Write to your MP. Tell them Charles can't do this.

Email from Republic:

What's the problem?

The Duchy of Cornwall, which Prince Charles runs as his own private business, is exempt from lots of different laws. Either a law doesn't apply to the Duchy or the Duchy will face no consequences if they break the law.

Now the government is planning major reforms of leaseholder rights. The reforms will mean people who own their homes but not the land their home stands on will find it easier to buy the land, and will be better protected from unscrupulous land owners.

Unless you live on Duchy land.

Already Duchy tenants are excluded from the right to buy the freehold, which would give them ownership of the land under their home. In this country we're not all equal in the law, if your landlord is Prince Charles. These reforms are an opportunity to put that right, but Charles is already lobbying to get exempted from the new reforms.

Write to your MP today!

Please write to your MP by visiting www.republic.org.uk/MyMP. Tell them Charles can't be allowed to get away with demanding more exemptions from the law. Even if your MP is a staunch royalist, they might agree with you on this point. Even if they don't, we need to make them aware of the strength of public opinion on this issue.

Your emails to your MP make a difference. So please, get writing!

Best wishes

Graham Smith
CEO, Republic

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UPDATE, from the BBC:

The Queen was shown legislation which may have forced her to reveal her private finances in the 1970s "by convention", Buckingham Palace says. Papers published by the Guardian suggest the monarch's personal lawyers successfully lobbied to change a draft law to conceal her wealth.

One has no need for slug pellets...

For a while now I've considered Price Charles the ultimate homeownerist.  Not content with vigorously opposing anyone building anything in London tall enough to peer into one of his many back gardens, or simply objecting to tall buildings in general, he actually heads a homeownerist front organisation with the raison d'être of reverting other people's farms back into worthless medieval swamps.  

So this morning over coffee I read the serialisation of Tom Bower's hatchet job in the Mail Online.  I don't know if they are true.  But if they are, I think these two quote sum up the wasteful, economic madness of homeownerism nicely:

"With a personal income of millions from the Duchy of Cornwall (£16.3 million in 2007 alone) he could afford to indulge his slightest whim — yet even that didn’t satisfy him."

"He was also unusually particular about his gardens at Highgrove. Because he refused to use pesticides, he employed four gardeners who would lie, nose-down, on a trailer pulled by a slow-moving Land Rover to pluck out weeds.  In addition, retired Indian servicemen were deployed to prowl through the undergrowth at night with torches and handpick slugs from the leaves of plants."

How can we rid ourselves of these people?

Fun Online Polls: Pies and Syria

I have been a bit out of action the last few days, so slightly belatedly: the results to last week's Fun Online Poll:

Does a pie need pastry on the top and bottom to qualify as a pie?

Yes, both 76%
No, a pastry lid is sufficient 24%

Good, we are three-quarters of the way to common sense. The correct answer is bottom and sides are most important. The upper crust, as per usual, is pretty superfluous.

Full write up over at Pub Curmudgeon's.
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Yes, we know that The Guardian have been saying that global warming caused the civil war in Syria for ages, but what's a bit worrying is that somebody who would like to be an unelected head of state is parroting this bullshit (while whizzing round in a private helicopter and living in several fully-staffed castles).

From the first article which is still rational, yes, if does appear likely that the drought in Syria was one of the indirect causes of civil unrest, as starving farmers moved to towns where people are more likely to start revolutions, that's happened quite often in history. But you can just extend this simple connection several steps in both directions.

So this is probably true:

Drought -> civil unrest

But you can't just keep extrapolating and end up with this:

Driving a car -> CO2 emissions -> global warming -> either floods or droughts, depending on what suits your argument -> civil unrest -> violent Islamists (which we've had for four decades) -> terrorism.

So is he right? Or is it more likely The Killer Cornflake Conspiracy?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"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."

"Prince Charles says there's 'not a moment to lose' in stamping out poaching"

From The Evening Standard:

Prince Charles united with his two sons today to launch a determined bid to stamp out the illegal wildlife trade in Africa.  He rounded on organised crime and poachers who trespass on others' land.

The prince said: “There is not a moment to lose if we are to protect this valuable source of income for large landowners.

"My forebears introduced capital punishment for poachers and enforced this without mercy. Having removed these people from the gene pool, we can now get away with just about anything.

"We've even conditioned them to bow respectfully when they meet us and address us as "Your Majesty" and so on. 

"Abso-bloody-lutely amazing, when you think about it.”

I'm surprised to see this sort of article in The Mail and The Sunday Express...

From The Sunday Express:

Lord Berkeley is demanding an independent review of the Duchy's housing policy after it emerged the estate, which provides the Prince with a multi-million pound income, is sometimes charging almost double what council tenants pay.

Charles prides himself on the principle that the Duchy offers accommodation for "local people at local prices".

However, the latest figures from the Council of the Isles of Scilly, where the Duchy has 700 tenancies, show that his tenants are charged an average of £130 a week, compared to £70 for council tenants and £100 for those in housing association accommodation.

From The Daily Mail:

Charles is a man with dozens of hand-made suits hanging in the huge, walk-in dressing rooms of his various homes. They are mainly from Anderson & Sheppard of Savile Row, where prices start at £3,936.

