On last night’s showing the title could be undecided and require re-match With the Downing Street crown in contention, this 3-round contest of party heavyweights had the nation glued to the screen and on the edge of their seats – hyped up by the expectation of a clash of the Titans that would leave one contestant head and shoulders above the others.

It is a sign of me getting old or are the Chancellor and his shadows all deeply unimpressive?

Our new expert commentator, leading economist Charlotte-Anne Schreiber, was in the TV audience Monday evening to hear the debate between Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable. She was not impressed. Here is her report for the Land Value Taxation Campaign.

The pound has fallen as the markets contemplate the prospect of a hung parliament after the General Election. The drop follows an opinion poll published in the Sunday Times showing that the Conservatives’ lead is down to just two percent over Labour. If that is how the votes are cast on polling day – expected to be 6th May – Labour would end up with enough seats to lead a hung...

Switzerland is a direct democracy. Anyone can draw up a petition and collect signatures. If there are enough, a referendum will held, giving people the opportunity to vote on the proposition. At times, this has led to results which some might consider odd, and not necessarily “progressive”. British democracy leaves decisions to elected representatives and their permanent advisers in...

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which recruits its membership from the civil service and government agencies, has produced this report on the future of the Land Registry. Whilst we do not necessarily endorse everything it says, it is a useful contribution to public debate.

ALTER, the LibDem group campaigning for LVT, has a produced a new report on the social justice argument for LVT. We would like to be able to commend this but unfortunately we can not. The report’s argument is based on the fundamental error that land is wealth, and that land ownership is synonymous with wealth ownership. It most definitely is not, and this is no mere pedantic quibble. Confusion...

  The LibDems continue to thrash around with their idea for a “Mansions Tax”. The original proposal was for it to start at a threshold of £1 million but that raised an uproar as it would have caught quite a lot of owners of ordinary houses in and around London, so the latest idea is for a threshold of £2 million, which will simply not raise enough money to be worth the trouble. The best...

What are public goods? They are goods that cannot be wholly provided by the market. An example is this ferry, which goes summer and winter, day and night, regardless of whether anyone turns up to travel on it. Assuming people had to pay at the point of use, how could this be charged for? By dividing the cost amongst the number of users? By having different charges at different times? By having...

The Icelanders are thinking of joining the EU as a way of getting out of their troubles. They should take care. They must watch their fish. Unless the fish have gone already, they should keep out of the EU. Even if the fish stocks have gone, EU membership will do them little good in the end. There is the cautionary tale of Ireland to take note of. The EU pumped money in. That caused a property boom....