They own land! Give them money!

The Lib Dems step up to the Home-Owner-Ist plate. From the BBC:

Homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages amid rising interest rates should be able to apply for a £300-a-month grant, the Lib Dems have said.

Under plans, the grant would open to people whose mortgage payments had risen by more than 10% of their income. It could be paid for by reversing tax cuts for banks, the party has said...

Can you imagine the form filling involved in proving that your payments have increased by more than 10% of your income? What compared to what? It would be far easier just to cap mortgage interest rates. Just declare that all interest rates to be fixed at whatever people rate were paying when they took out the mortgage.

Any price cap on a quasi-monopoly like a bank has much the same effect as a tax on their monopoly profits/rental income and saves a lot of churn. To level the playing field (morgage-borrowers vs tenants), they could do normal rent controls. This is quite different to price caps in the truly competitive private sector, which usually make matters worse.

Yeah! Go Lib Dems!

Jo Swinson doesn't seem to grasp the logic behind LVT, she's mis-selling it, but good stuff nonetheless from The Daily Mail:

Ms Swinson told delegates:

"The Liberal Democrats are committed to supporting small businesses who are the engine of our economy. That's why the Liberal Democrats would scrap business rates and replace them with a commercial landowner levy. It will shift the burden from the tenant to the landlord so that we can breathe new life into our high streets... It is time for clear action that will give proper help to our small businesses."

Ripping up business rates was mooted by the party in August 2018 by the then leader Vince Cable in a report called Taxing Land, Not Investment. It made clear the levy would be paid by owners, not tenants, and that 'non-residential stamp duty should be scrapped to improve the efficiency of the commercial property market.

Ms Swinson added: "Let's remember what the issues are that we're trying to solve here - businesses on the high street have been struggling for many years now and they find the business rates can be a crippling cost and this is at a time when they're already having to deal with footfall falling, competition from online competitors where they aren't having to pay the same type of rates.

"So I think this is an important change, and clearly it being borne by landlords - some of that may well be passed on but we also recognise it will not all be - and this will provide a significant boost for businesses."

Vote Lib Dem for a steel-free future

From BBC:

The [new] Woodhouse Colliery would extract coking coal from the seabed off St Bees, with a processing plant on the former Marchon site at Kells...

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, who asked for the "call-in" described the news as "a kick in the teeth in the fight to tackle climate change".

He said: "Cumbria has so many renewable resources to provide energy - water, wind and solar - and we should most definitely not be taking the backwards step of opening a new coal mine."

Which raises the obvious question, can the world produce steel without using coking coal?

To which the answer appears to be "No".

UPDATE: Or possibly "Yes", if you believe the clever scientists.

Reader's Letters Of The Day

All from today's Metro:

As the LIberal Democrats are now the Remain party, I'm expecting 48% of voters to back them - unless, of course, they feel British party politics is more important than remaining in the EU.

Richie, London.
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In reply to Julian Self (MetroTalk, Thu), Boris Johnson never pledged £350 million to the NHS, he stated it 'could' be used by the NHS - a bit of a difference.

John Nightingale, London.
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I'm looking forward to six weeks of Conservative MPs answering questions by criticising Jeremy Corbyn.

Where Art Thou, London.
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To Tom, the short, fat, badly dressed guy on the Hertford North line who says he is despondent about never being the subject of a Rush-Hour Crush (MetroTalk, Thu). Your bags are in the front garden.

Tom's Wife, Enfield.

By-election fun

From the BBC:

The Liberal Democrats have won the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, leaving new PM Boris Johnson with a working majority in Parliament of one...

Now, with the thinnest majority, he will have to rely heavily on the support of his own MPs and his confidence-and-supply partners the DUP to get any legislation passed in key votes.

His majority is thinner than that!

The Parliament.gov.uk website has been updated and shows a majority of precisely zero.

650 MPs. minus Speaker (who doesn't vote) and minus seven Sinn Fein MPs, who refuse to attend = 642, divided by 2 = 321.

There are now 311 Conservative MPs plus 10 DUP MPs, who are in a sort-of-coalition with the Conservatives, total 321.
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UPDATE: Bayard reminds us that there are also two opposition deputy speakers and a Conservative deputy speaker, who don't cast a vote, which would bring the Conservative + DUP majority back up to one.
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Also, apart from the Lib Dems slavish Remainism and Climate Alarmism, I still have a bit of a soft spot for them and would like to say, well done for finally electing a woman as party leader!

