Comment - Land Value Tax Campaign

Office cleaner finds budget draft sensation

Written on 14 March 2013. Posted in General.

Our sleuth, a Latvian woman who works for a firm of contract cleaners, has been keeping a low profile of late, but her patience paid off when she discovered what appears to be a draft of the budget speech. It appears that the Chancellor has more courage than we have given him credit for and that Land Value Taxation will be the centre of his policy to get growth back into the economy. We will listen...

London offices most expensive in world

Written on 13 March 2013. Posted in Economics.

London’s West End is the world’s most expensive office market once again after regaining its crown from Hong Kong’s Central Business District (CBD), according to research published in Cushman & Wakefield’s Office Space Across the World 2013. The report from the international property consultants highlights the scarcity of quality space in London which has increased competition...

Where are the LibDems going?

Written on 10 March 2013. Posted in Politics.

The LibDems somehow managed to hold on to Eastleigh at the by-election, and the Spring Conference is on this week at Brighton, so where is the party going? It has certainly not distinguished itself by supporting this disastrous Coalition, nor has it made matters any better when leading figures like Vince Cable have been pushing ludicrous proposals such as the Mansion Tax. Cable has no excuse since...

We predicted right five years ago

Written on 7 March 2013. Posted in Economics.

We have been warning about inflation since 2008. We argued then that the policies that were being put into place would not work. And they haven’t. Like a gambling addict on a fruit machine, those in charge of policy keep on feeding money in, hoping that the jackpot will arrive. Only there is no jackpot.

Fiscal emergency declared in Detroit

Written on 2 March 2013. Posted in Economics.

An article in the FT today reports that “The governor of Michigan declared a fiscal emergency in Detroit on Friday, clearing the way for the appointment of an outside manager with broad powers to oversee the finances of the debt-ridden city. The emergency manager could recommend a bankruptcy filing if he or she found the city’s fiscal problems were insurmountable. If Detroit took such...

Our brief address to the House of Commons

Written on 23 February 2013. Posted in Politics.

On Friday, Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, will have the opportunity to present the case for LVT in her Private Member’s Bill, which would “Require the Secretary of State to commission a programme of research into the merits of replacing the Council Tax and Non-domestic rates in England with an annual levy on the unimproved value of all land, including transitional...

Milliband grabs two stupid policies simultaneously

Written on 17 February 2013. Posted in Taxation.

Labour leader Milliband’s new-found support for a 10p tax rate and a Mansion Tax at the same time is the worst of politics and an insult to the intelligence of the electorate. A short band of income tax at 10% is inefficient and complex. The way to cut the tax burden on the low-paid is to raise the starting threshold. And that is before tax incidence is taken into account, because the initial...

Clear as mud – Charlotte-Ann Schreiber

Written on 14 February 2013. Posted in Banking.

Charlotte-Ann Schreiber interviews Sir Mervyn King…Following the latest Bank of England’s Quarterly Inflation Report we sent our resident economist Charlotte-Anne Schreiber to interview the Governor, Sir Mervyn King, to find out if she could get a simple explanation to some aspects of his statement. “Sir Mervyn, I gather you’ve seen it. This must be a wonderful moment for...

Helicopter money and the supply-side blockage

Written on 9 February 2013. Posted in Economics.

The camera retailing chain Jessops is one of a list of big name retailers which has closed in recent months. 187 stores have shut, with over 1300 people losing their jobs. What is left of the company will now become a mail order firm operating from a warehouse in Leicester, which takes the company back to its starting point. Jessops big expansion took place in the 1970s and it is, like many other...

Could the UK economy implode?

Written on 6 February 2013. Posted in Economics.

Several times a week I receive emails with scare stories about the imminent collapse of the UK economy. Most of them come from outfits trying to sell subscriptions to expensive investment advice magazines so they need to be taken with a pinch of salt. But some regular journalists are asking the same question, as here. All of these gloom-and-doom forecasts draw attention to the same fundamental...

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