"Cornish people granted serf status"

From the BBC:

Cornish people have been granted serf status under Prince Charles' new rules for his now independent Duchy.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander will make the announcement on a visit to the country later.

Dick Cole, leader of Mebyon Kernow, which campaigned for Cornish devolution, said: "This is a fantastic development. This is a proud day for Cornwall. We salute our new overlord!"

The Cornish will gain the same status as communities in mediaeval and feudal times. Elections have been deemed unnecessary and the leaders of Mebyon Kernow will be burned at the stake.

A spokesman for Prince Charles, who is due to visit Bodmin as soon as they have finished building a castle for him, said:

"Cornish people have a proud history and a distinct identity. I am delighted that we have been able to officially recognise this and afford the Cornish people the same status as their forefathers."

Gloriously Irreverent Headline Of The Day

The Soaraway Sun's headline(s) above the story about Cornish people worrying about getting their feet wet:

Land's End of world as we know it
Ooh Arr-pocalypse* Now... Cornish tsunami fears

* The headline in the paper version was "Ooh Arr-mageddon", which I thought was better.

UPDATE: Mark in Mayenne submits "Ooh arr-mageddon my feet wet" and wins this round.

As Peter Lilley said, "There is a thing called a telephone which has been recently invented....

... and most foreigners speak English."

From The Daily Mail:

A massive earthquake off Portugal could trigger a tsunami which would wipe out the Isles of Scilly and lay waste to the Cornish coast, scientists said today.

Experts say that much of the south-western British coast including outlying islands would be destroyed by a 10ft wall of water within four to six hours if there were to be a repeat of the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.

Fears of the natural disaster have been raised by the Devon and Cornwall Local Resilience Forum (LRF), which wants an early warning system like those used across Asia and America* to avoid a British version of the devastating 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Unless of course the members of the LRF think that the Portuguese are so spiteful they wouldn't ring up and tip us off.

* The early warning buoys are of course NOT "used across Asia and America", they are floating about in the Pacific Ocean. How they tether them to the ocean floor is another question..?

Austerity still biting and yet another established business goes under...

... as Fruit and Veg Market Stall Trader sadly decides to call it a day.

"There's no money in it any more" he says, adding "Thankfully, I've got a few other enterprises that do turn a decent penny, and some career opportunities that might still pan out."

All subsidies accrue to landowners (part 94)

Spotted by Bob E at the BBC:

The owners of empty shops in Liskeard have been accused of trying to cash in on the town's £100,000 facelift. The Cornish town was one of 12 in England chosen for government cash to rejuvenate its shopping area with the help of retail guru Mary Portas.

Since the announcement last month, two owners have put up the asking price of their properties. Liskeard Mayor Tony Powell described the hike as greedy and insensitive, but inevitable.

One owner, who had an empty property on the market for £275,000, has instructed her estate agent to increase the asking price to £300,000.

Right, as we can see, subsidies push up land prices; can somebody explain to me why on Planet Home-Owner-Ist, the converse also seems to apply: the age-old KLN that "if we had Land Value Tax, landlords would just add it to the rents"?

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (127a)

A Devon Pensioner played an interesting variant of The Poor Widow Bogey over at The Adam Smith Institute:

You have to be careful - replacing "as many taxes as possible with LVT" could create other problems due to non-imcome earners effectively then paying "income tax" and not being able to afford the land rent...

To which I responded: Ah, the Poor Widow Bogey again, can you imagine how many times I've heard that? Exemptions, rebates, deferments, discounts or higher state pension, perhaps? Or trade down, take in a lodger, rent out or sell, ask your heirs to pay, equity release schemes, perhaps? Are you telling me none of this is do-able?

She kept going: Funny kind of "fair society": to force a family on a low income out of their home to let a high income family move in, solely because they are asset rich and cash poor?! LVT would not even ensure land is used in the most economical way, it would be down to your ability to afford the LVT... We would end up with ghettos for the poor families and the poorer retired... and all young high income earners living in the same prosperous areas - there would be no diversity, and society would be 'poorer' and less fair as a result...

Me again: I'm a great believer in a welfare system and redistribution (I have no grudge against low income people), but the least bad kind of tax is LVT (which is not an attack on wealth creation, so is not inherently against high income people, as I have no grudge against high income people either)... with LVT and a welfare system (preferably a Citizen's Income), low income people end up better off (in cash terms) and high income people end up better off (because they can now afford to live in the nice houses vacated by the low income people they were previously expected to subsidise)...