Of the main political parties, this leaves only Labour which does not and/or never had a woman as leader. Yup, even UKIP briefly had a woman as leader and Brexit Party is relatively new (and might disappear again soon).

They own land! Give them money!

From The Evening Standard:

Housing benefit would be increased for tens of thousands of people in London under Liberal Democrat proposals.

Lib-Dems are proposing to link local housing allowance, which private renters on housing benefit can receive, to average rents locally "so that the benefit reflects the actual cost of renting. LHA is currently capped and linked to the lowest rental costs in an area.

This would mean huge rises in housing benefit for many people who live in high-rent areas such as Westminster, Chelsea, Kensington, Fulham, Islington and Richmond.

The Lib-Dems estimate the housing benefit reform would cost about £3 billion a year by 2020-21.

Or more accurately:

Housing benefit would be increased for thousands of landlords in London under Liberal Democrat proposals.

Lib-Dems are proposing to link local housing allowance, which private landlords whose tenants are on housing benefit can receive, to average rents locally "so that the benefit maximises the value they can extract from society". LHA is currently capped and linked to the lowest rental costs in an area.

This would mean huge rises in housing benefit receipts for those who own several homes in high-rent areas such as Westminster, Chelsea, Kensington, Fulham, Islington and Richmond.

The Lib-Dems estimate the housing benefit reform would benefit the Duke of Westminster by about £3 billion a year by 2020-21.

The Lib Dems latest whacky proposal

Appears to be that the government will pay tenant deposits of up to £1,500 or £2,000 in London more or less directly to landlords, without asking the landlord for the money back; if they can't get the money back from the tenant, the government will just write it off.

So presumably those landlords who currently would have demanded a smaller deposit will promptly bump it up to £1,500.

See how many other holes you can spot in Clegg's logic.

Lib Dem Minister makes a fair point

From the BBC:

[Stephen Williams] also took issue with his department's insistence that authorities raising council tax by more than 2% must hold a referendum to get public backing.

"A referendum on tax rises is absurd," he said. "If we had it for income tax, VAT, then the country would probably grind to a halt."

What sort of pseudo-democracy is it where people have a veto if the council wants to increase their council tax by more than £20 or £30 per household per year (thus indirectly voting for corresponding increases in other taxes), but weren't even consulted when the government increased their VAT bils by an average of £300 - £400 per household per year or their National Insurance bills by an average of £600 - £800 per working household per year?

Clearly, his concluding remark about the country grinding to a halt is nonsense, but there you go.

They said it, not me.

The effluent has hit the affluent

The Lib Dems we know and love

From The Daily Mail:

Cars should be banished from town centres, a Liberal Democrat minister has claimed.

Transport Minister Norman Baker said drivers should be hit with big increases in parking charges so they are ‘disincentivised’ from parking near high street shops. He renewed the Lib Dems’ war on motorists at a fringe meeting at his party’s conference in Glasgow.

Mr Baker admitted that higher parking charges could ‘damage town centres’ but he then claimed that pushing people onto public transport and bicycles would help revive the high street.

That doesn't really merit a response, does it?

"Liberal Democrats freed from rocks"

From the BBC:

Political engineers in Glasgow say they have succeeded in lifting the Liberal Democrat party free of rocks, 20 months after it slumped in the opinion polls.

Efforts to right the party, one of the largest and most daunting salvage operations ever undertaken, are expected to last up to 12 months. The Liberal Democrats have now been detached from their core policies and principles and moved on to a vague platform constructed on platitudes, officials said.

Thirty-two Liberal Democrat MPs lost their seats when the party ran aground in the 2010 General Election. The bodies of two of those have never been found. There are hopes that they may be located during the party's annual conference, although officials said on Monday there was no sign of them so far.

Engineers have never tried to salvage such a huge party so close to a General Election. Experts said the economic and political conditions had mostly been right for the attempt, but the operation had to be delayed by three hours because of an overnight storm between Nick Clegg and Vince Cable.

