Comment - Land Value Tax Campaign

Curses! Romania’s witches forced to pay income tax

Written on 22 January 2011. Posted in General.

Romanian witches angry about having to pay up for the first time are planning to use cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government. Superstitions are no laughing matter in Romania — the land of the medieval ruler who inspired the “Dracula” tale — and have been part of its culture for centuries. President Traian Basescu and his aides have been...

Borrowing from daddy to stoke up the land market

Written on 13 January 2011. Posted in Banking.

House builder Barratt has teamed up with Hitachi Capital to offer £50,000 loans to parents wanting to buy Barratt homes for their children. Barratt’s tie-up with the UK financial services arm of the Japanese conglomerate will see the creation of a £1bn fund that will offer 12-year unsecured loans for parents to use as part of the deposit for their child’s new home.

UK Pound tumbles against Zimbabwe Dollar

Written on 30 December 2010. Posted in Economics.

The UK pound has not done well against most currencies, even including the shaky Euro, but who realises that for the past two months it has been tumbling down against the Zimbabwe Dollar? Should Osborne and Mervyn King be asking for advice from Harare?

Benefit cheats

Written on 24 December 2010. Posted in Welfare.

Benefit cheats exploit the system and rob the community. What they do is dishonest, criminal and a punishable offence. Benefit cheats obtain public funds to which they are not entitled. Is this surprising? The system is wide open to abuse. What else can we expect? In a recent case, a 51-year-old woman claimed over £30,000 for 9 years and was discovered to have bank accounts in three countries, a...

Cognitive dissonance epidemic

Written on 20 December 2010. Posted in General.

The shut-down of Britain by the recent snow falls has got the right-wing tabloids screaming about the poor response by central and local government. These are the same newspapers that would normally be screaming for tax cuts. Here is a case of cognitive dissonance.

Veteran Observer journalist misses point yet again

Written on 19 December 2010. Posted in Banking.

Writing in today’s Observer, Will Hutton talks about the need to reform the banks. It is strange how he and so many of his colleagues succeed in missing the point so precisely. Hutton is just talking about effects. Banks create credit for property purchase, of which most of that value is land purchase. The loan is secured on the land. The lenders then charge interest on the money they have...

Tax avoidance must be stamped out

Written on 18 December 2010. Posted in Home-Owner-Ism.

Two stories on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, Saturday December 18 attracted our attention. The story on the left was headed “MPs can’t be trusted on expenses” and the adjacent story read “Taxman targets middle class” describing how 200 investigators will comb the country rooting out people who pay cash for services and rent out rooms without declaring the income....

What is a Prime Minister for?

Written on 2 December 2010. Posted in General.

I raise the question because Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has gone off to Zurich with Prince William, second in line to the throne, and the football player David Beckham, to campaign for Britain to be selected as the venue for the World Cup in 2018. I find this worrying on several counts. Why is it that British politicians want these events to be held in Britain? It is most definitely...

Cameron backs high speed railway

Written on 30 November 2010. Posted in Public Transport.

Government support for the proposed high speed line from London to Birmingham and the north is hardening. This is unfortunate. The case is based on spurious arguments about the need to increase capacity. There is indeed a shortage of capacity at the London end of the West Coast Main Line – from about Rugby southwards, but this could be increased by upgrading existing routes and reinstating...

Mirrless Review published

Written on 17 November 2010. Posted in Taxation.

The final report of the Mirrlees Committee, sponsored by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, has now been published. It makes wide-ranging proposals to simplify the UK’s tax system: income tax and National Insurance should be merged, with an alignment of the way the employed, self employed, and limited company owners are taxed. The Review, chaired by Sir James Mirrlees, argues that a coherent...

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