[And] what social segregation issue? What happens when these Poor Widows In Mansions die? Do their heirs then say "Ah well, it's important to make sure the area stays as a mixed community - so we'll sell the house really cheap to a low income family?"

Methinks not. What happens is that they sell it to the highest bidder, so over time, expensive areas become populated by the highest earners. LVT just speeds up the process by a couple of decades.
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She then adopts a different line of attack: I think you'd find that introducing LVT would force most people out of their current homes as they have made no provision for this kind of tax

Me: Now you are being plain silly. People have half their earned income taken off them in income tax, NIC, VAT [Working Tax Credit withdrawal] and so on, and most people can still afford to live somewhere, because land prices adjust down to a level where people can afford them.
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And then she tries yet another bit of Homey propaganda: ... once land is reclaimed by the sea it's value would undoubtedly be effected - it is effectively destroyed...

Of course, common sense tells us that land which falls into the sea has little value (unless it can be reclaimed), and that under LVT, somebody who'd bought land which fell into the sea would be compensated in full because the LVT liability would be extinguished (and the buildings are presumably covered by insurance, and if uninsurable, the price he paid for the site and the LVT he pays would adjust down accordingly) unlike current rules where the land might have fallen in value but you are still stuck with the original mortgatge) but Homey tradition is to always ignore those who would be better off or who would not lose out, they only care about making sure that those who benefit from current rules continue to do so in perpetuity. However, to enliven the debate I threw in this:

That is a complete red herring.

Land has value because of people living there, carrying out businesses, trading with each other. If bits fall into the sea, the people move a bit further inland, and then the value of the new bits they inhabit goes up by exactly the same amount that the cliff edge went down.

Did you not understand the plot of the Superman film where Lex Luthor buys up Nevada, steals some nukes and plans to trigger an earthquake which will make California collapse into the Pacific?

I'm sure Dearieme would have just driven over it.

From The Daily Mail:

A fox bit a lump out of a mother's arm when she got out of her car to shoo it away after it had refused to move for her vehicle... She got out of her Peugeot 206 after the nonchalant fox, sitting in the middle of the road, didn't move when she honked her horn at it in Fraddon, Cornwall. After being bitten she quickly got back into her vehicle fearing she would be attacked again.

Things you didn't know you didn't know

I did three units of property law* on my law degree (LLB Hons with First Class), and either they didn't tell us this or I wasn't paying attention. I stumbled across a lengthy and fairly technical article, the upshot of which appears to be:

In England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the land is held from the sovereign in right of her Crown. As we have seen from the operation of bona vacantia, this particular aspect of land law does not apply to Cornwall. This is because the whole of Cornwall is legally the soil and territorial possession of the Duke of Cornwall in right of the Duchy of Cornwall and people hold their land not from the Queen as sovereign, but from the Duke as sovereign. Therefore, and in accordance with the terms of the 1st Duchy Charter, people in Cornwall hold their land not from the UK Government, but from a legally extant but now denied and hidden Duchy Government.

Known today as the Prince’s Council, it is an institution of governance that, whilst reaping the financial benefits and other rewards of this constitutional settlement, abdicates its reciprocal duties and responsibilities towards the territory and people from which it derives its powers, rights and status...**

I have explained in my books, on the ‘Status of Duchy’ entry on this weblog and also on the Duchy of Cornwall.eu website, that although laws passed by the Westminster Parliament today always extend to England and Wales, they do not extend to the Duchy of Cornwall unless the text expressly states that they do, and then only with the prior express approval of the Duke in his capacity as the de jure sovereign of Cornwall. As with other sovereigns, when considering new laws the Duke acts on advice from his officers of state sitting as the Princes Council.

The author may be exaggerating, but it stacks up as far as I can see.

* They refer to land law rather disingenuously as 'property law' - the other forms of property, such as employment [income], goods, copyrights are all dealt with separately as 'employment law', 'sale of goods', 'copyright law' etc.

** In other words, Cornwall has Land Value Tax (often referred to as 'ground rents'), it's just that it's collected privately by Prince Charles and his mates. IMHO, it would be far better to collect it publicly and use the proceeds to cut other taxes, repay the national debt or dish out as a Citizen's Income.