"Clegg and Alexander reject Cable's warning over Help to Buy"

From The Guardian:

Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have dismissed a call by their Liberal Democrat colleague Vince Cable to restrict the second phase of the government's Help to Buy mortgage scheme to areas of the country with depressed property prices.

In a sign of tensions over the economic policy at senior levels of the party, Clegg and his close ally Alexander rejected Cable's warnings that Britain was facing a dangerous housing bubble.

Does not compute.

The justification for Help To Buy was that houses are too expensive and so first time buyers have to be "helped". The very existence of the scheme is the government's tacit admission that house prices are in a bubble.

If prices were "affordable" by whatever measure, then there'd be no need for such schemes. So Cable's idea about restricting it to "areas of the country with depressed property prices" is even more stupid than Clegg and Alexander's state of denial - because people don't need help to buy a cheap house.

The only way that any of this makes sense is if "Help To Buy" is in fact "Help To Sell", then it makes perfect sense from the point of view of a Home-Owner-Ist government trying to win a general election from a majority Home-Owner-Ist electorate.

H/t Alan at HPC.

Letter From Marie Antoinette

A Lib Dem member forwarded me an email he'd received from head office (see below), adding that:

Cleggie’s advisors have clearly not heard of Marie Antionette, who built a pretend rural idyll called Hameau de La Reine where she would dress up as a milkmaid. No doubt she would have said (but in a Frenchified way) "It’s about practising what we preach and selling the benefits of apprenticeships to young people and employers. Check out that delicious cake!"

As Wikipedia remarks, “The extravagance and subtle mockery of peasant life did not help Marie Antoinette’s already suffering image.”

Well maybe Anna is right (see previous post for background)

From The Times

A Liberal Democrat minister needed emergency treatment in hospital after she suffered a severe allergic reaction to a biscuit.

Jo Swinson, the Equalities Minister and MP for East Dunbartonshire, was at a charity cake sale on Saturday when she unwittingly began eating a biscuit that contained nuts.

Her mouth began tingling and before long she went into anaphylactic shock...

I hate to be crude, but at the back of my mind I'm wondering, did she take the last biscuit and did all the males present suddenly stop giggling?

"Actually, I think even Miriam has a sneaky regard for them....

... whereas I of course despise the place, absolutely... we Lib Dems prefer "traditional" sources of funding and not from City Spivs. Not of course that they are all spivs... some are thoroughly decent upstanding donors, I mean people."

Electoral Commission report of August 2012:

The Liberal Democrats' largest donation was £250,000 from Brompton Capital Limited, a property development company owned by entrepreneur Rumi Verjee, who last year dined with party leader Nick Clegg at his grace and favour residence Chevening, in Kent. The largest individual donor was Lib Dem peer Lord Loomba, who gave £100,000.

The Guardian, February 2013:

Nick Clegg: Labour and Tories 'bewitched by Square Mile'

But actually despite what you might read into that headline (completely unintentionally of course, the G doesn't do misleading headlines after all!), he isn't launching an attack on the place or its morals, no not at all.

Emailed in by Bob E.

Nick Clegg issues hasty correction to misreporting of a speech he gave in January

Spotted by Bob E at Huff Post:

Nick Clegg has said he's delighted that no way will Chris Huhne return to the cabinet now that the former energy secretary has been convicted of perverting the course of justice related to a speeding offence.

The Lib Dem leader told journalists in Westminster on Thursday that Huhne was a "formidable and accomplished liar" who he wanted to see "banged up" and that there was no way Huhne could ever expect to be back at the "top table" of British politics.

Clegg's desire to have Huhne back inside a correctional facility may in part be motivated by the view that it is better to have him inside having nasty things done to him, than outside it doing nasty things to those in the Cabinet.

Fun Online Polls: Party conferences and QE

The result in last week's Fun Online Poll was as follows:

What was the stupidest idea from this year's party conferences?
Lib Dems: Use your pension fund as a mortgage deposit - 42%
Tories: Any suggestion that the leadership is in any way EU-sceptic - 31%
Labour: Spend 4G licence money on propping up house prices - 27%

So a pretty close run thing there.
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There were howls of outrage from the usual suspects when Adair Turner pointed out that the IOUs which one department of HM Treasury has issued and which are now held by another department of HM Treaury are effectively null and void and that to all intents and purposes it would make no difference to the outside world if these were cancelled. Golden rule: you cannot owe money to yourself.

