"They own land, give them money - BUT GIVE ME A BIT AS WELL PLEASE!"

There's a splendid summary on David Ireland's blog* of some of the hundreds of millions of taxpayers' finest which the UK government has thrown at the "house builders", ostensibly to help "first time buyers", but as he points out, all that has happened is that construction levels have fallen and "house builders" have booked much larger profits. Which is what you would expect - all subsidies to land ownership go to landowners. He missed off the £80 billion "Funding for Lending Scheme", but hey.

Now, who is this David Ireland chap? He's Chief Executive of the fakecharity "Empty Homes".

And what's their Big Idea..?

The loans fund was one of the demands of Channel 4's “Great British Property Scandal” campaign led by architect and independent Empty Homes Adviser George Clarke. Government operated empty homes loans funds have already been announced in Scotland and Wales, this fund will operate across England.

Loans will be available to pay for works needed to bring empty properties into use. The resultant homes must be affordable. This means that they will need to be let an affordable rent (no more than 80% of the market rent) for at least five years. Homes will also need to be renovated to at least the Decent Homes Standard.

The fund will be run jointly by Empty Homes and a building society. It has been made possible by a grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Empty Homes Community Grants Programme.

In other words, more of the same. He primarily wants to give more taxpayers' money to landowners, ostensibly to help tenants, but applying his own logic, at best this will just push up landlords' profits and at worst achieve nothing. And secondarily he'd like to funnel off a little bit for himself as a commission, of course.

* Via SBC at HPC.

How to encourage charitable giving

A reader's letter by a quangocrat in today's FT signs off with this:

If the current government has decided that it wants to lessen this [subsidy], it will result in a massive loss of funding for charities, at a time when many of them are already struggling to survive. Fashions in philanthropy may change, but people’s desire to give to causes they believe in will never go away and the government must continue to support this.

John Low, Chief Executive, Charities Aid Foundation*

Twat.

You might as well say "people's desire to have sex will never go away and the government must continue to support this" or "people's desire to play golf/collect stamps/race pigeons will never go away and the government must continue to support this". If the desire isn't going to go away, by definition, there is no need for the taxpayer to subsidise it.

* The CAF appears to be a glorified book-keeping service/clearing house for charitable donations which are forwarded on to the actual intended charities. Note 6 on page 43 of their 2011 accounts makes for interesting reading.

The number of staff whose total emoluments (salary plus benefits excluding pensions contributions exceeded £60,000 during the year is as follows:
...
£100,001 - £110,000 - 1
£110,001 - £120,000 - 1
£120,001 - £130,000 - 2
£140,001 - £150,000 - 1

Eagle-eyed Pedant Of The Week

The Bank of England have tee'd up a short video to explain how they are going to try and keep the Home-Owner-Ist bubble going at your expense (I will return to the substance of this later on). If you watch the text at the bottom of the screen carefully, you'll notice an awful typo at about 14 seconds in (click to enlarge):

Spotter's badge, Devo (comment 5 here).

Why politicians love Value Added Tax (2)

The British Chambers of Commerce have calculated the gummint has raked in an extra £505 million in VAT and North Sea Oil tax* in the last six weeks as a result of oil price rises.

Annualised, that's £4.4 billlion - or enough the increase the tax-free personal allowance by a further £1,000.

This is a very good illustration of "Why politicians love VAT" items 8 & 10.

David Frost's analogy is rather unfortunate though “Seeing the fuel gauge barely move when you put in £20 is frustrating and only going to get worse." Er, David, you don't actually put a £20 note in the tank, you give that to the attendant when you've finished putting petrol in.

* This is in fact a 20% surcharge on the standard rate of corporation tax that North Sea oil companies pay, making their effective rate 48%. Altho' I have said previously that flat-rate corporation- or income-tax is the second least bad tax, firstly, 48% is hardly 'flat' and in situations like this, it acts pretty much like a turnover tax, the worst tax of all.

Quangocracy - a government of all the thieves

This blog's discerning readers suspect that we have a Government Of All The Thieves.

Via Snafu, an article from earlier this year detailing some of the most obvious excesses of the kleptocracy. A scandal that seems to have got lost among all the other scandals - John Prescott's affair? Seems like a lifetime ago.