Land Value Tax 2 - A Panacea For The Housing Crisis

See previous post titled Land Value Tax 1 - Where's My Acre?

At a Tory fringe meeting a Northern activist stood up and said “I’m 31, I can’t afford to get married, buy a house or start a pension, what are you doing for me?” The reply was most dissatisfying. Build more houses. The response is trite and what Labour have been saying and failing to deliver on for years.

Let’s look at the usual methods of addressing the housing crisis. They don’t work and in the case of one and two are very expensive to the taxpayer.

1. Shared equity/key workers – this state subsidy merely drives house prices up for those who aren’t lucky enough to be in these groups. This is inequitable and burns public money. If key workers can’t afford to live in a location, pay them more or move the location.
2. Public housing program – traditionally pumps poor quality housing at the bottom end of the stock. Crowds out private investment in housing. V expensive and often creates sink estates.
3. Loosen planning regs - I’ll be the first to recognize the weaknesses and over-regulation in the UK planning system, but short-circuiting these procedures is not going to lead to a sufficient increase in the supply of suitable housing

If you want to radically improve the quality and quantity of housing in the UK I suggest land value tax. My vision would be to phase out tax on built property (i.e. rates and council tax) and move towards LVT. Patterns of land ownership massively influences access to housing and land on which housing can be built. Take a look at this report into private land ownership in Scotland and you have an explanation in a nutshell for why Scotland’s population has been falling. Private owners and speculators can happily sit on unproductive land with little or no cost. Phased in LVT would cause land owners to question their ownership and naturally divest ownership. This would dilute ownership patterns allowing more land for housing to become available. Also, as house ownership itself is taxed less, you'll get more of it. I make no apologies for calling this a panacea. Next post will be on the how to introduce LVT. What do you think?

Blog-Gazing

Pardon the self-indulgence, but I am having a bit of a public review of this blog.

Blog Stats

I've been running MyBlogLog for almost a month as have a lot of other political bloggers. It's the only tool I use to see where people have come from, what they have viewed and what links they click.

Coming

Here are the top 10 sites from which people have visited in the last month. A few surprises in there, I think.

Looking for a Voice - mine?
Croydonian
Dizzy Thinks
Iain Dale - you're not giving me enough traffic!
Ellee Seymour
Pakman - he linked in to this joke.
The Daily Pundit - TDP has kindly linked to me in his posts several times
Chris Black - a decent Lib Dem.
Peter Martinovic
A Very British Dude - we were adjacent in Iain Dale's top 100 Conservative bloggers list

Google "praguetory" or "prague tory" are also v popular ways of coming to this site as is the website www.expats.cz where I post under a different name.

Going

Here are the top 10 external sites that people clicked in the last month(these figures are probably significantly skewed by my clicking)

Iain Dale (279 clicks!!! - I'm certain that those aren't all me)
Croydonian
Dizzy Thinks
James Cleverly
Political Hack
Guido Fawkes
Peter Smallbone
Ellee Seymour
Prison Works
The Notorious Bob Piper

Impact Of Political Blogging On Me

- Met lots of right-wingers with whom I agree
- Met lots of right-wingers with whom I disagree
- Improved my pub political argument skills
- More impatient with Labour and Labour supporters
- Moved from being Euro-Scizophrenic to Euro-Sceptic
- Becoming a more libertarian and a more socially conscious Tory
- Involvement in successful political campaigns (ReinstateRoger) and embryonic ones (Prison Works)
- Less time for other stuff

Future Short-Term Plans For The Blog

- Keep blogging at a rate of 1 a day
- Improve design, colours, features and formatting - probably through Mike Rouse.
- Ask a few of my regular visitors who don't, to link to me.
- Get more expats in Prague aware of the site.
- Focus on two political projects - Conservatives Abroad in Prague and Prison Works. Turn down getting involved in other stuff.
- Try to be nicer to Labour bloggers

Happy to have 30 to 50 readers a day with the occasional upward blip. Please provide me with any comments or suggestions to the above.

