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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?

I spotted someone seemingly scouring my blog for articles relating to "citizens' Income" and came across this now seemingly very prescient post I did nine months ago about our tax policies hitting the mark or not.

I've made quite a big thing about Chris's European Parliamentary experience both in writing to him when encouraging him to stand and to other people. It seems to me that, now that Blair's pretty lacklustre presidency is over and with the sceptic Brown on the horizon and with Cameron likely to pull the Tories even further away from Europe there is no longer any desire to champion Europe in the higher echelons of the other parties and that pro-Europe voters have nowhere to hang their hats.

Chris is just what Britain needs in a champion for the European cause. As an MEP he's been at the heart of the working of the EU and, perhaps more importantly, in the representative part of the EU where he has scrutinised and held the other arms of the EU to account. For too long the political discourse on Europe in the UK has focussed on the supposed excesses and lack of democracy of the Commission or the inter-state wrangling in the Council. In Chris we have an opportunity to explain and promote how a truly democratic Europe can be made to work for us, its citizens.

We all seem to agree that we want a distinctive agenda marking us out from the other parties. In the next few years, while they do their best to look embarrassedly apologetic about Europe on the one hand or downright anti-Europe on the other with Chris we can be positive about Europe and our place in it. And vastly strengthen our position as the only party for pro-Europeans in the UK.

There's a bit of a kerfuffle started up over a report by eminent science guru Colin Blakemore and David Nutt of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and MPs like the report and want change.

But there's something I would like to know about the research - if anyone finds an answer to this I'd be grateful.

Heroin and cocaine are in there as number one and two most harmful drugs (followed by barbiturates, methodone and then good ole grog incidentally - way ahead of LSD at 14th and Ecstacy at 18th). Now I presume first that they are not distinguishing between different forms of cocaine and that in that figure is both David Cameron's alleged adolescent sniff of white powder and crack or freebase cocaine use (nor presumably the millions of people who use the coca plant itself, or the tonic wine, toothpastes or cola drinks that once contained versions of cocaine).

But I'm intrigued about the heroin place. I was under the impression that biochemically heroin, properly dosed, was actually less damaging to the human body than alcohol - yes, overdosing and so on lead to hearts stopping (as do overdosing on alcohol and all depressants) which is definitely not good for the human body but, well managed, you can get a "high" without taking those sorts of risks and be less damaged by it than a similar high from alochol.

So is this research about the harm of a substance itself or the relative harm of each substance given the peculiar social circumstances in which it is taken. Or put it another way, are they trying to gauge the relative harm despite these drugs being illegal and therefore prone to tampering with and uncertain dosage and the whole criminal world that surrounds their supply chain?

My suspicion is that these placings would change again if all of these substances were legal and controlled.

Certainly any evidence based input to future discussion of illicit drugs is welcome but just changing how legal or otherwise a substance is seen as by the courts won't take away the criminal underworld that surrounds drugs and causes adulteration, misinformation and pushing people into multiple dependencies which they are then scared to deal with even when they want to.

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