goods. But with computers and most other consumer electronics we're more or less stuck with what we're given. Why not a "Fair Trade" PC? People pay a premium for Jonathan Ive's beautiful designs, why not for better conditions for the workers?

ALTER (the Lib Dems' Land Value Tax and Economic Reform group) have spent the time over the holidays preparing arguments for the "Tax Commission II" which will focus, amongst other things on that bit of tax policy that was left hanging at Conference - the details of how to implement Land Value Tax.

One thing I noticed just before Christmas which didn't seem to be picked up anywhere else was some research from "Inside Housing" magazine, also reported in the Telegraph, that in some places up to 50% of new build housing is standing empty, bought up, often "off-plan", by speculators who just want to hold it and hope to make a turn on it selling it on after a year or two, but not even putting tenants into them because they don't want to have to carry out any remediation work before they sell and don't want any "vacant possession" issues to affect their choice of timing.

It particularly affects apartments, and so disproportionately also those trying to get onto the housing ladder.

The Lib Dems already have policy to shift the Uniform Business Rate to a Site Value Rating basis, and at conference as part of the tax paper it was agreed that this should also apply to vacant brownfield sites to encourage development.

Anyway, as one way of beginning a shift to LVT more generally as the main, or hopefully only, property based tax, we are suggesting that once land is in the SVR system it should stay there. So new homes would attract SVR even after purchase rather than Council Tax or anything else. This would provide a huge disincentive for people to "abuse" the new housing market in this way. At the moment, and even under Local Income Tax, most of these buyers would pay little or nothing while the properties lie empty, but if they attracted SVR from the moment they got planning permission, such buyers would have to factor in a tax bill when deciding to leave them empty.

Problem solved?