O'Neill Has 'Til Christmas - Wind Up

Update

OK, OK I admit it. The posting below is a wind-up. I was just waiting until I got 10 comments before owning up. Thanks to Bob Piper and Peter Smallbone for the back up. In reality, I am delighted to have O'Neill who is the finest British manager on the circuit at present (yes, better than Ferguson). Us football fans are always accused of being negative and I admit it was a relief to get rid of O'Leary. O'Neill can stay for as long as he likes.

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Wind Up

For any Villa fan the Premiership table makes depressing reading. Villa lie sixth only ahead of newcomers Reading on goal difference. Just as worrying is Villa's failure to win away from home. Time will tell whether manager Martin O'Neill's statement "I can't do anything about expectations, but eventually we will find our level" will alleviate the pressure he is under to move Villa up the table.

Villa fans are known for their patience, but it must be an onimous sign that new owner Randy Lerner has given O'Neill the dreaded vote of confidence. Lerner said "Martin O'Neill has got the record and the history..." but this praise for O Neill's previous record came with a thinly-veiled warning. "I want to focus on Martin now. Even although I am just getting to know him Martin is great."

When O'Neill was appointed, I wasn't the only fan to express my concern over his managerial style which oscillates from manic to grouchy and the fact that he had been away from the coalface for an extended period, but I was willing to give him a chance. Seeing Birmingham City doing so well just adds salt in the wound. Personally, I'm prepared to give him until Christmas to turn our season around. Here's a picture from happier times.

Elected Sheriffs - Nuts & Bolts

I like elected sheriffs and more importantly so does David Davis. What about the nuts and bolts?

How often should elections take place?
How many candidates should be put to the public?
Are there any minimum requirements (e.g. seniority in Police Service) before candidates can stand?
Will this mean an end to national pay bargaining? It should.
How should their campaigns be funded?
Crime stats will become even more politically important. Who will monitor the accuracy of them?

How was it for you, dear?

I'm back in Prague after about four hours sleep last night - I'll review my thoughts whilst it's fresh - I may well feel differently with more hindsight.

MOOD

The party was in a buoyant and positive mood. Very confident. In Tory eyes we have won all the major political arguments and events at home and abroad continue to reinforce our key beliefs. The power of the Internet was evident as there were discernable campaigns being orchestrated here and there - but that's politics - the point I am making is that it is easier than ever to find like-minded souls in the party and work together to shape things. One slightly discordant note was a feeling that the issues that matter in the North are being sidelined for a Notting Hill agenda. We made no progress from 2001 to 2005 in places like West Yorkshire - this conference is unlikely to have an impact in these areas. We need to listen to these communities if we are going to give ourselves a shout.

THE MAIN STAGE

It was manifest early on that the Main Hall was carefully choreographed. It was about mood music, bashing Labour, clarifying our new direction and not a little branding rather than setting out policy. It didn't take long to read those runes. Also, the speeches were so well trailed you barely needed to see them. Saying that, I'm glad I was there for the Davis, Hague and McCain speeches on the first day. I didn't miss much by not seeing DC today did I?

FRINGES - POLICY DEVELOPMENT

I was more hungry to see what policies are developing by visiting the fringes.

NB - The most boring fringe event that I attended was Osbourne's cautious interview and Q&A with Sieghart. Too many media and they got their scoop anyway. In that event, a UKIP infiltrator was another incident as was the Ed Balls Conservative membership revelation, which went down well enough for George to use it in his conference speech two days later.

More interesting/wonkish were the fringe events around education, criminal justice, social justice and "Modern Compassionate Conservatism" which encompassed all of the above. There are a lot of deep thinkers both within and outside the party who are engaged in excellent research in all these areas and I gained great confidence that the policies that we will be presenting over the next few years will contrast very positively with Labour's knee-jerk approach and incompetent delivery of policy since 1997. The types of organisations that are receptive to our new, but still Tory way of thinking might surprise a lot of people.

