I’m sure everyone knows that I have what some would call an obsession with rent, of the economic kind rather than the Piccadilly kind frequented by politicians and the like :) It wasn’t always this way. I was once as ignorant as anyone else about the effects of rent on our economy and society. It…
Could it be that the best way to achieve an economically liberal Britain might be to get a "mad" left government headed by Corbyn and McDonnell elected? Now sure, ALTER has long touted the LVT-supporting credentials of leading Lib Dem MPs: Clegg, Huhne, Cable, Davey and others have been or are presidents or vice-presidents of…
Wow, three posts in three days. My disdain for the political process is clearly not enough for me to ignore all its ramifications! Of course you decide how much of this, like so many post mortem/what next posts, to give any weight to. The best I can say is that I have never left the…
Okay, he was often wrong after he had his appendix out and rejoined the Tories, but in 1908, while fighting that good Liberal seat of Dundee in the by-election of that year, Winston Churchill reminded us that: Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be. There is a great gulf fixed. It is not only…
So the orgy of voting violence has subsided, the army of apparatchiks (including some conscripts it would appear) has worked through the night to ensure your choice of which gang should impose your will on the rest of us is slowly, tantalisingly, revealed and the peaceful transition of control of the monopoly of force can…
I haven’t got much involved in discussion about the Scottish independence referendum. My opinion doesn’t fit, as usual, with either “side” in this battle to see which group of elite farm overseers get to control the human livestock that is Scotland’s huddled masses. Instinctively I want to side with those who want to secede from…
So, a few days into the “LIBOR Scandal” what do we know, when did things start to go wrong and in what way did they breach “best practice”? Here’s a timeline to the current travails of the Treasury-privileged classes: 1690: John Freame, Quaker of Cirencester, and co-religionist Thomas Gould fled persecution in backward English countryside…
I had sat down to write a piece trying to respond to Jonathan Calder's call for a stronger Liberal Democrat "ideology". But as, in the process, I was reading and rereading various ways in which people in the party had responded to last week's election results, I began once again to wonder whether I had…
A book published by Lib Dems ALTER (link is external) (Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform) about Land Value Tax in 1909 and today in whicih I contribute a chapter on LVT and Housing. Attached is an M4B file I made of the recording I produced of the book. This is a file best…
"You know my name. You people gave me the fucking number." Whether it's John McVicar's prison number, an army number, a tattoo on your forearm or a piece of plastic, there is a tendency of authority to assign some "unique ID" to their "subjects". Sometimes "unique IDs" can be useful - they make database management…