Our blog-host made exactly this point a few days ago, I paraphrase “cutting spending would be quite easy because there is so much waste”. So why do the Tories allow Nulab to get away with the outrageous claim that if they scrapped IHT (yield, a modest £4 bn or so) that 40,000 nurses’ jobs would be lost?

“4,000 quango jobs. more like” would have been a suitable riposte.

That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. I’d love to know.

http://tpa.typepad.com/bettergovernment/files/080515_structure_of_government_1_unseen_government_immediate_release.pdf

£30 Billion Net to the EU.

http://www.brugesgroup.com

We could EASILY Survive the economic Meltdown,
Simply scrap the Quango’s
Get us out of the EU.

As a One off, Wipe off all Mortgage Debt, let people have their Own homes.

We are being farmed.

As for the Next General election, there is a very real prospect that there may not be another General Election, Why else would they ( Our Establishment and the EU ) have set up the Civil Contingencies Bill.

If it is broadly agreed that e.g. strengthening the Thames Barrier is a good thing, should some people who own property in the potential flood zone (but who benefit from the new barrier) be allowed to opt out of paying for the cost of it, even though they benefit from e.g. lower insurance bills and higher resale value? LVT is not about ‘alleged value’, it is about actual market value.

If the people who benefit don’t have to pay, why should anybody else? I personally hate the idea of paying extra income tax so that central government on a whim (usually in the interest of buying votes) can build stuff anywhere in the country they like, OTOH, I have little objection to paying more LVT for stuff that benefits me (or at least enhances the resale value of my house) where I live.

Under general free market principles, if the value (in this case the benefit) exceeds the cost (i.e. the tax) then the project should go ahead. Else not.

Broadly agreed, but that’s the point of Land Value Tax.

1. ‘Good infrastructure’ raises property values overall (e.g. better transport links, flood defences) but of course will impact negatively on some people (in the shadow of a motorway flyover, whose view over the sea is spoiled).

2. The trade-off is quite simple – would there be a net increase in LVT receipts? Some would pay more for higher amenity, the losers would automatically be compensated for the fall in value.

3. The next question is, would that net increase (assuming there would be one) be enough to pay for the new railway, new road, flood barrier etc. If yes, the project gets built, if not, then not.

4. Those who benefit would pay, those who lose get automatic compensation. Depending on how big the project is, the same logic applies to local councils deciding whether to sell off a bit of land or use it for a local park as it does to the national government deciding whether to widen the M1 to four lanes each way.

Reply: That is why such taxes are unfair. Someone can have an alleged benefit on their land value and be forced to pay tax, even though the benefit is not a benefit to them. It could force certain businesses to close if land values rose too much, and could end up throwing people out of their homes.

If you read the online media and blogs you will see that the British people are choking on regulation and taxation. My sincere hope is that by inflicting such damage on the country, and on England in particular, they ensure their concept of socialist authoritarianism is consigned to a bleak footnote in history, together with the Fabians, Common Purpose et al.

You are right that the government are “now in panic mode that they have run out of time to put through large schemes in the normal way. They must be dreading that the lights could go out for want of power, or the country grind to a final halt in massive gridlock”. However it is a justified panic (& the Tories were barely better over the last 11 or indeed 28 years in supporting nuclear) & if this bill is going to go some way to cutting the 6 years of paperwork previously suggested before starting the 3 1/2 year project of actually building reactors then not before time.

So it is not surprising that the government is taking this away from local democracy, since the record of local councils on planning in the past decade has been a total disaster. Be it clueless councillors or indolent, incompetent, obstructive, green-fanatic officers, no-one in local authorities can look back on their record with pride. That said, the guillotine shows that Nu-Labour see parliamant as an inconvenience and to have vague ill-defined talk of new taxes is legislation at its worst.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

Now I can understand how after nearly 11 years of inaction over the UK’s energy policy the government may need such powers to fast-track planning approval for new nuclear power stations. Indeed there might be reasonable justification that such consents are of strategic national importance – in which case why not specifically target them in the legislation. However given the position we are now at in the electoral cycle, they do not have a hope of getting much underway before the next General Election.

This latest action seems to be part of a trend to further marginalise our increasingly expensive local councils – for example with these measures in place and once the local authority has created a joint waste authority why do we need local councils?