PERSONAL PROJECTS

Lots of names to faces in the blogging world. Also, heard on the grapevine about another active Tory coming out to Prague. Hurrah.

Candle At Both Ends

I needed to leave for a flight early on Wednesday - here's what happened on Tuesday my last full day.

Went to a breakfast do with David Davis and other notables including the Head of The Bar Council. Davis is 100% behind elected Commissioners. Finally met Mike Rouse from Blue Torch Solutions. Finally, the blogging stand appeared to be working like a clinic. Met the Conservative Abroad guys to knock a few ideas about. More later. Met up with a few friends who had finally got into the Conference and went for a coffee!!!

Watched Osbourne's speech and meet the Candidates on the main stage. Ali Miraj destroyed the panel and won over a vocal section of the audience including me. Some incoherent ideas and terrible presentation skills from the women (eeek!) and George wasn't much better. Without any coercion on my part, the two young ladies I met later on yesterday were disparaging about the A-list tokenism and concerned by the poor quality of the A-list women who had been on stage ("worse than Blair's Babes" were the exact words).

Went to a great fringe on campaigning hosted by the effervescent Grant Shapps. Just the man we need to be in charge of our by-election strategy. It was great to see so many PPCs and A-listers attend the meeting. I went along with Bobby Alden who got a 50% swing to become Birmingham's youngest Tory councillor by working like a dervish and going ultra-local. I don't think he'll mind me quoting him as saying that he thinks that Sion Simon (who is the constituency MP in his area) is one of the most unpopular MPs around.

We ended up in a restaurant in an old church where I found myself next to the only non-blogger member of the successful Reinstate Roger campaign which I supported. I'd bumped into Roger earlier in the day, who kindly told me about an upcoming event in Prague and gave me one of his DVDs, which I will get around to watching soon. Next was an event in the Royal Bath for an event called Absolutely Equal organised by Stonewall and CRE. More skewed towards Somerville than Snoop though. I tried to explain that there are a few straight nightclubs in Prague that play the same sort of stuff, but I think it went over people's heads.

For some unknown reason I then found myself drinking in the packed-out Highcliff Hotel until 4.30 in the morning. Spent quite a bit of time chatting and having a laugh with amongst others Trevor Ivory, Matt Dean and a few Birmingham Tories. Last MPs spotted were Peter Ainsworth (who looks like a Dr Who) and Grant Shapps again. James Cleverly was making up for lost time.

The Boris thing re the school dinners is funny. Why don't the media get that the Tories stand for freedom of ideas and speech? I think that if I had to judge the media purely on their coverage of this conference I'd think they are a bunch of idiots...

Tuesday Start Of The Day

I feel like I've almost achieved what I set out to do this Conference.

Conservatives Abroad

Yesterday's CA AGM was great fun. There were representatives from New York (who will be establishing a branch there), Washington, Spain, Malta, France, Switzerland, Czech Republic and most impressively Australia. We were given the facts on overseas voter registration. There are 2.5m UK voters living overseas. 17,500 of these (less than 1%) are registered to vote - undoubtedly even less actually vote. CA should exist to get more people registered and we discussed a few ideas. I'm meeting the members from Washington, Australian and Switzerland today at 11. It's fair to see that CA members are more right-wing than today's Tories from what I can gather.

Blogging

I have met many bloggers. Unfortunately, not as many as I had hoped because of the problems with passes which have left the likes of Trevor Ivory outside of the main conference (STOP PRESS - he has his pass at 7.40 last night). I was hoping the blogging stand might be something like a clinic. Instead, the blogging stand seems to be somewhere where Iain meets, greets and blogs.

Birmingham Tories

Had a few drinks with them, but haven't met the leader (Whitby). Oh well.

Anyway, off to see DD for a breakfast session.