The very real debts which the government has post-QE is the £366 billion-odd which the Bank of England now owes the commercial banks, i.e. the amount 'paid' for the UK gilts which the commercial banks have left on deposit with the self same Bank of England. But seeing as the banks can't withdraw this (or at least, they haven't done so far), no new money has been 'printed' or 'created' by QE and very little QE money has actually gone 'into the economy'. It's the deficit spending which creates 'money', the method and mechanics of the actual financing of that debt is a separate and secondary issue.

Just to see if anybody at all has been paying the slightest bit of attention, that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll.

Please vote using the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Best of the party conference season

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll. On a very high turnout, the responses were as follows:

What was the stupidest idea from the Conservative conference?

Any suggestion that the leadership is in any way EU-sceptic - 71 votes
Going ahead with HS2 - 39
Swap employment rights for shares - 36
Teach bankers a lesson by cutting welfare - 34
Boris Johnson for PM - 16
Pact with UKIP - 15
Freezing Council Tax - 15

So the Tories' winning entry goes through into the final round, along with the craziest idea from the Labour conference and the most crackpot idea from the Lib Dem conference.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Labour and Tory conferences

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What is the craziest idea to emanate from the Labour Party conference?

Spending 4G licence money on propping up house prices - 54 votes
People have forgotten everything before 2010 - 33 votes
One Nation Under Ed's Groove - 22 votes
Means testing Universal Benefits - 18 votes
Replacing Ofgem with a "tough new regulator" - 8 votes
Introducing a "Technical Baccalaureate" - 6 votes

So "Spending 4G licence money on propping up house prices" will go through into the final round, together with the most crackpot idea from the Lib Dem conference, which was "Use your pension fund as a mortgage deposit" and whichever idea floats to the surface of this week's Tory Party conference.
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The Tories have got off to a flying start: they are going to eliminate the deficit, but not by reducing spending - no, they will do this by increasing taxes on "the rich" (Wot? Having reduced the top rate of tax slightly and ruled out any sort of Mansion Tax..?); freezing Council Tax; indexing welfare payments with wages growth not price inflation (Wot? Wages normally rise slightly faster than prices, so they'd have to change this back again in a couple of years.) and maybe taking away Peter Stringfellow's bus pass.

Please leave your suggestions in the comments here or in the comments to this post, we'll then have the Grand Final next week.

Lib Dem crackpot idea of the day

From The Telegraph:

The Deputy Prime Minister said that at a time of economic strain, it was questionable whether it was right to continue making payments to multimillionaires such as Lord Sugar, the Labour peer, businessman and television star.

But the benefits will continue for the rest of the Parliament, due to come to an end in 2015, because a promise to maintain them was included in the Coalition Agreement drawn up between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats when they came to power in 2010.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory Work and Pensions Secretary, is among those who have previously called for the end of universal benefits for the elderly, regardless of income. The winter fuel allowance alone is worth up to £200 for each pensioner – £300 for those over the age of 80.

As ever, it's a bonfire of prejudices here, but I wonder, what is the point of all this? The winter fuel allowance, free bus passes and free TV licence for over-80s "cost the taxpayer" something like £4 billion a year, if you go through the expense and rigamorale of preventing pensioners with assets of more than £1 million (the suggested threshold), which is maybe 1% of pensioners, that "saves" about £40 million a year, which is f- all, compared to the extra £100,000 million they have been spending each year since the "financial crisis" was started.

And seeing as means-testing is just taxation for dishonest politicians or gullible voters, why not hike Band H council tax by a few per cent and get the £40 million in that way?

Do these people not understand maths: reducing somebody's benefits it exactly the same as giving them the benefits but increasing the tax they pay, only the latter is simpler, cheaper to administer and more honest. This is just like the Child Benefit changes: what they boil down to is that higher earners with children will continue to receive Child Benefit but they will pay a much, much higher marginal rate of tax on earned incomes between £50,000 and £60,000 a year.