Yup, that's the next house price bubble sorted

There are one-and-a-half decent idea in this melange of crap from the Tories, as reported by the BBC, namely these:

The Conservatives also propose making councils publish detailed information on expenditure, including senior staff's pay and perks and guidance to stop "rewards for failure" for sacked workers. Regional Development Agencies would lose their planning and housing powers to local councils and the party says it would scrap the controversial Infrastructure Planning Commission - set up by the government to take decisions on major projects like airports to streamline the planning process.

Of course, they are total hypocrites on airports, do they mean 'streamline' as in give to local NIMBYs more quickly, or 'streamline' as in push through wealth-generating infrastructure projects, who know?

But at the core is the usual shite:

Caps on council tax rises would also be scrapped. Instead, if increases broke a certain threshold, 5% of council tax payers could trigger a local referendum.

Here's a thought, why don't we allow people buying/selling homes in any area to set the amount of local property tax via the free market, by charging a fixed percentage on the amount that buyers are prepared to pay (and which sellers aren't prepared to pay) over and above the bricks and mortar value? Isn't it better to let people vote with their feet - if a council is badly run, then prices fall and the tax goes down, and vice versa. The council is thus more like a mutually owned service provider. This would have the added bonus of acting like a higher interest rate on the largely speculative land value and thus help keep house prices low and stable.

Instead, why don't we have a referendum on the the ninety per cent of taxes that relate to incomes and production? How about a referendum on scrapping VAT and National Insurance or doubling the tax-free personal allowance?

Oh, of course ... I've remembered why ... it's because people equate rising house prices with wealth and falling house prices with recessions (thus completely confusing cause and effect; it's the rising prices that cause the subsequent recessions), so if the Tories can keep council tax down (and all other taxes correspondingly higher) then money will flow from heavily taxed productive investment into lightly taxed property, house prices will start to rise ... (continued page 94).

Remind me, what was it that Dave studied at Oxford?