Education Education Education

First fringe event of the day was all about education titled "New thinking on the curriculum". The panel was the Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb and Martin Johnson representing from the Association of Teachers & Lecturers (ATL) who are apparently relatively friendly to the Tories. The subject of the debate was the contents of the national curriculum. Martin Johnson seemed like quite a nice guy and was arguing that the curriculum should focus on skills rather than knowledge, but that it should be broad in terms of taking into account the psychological, emotional and morale aspects.

I agreed with Nick Gibb's view that the curriculum should include knowledge as well as skills and was happy to hear that he rejected the extraneous stuff and is in favour of setting/streaming and evidence based policy.

As previously blogged I think the levels of literacy is a national disgrace. I asked a question to the panel about the root cause for this and the one thing they would do. Nick agreed things were poor and suggested the use of phonics, which I agree with. Astonishingly, Martin answered by disputing the assumptions in my question stating that we were doing well in international terms. He thought we were doing well internationally - I kicked straight back and there was something of an uproar in the audience. He then babbled on for a bit - in other words he lost it. I had many people coming up to me afterwards complimenting me on my question.

Another astonishing comment from the panel was that the requirement for IT teachers/skills was a passing fad.

What is the Economist Thinking?

David Cameron is on the front of the Economist this week and they lead with the article "Who is David Cameron?" with the baffling sub-headline "What the Conservatives' bright new hope can learn from Gordon Brown"

The article offers no new insights and it's a pretty trivial article, but I have to take issue with the three things the Economist counsels that he "needs" to do.

I set out their "recommendations" in order of ridiculousness

1 Ditch the pledge to leave the centre-right EPP altogether in order not to lose influence in Europe. This would be a wholly inconsistent and unprincipled stance. We have a great opportunity to lead the way in Europe by creating a non-federalist grouping in 2009. If Cameron wants a real schism in the party, he should take the Economist's advice here.

2 Follow up on his intention of making his party look as though it represents modern Britain by pushing through organisational changes and tightening his grip on how the chooses its Parliamentary candidates. Rightly or wrongly, I perceive Cameron to be less authoritarian than Howard - and I like that. When it comes to running the country he correctly espouses localism and decentralisation which I think is a powerful contrast to Labour. Why should he run roughshod over local members re candidate selection? I don't think any tightening of the grip is required, thanks. The foot-soldiers are already restless.

3 Hand the job of delivering public services to providers from the private or voluntary sector. We're Tories. We will always look at these type of initiatives on a case-by-case basis. We don't "need" to do this. We've always done it.

I used to subscribe the Economist. It won't take many more deadhead leading articles for this rag to be taken off the menu.

Land Value Tax 1 - Where’s My Acre?

The first in a series about land value tax. I would like to see a shift of emphasis from property taxes to land taxes.

This question "where's my acre" is a little facetious but given that the population density of the UK is 244 per square km and there are about 247 acres in a square kilometre it is a reasonable rhetorical question. I am told the series Jon Snow did with his son on land ownership in the UK was great viewing. It demonstrated how land ownership in the UK is concentrated into a very small number of hands.
Not unconnected is that the average size of a new house in the UK is nearly a third (30%) smaller than a pre-1920s' dwelling, and has continued shrinking over the decades and is near the bottom of the EU league.
Retail analysts Verdict, has discovered that the average area for a modern medium semi detached house is currently 88m2, compared to an average 120 m2 for its pre 1920s' equivalent. Across all housing types, the current average is actually down to 83m2. Research shows overcrowded living conditions are independently correlated with poor educational achievement and other ills. Socialist ideas to solve this problem seem to be based around regulations and standards. In my opinion all that achieves is more red tape leading to less new housing which only compounds the problem. A root cause of the problem is that land is barely taxed (meaning speculators and indeed the public sector can sit on land and not use it productively at next to no cost to them) whereas residential properties are heavily taxed in the form of council tax, stamp duty etc causing a disincentive to build residential property. Your thoughts?

Quizzage - There is a successful and fast-growing economy where land tax is the major source of income. Can you name the place? Here's a clue, showing two fingers to the ordinary license fee payer the BBC is renting an island there?