Charles put on the patched one, complete with striped shirt and red-and-blue tie, while with Camilla on their annual summer trip to Wales, where unemployment is high and many families are finding times particularly hard.

His making-ends-meet display came just a few days after it emerged that his annual income from the Duchy of Cornwall had risen by an inflation-busting 4 per cent to £19 million.

So what are we to make of this gesture?

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."

Prince of Thieves

From The Daily Mail:

The influence the Prince of Wales wields over government legislation has been revealed in newly released documents. The papers shed light for the first time on the customary routine by which the Prince is consulted on Bills that may affect his estate, before they are debated in Parliament...

The response reveals the level of power the Prince appears to wield in matters of legislation and appears to suggest he sees his role as going further than that envisaged by ministers. Ministers have been forced to seek permission from Prince Charles before passing laws in at least a dozen separate areas during the past five years, from road safety and energy reforms to gambling and planning.

The requirement stems from a little-known constitutional right for the prince to effectively veto legislation in areas which might affect his private [sic] interests.

More FakeCharity Fun

From The Daily Mail:

Prince Charles has used charities he set up to lobby Ministers to get them to change their policies, it was revealed today...

Documents reveal the Prince's charity Business in the Community asked Vince Cable to reverse his decision to get rid of the Northwest Regional Development Agency. The quango has funded Business in the Community's work with disadvantaged secondary schools.

Grant Shapps, the Local Government Minister, received a letter from the Prince's Regeneration Trust calling for a cut in VAT on restoring historic buildings... Just three months later the department awarded the group an £800,000 grant. They deny that the two were linked.

More Wills & Kate Fun

From The Times:

A recent scientific study has shown that there is a particular gene, present in two out of every five men, that makes them less likely to form a lasting monogamous relationship. So, certain men are biologically predisposed to cheat. Infidelity is in their DNA...

So, if you get married to somebody whose father and mother both had affairs...

In response to Onus Probandy

Blogger is losing comments, so I shall reply 'by post'.

OP picked up on my statement from here "Of course, you can build a ten-storey building in place of a single-storey building. 'Location value' has been magicked out of thin air, but the rental value of the underlying plot of land goes up by a factor of (nearly) ten as well" and asked:

This is contrary to your usual stated position: that land value is independent of the bricks and mortar on it. And that is the land value that would be taxed for its potential use rather than its actual use. Is then the potential use of all land a 100 storey office block? Could you clarify for me? Have I simply misunderstood your earlier/this position?

My clarification:

"OP, under the present system with strict planning laws, the value of a plot of land is exactly what I have always said - it's location x planning permission.

I always tell my property developer clients that they make 80% of their profits (at negligible downside risk) by getting planning permission - once you've got that you might as well cash in. In that sense, the value of the plot is entirely independent of the b'n'm on it.

Do not confuse this with how LVT would work, which is to tax the land value only, i.e. the location x planning generosity*.

To the extent that we retain planning restrictions as a comfort blanket, it would of course be totally unfair to tax the owner of e.g. agricultural land as if he had planning; or to tax the owner of a plot with a single storey building who would not be allowed to build a ten-storey building as if he had a ten-storey building**.

Which is why the Land Value Taxers refer to a tax on 'optimum permitted use'.

If we liberalised or even abandoned planning restrictions, then it would be a whole new ball game - the only rational way to decided 'optimum' use would be to look at the biggest, fully-occupied building on surrounding plots and to assume that each plot could be built on to a similar density.

Don't forget that in some US towns or states there are no (quantitative) planning restrictions, and some don't even have 'zoning', but you still observe that this sorts itself out: there is a down town area with sky scrapers; there are industrial areas, there are residential areas and there are public parks. It's called 'agglomeration' (The Invisible Hand at work). People still buy and sell land in those areas, so it can't be too difficult to work out relative land values and that optimum use is something very similar to what the neighbours are doing.

* As opposed to Business Rates, which is not a million miles from LVT, but it taxes the rental value of finished buildings and not the rental value of the site itself. For most existing buildings, the LVT bill wouldn't be much different to the current Business Rates bill.

** An extreme example is the Centre Point building in Central London. Although most of C London is restricted to ten storeys or lower, that building is 50 storeys high on a tiny plot. So with current restrictions in place, it would be fair to tax that plot at five times the rate of surrounding plots; but totally unfair to tax owners of ten storey buildings as if they had 50 storey buildings for which they would not get planning (that well known rural landowner and all-round NIMBY Prince Charles would veto it)."

I trust that clears that up.

Hasn't Sweep been doing this for half a century?

Prince Charles faces 'Sooty' name claim

"Harry 'bitterly disappointed' ...

... as his £1m charity gives Aids orphans just £84,0000".

This may be a disappointment to Him but it's hardly a surprise, is it? That's how charities operate nowadays.

"UKIP anger at prince's EU speech"

Well bloody done to Nigel Farage, is all I can say.

And why the f*** does Labour MEP for the North West 'region' and all-round treacherous shithead Gary Titley think that Nigel " ... should apologise to the British people he represents"?

Nigel represents me, AFAIAC, and I'm not offended in the slightest.