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...who seems as appalled as I am at the relish with which our party has taken to banning a four hundred year old "pleasure": Forceful and Moderate: Smoked out....

Now, I accept the public health arguments, and I accept in particular (as a member of UNISON how could I not) the arguments about the dangers to staff. Yet still there are ways round having to illiberally ban something. Many people take on jobs that have risks to their health or personal safety. Health and Safety legislation tries to get employers to minimise those risks in most cases (for example with protective gear) but in some cases, when all that's done and risks still remain, employees can command a premium.

If 80% of people really want to eat and drink in smoke free places this is plenty incentive for the industry to give them that option. Since more than 20% of people smoke anyway (and it's higher amongst the young adult population), isn't there a good chance that only those who do would be prepared to work, for more money if possible, in an establishment that permits smoking - I know almost everyone in my SU bar are smokers - they get extra breaks!

As a party we have, or had at least, policy in our "abolish regulation" stuff to replace the national minimum wage with a more flexible arrangement negotiated and enforced thropugh trade and workers associations on a region by region basis so it could reflect the costs of living in different places. We could add into this premiums for working in smokey bars perhaps. A real liberal response to this would be to try to level the playing field in favour of the workers, not outlaw something (especially something that is still so very, even if inexplicably, commonplace).

Incidentally, does anyone know how this affects hotel bedrooms? I have a get around in my mind already. Small hotel, bedroom suites rented by the hour with more settees and tables than beds, room service delivering booze. Get the picture? The wealthy can get round anything.

The Telegraph reports that the government is to force councils to raise Council Tax by more than inflation so he can divert more central money to the NHS and education. Responding,

Eric Pickles, the Tory local government spokesman, said: "Council tax is starting to become unbearable. Gordon Brown is using smoke and mirrors which is shameful. But, I think people will recognise what is going on. Mr Brown has already fooled them before in this way."

Funny that. Not so bad that it deserved your attention when deciding which tax to cut last week was it, Mr Pickles? Starting to become unbearable? Your own Tory party polling showed that it was the most unbearable tax already. Only one of the mainstream parties wants seriously to address this regressive tax:

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: "Council tax is a particularly regressive and hated tax which has already put a massive squeeze on household incomes."

Now that should be bigger news than the Tory tax cut for about five richest per cent of dead people, don't you think? Even if I do think they want to do it the wrong way.

Conference is coming, and I'll have an opportunity on Saturday evening to share a platform with Vince Cable and James Graham at the ALTER fringe event, entitled "Economics as if People Mattered" (Saturday, 18:30, Arena Hall 2n, for anyone interested - note the change of venue from the conference program). My task is to set out some more details of the book of essays we propose to publish in time for the Autumn Conference, entitled "The Liberal Alternative". And since I shall also be seeing Vince tomorrow evening at the Oxford East constituency dinner, I thought I ought to prepare what I am going to say on Saturday so I can let him have a copy tomorrow night. So here goes with a first draft...

Tough on poverty, tough on the causes of poverty!

By the next time most of us get together again at Bournemouth in September we will have celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the National Health Service and the centenary of the legislation that gave us the first Old Age Pension. Both of course were the triumph of political economists steeped in a tradition of liberal economics and concern for the least well off in society.

So we've decided that for our big project for the year, and to prepare for next year's centenary of David Lloyd-George's great 1909 People's Budget, we're going to publish a book of essays investigating some of the problems they faced both at the turn of the last century and in the widespread domestic poverty after World War Two that Beveridge sought to address through his "war on the five wants".

We want to show that despite throwing ever increasing resources at tackling the unequal outcomes of our economic system, successive socialist and conservative governments have completely failed to address the causes of inequality that Lloyd-George, drawing on that long tradition started to attempt in that budget.

And we want to persuade you, and the party more widely, that that tradition, never really given the chance to show its potential since then - a whole century ago, is just as relevant today. That it remains a precondition to creating an economically and therefore socially equitable society.

Prevention, in economics as much as in health, is always better than trying to cure or treat the symptoms once a malaise has taken hold. For as the cures become ever more expensive, and consume ever more of our productivity, so they also become steadily less liberal.

We are more, not less, dependent on the decisions of politicians where they deliver monopolistic public services. And the more of our labour they appropriate to pay for those services the less we are able to make our own choices anyway.

Talking of "choice", I know that some of us seem instinctively to shy away from choice, because we feel that it excludes the least well off. But I'll bet we all deep down believe that choice, unlimited choice, would be great if only we could ensure everyone was able to afford to participate in such a market place.

Well that's what we want to show you can happen when we address the central inequities of the economic system we have inherited. Taxing income and productive investment slows the creation of wealth for all of us. Failing properly to tax land allows those who happen to own or have inherited the best locations to absorb much of the value of our labour and productive investment, and especially the labour of the poorest. The wealthiest grow fabulously rich off the back of the labourer through land. And even, in this era of widespread home ownership, as it's called, many benefit unfairly, while paying, through their other taxes, for the attempts to relieve the poverty this system sustains!

If we took that tax shift seriously, our economy could be as much as a third bigger, and distribute that extra wealth more equitably according to what we put into it - our work and our savings. We would be better able to compete with the newly emerging economies of the world without retreating into hiding behind protectionism. We would be able to allow people more choice over their lives and the services that sustain them, whether that be health and education, housing, or basic needs like food.

I want to end with a brief quote from Herbert Spencer, who, writing in 1851 said:

"To mitigate distress appearing needful for the production of the “greatest happiness,” the English people have sanctioned upwards of one hundred acts in Parliament having this end in view, each of them arising out of the failure or incompleteness of previous legislation. Men are nevertheless still discontented with the Poor Laws, and we are seemingly as far as ever from their satisfactory settlement."

I suggest that 150 years later, we are still tinkering with laws, often ever more coercive laws to try and reach that nirvana of the "greatest happiness" through government intervention. We take more from everyone in the process and limit everyone's ability to decide for themselves. Addressing the central causes of our economic inequity has not been tried since 1909. 2009 is high time we put this, left, right and centre at the forefront of the new liberal political economy for the next century.

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So, having read roughly what I'm going to say, you can now come along to theALTER fringe and hear Vince Cable (who will I hope by then have been formally adopted along with Nick Clegg as an ALTER Vice-President!) and James Graham as well!

"Economics as if People Mattered" (Saturday, 18:30, Arena Hall 2n - note the change of venue from the conference
program)

Hat tip to US Georgist tax researcher "Taxpayer" who highlights that Fred Harrison has made a seven or so minute introduction/video advert for his book "Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback Scam"

If you want to understand a bit about just how unfair a tax system based on incomes is, have a watch, and hopefully buy the book - it goes into a lot more detail and will leave you I am sure convinced of the place of LVT.