Economic suicide: How to sink into the bog

Economists, like Vince Cable, and their imitators (think Mr G Brown and Mr A Darling ;), sometimes talk about "economic drag", or the economy getting "bogged down" and Tories have for years fought for low taxes on the basis of economic efficiency, but what is this "drag" they speak of?

Well, coming up, I'll talk about:

• What it's not
• What it is, and it's impact on our lives, our finances and our environment
• Why lower taxes are what we should aim for, but not the starting point
• Where we can start: Swapping the TV license to being either an income tax or a fixed component of local taxes (like the police); replacing council tax with something efficient to collect and administer
• The stupidity factor: The 'drag' of thousands of tonnes of letters that cost more to send than the amount of money they relate to
  

Nick Robinson - Missing the point yet again!

"Cash for what?" says the BBC's Nick Robinson.

It's simple: "cash for status quo Thatcherism", that's what!

How can someone ask that question over a £600k donation? Yes, as one comment points out, it's the "you owe me" for some point in the future, but really it's more about someone maintaining the party spending race that is becoming like the US primaries.

Whatever party large donations are given to, it's:

• cash for low tax for the wealthy
• cash for giving the wealthy and large companies more control over planning and economic policy than local people
• cash for keeping the poor enslaved by the rich

It's no surprise that the Liberal Democrat's are now the most socially progressive party, prepared to reign in the rich.

Why? Not only because the members of the party form the policy instead of some elite cabinet, but also, it has to be said, because they'd lose out far less than Labour and the Tories, who'd lose their huge donations from Lord "how did I get a peerage" Sainsbury and Lord "I'm not a tax exile, really!" Ashcroft.

It's time we ended this farce of a a supposed democracy and took back our control from these wealthy donors!

At the moment, it's only the Liberal Democrats that can be trusted on real reform:

• reform of party funding to place limits on individual donations
• reform of our voting system to make sure that every vote counts, not just the swing voters in marginal seats
• reform of local government, putting funding and control back with the people instead of where it currently is: Whitehall.
  
• abolition of the Dti (or whatever Prime Minister Bean renamed it to)
  

BBC comment on policy copying but fail to notice LibDem policies!

Perhaps Liberal Democrats are getting used to the BBC ignoring 23% of those who voted in 2005 and defaulting to two-party coverage in their analysis.

In yet another example, Nick Robinson comments in his piece, Battle of Ideas, how the Chancellor has copied Tory policies, without a mention of the Lib Dems.

How very strange, considering that it was the Lib Dems who, over a year ago, adopted a policy to replace Air Passenger Duty with one based on the aircraft emissions, hence ensuring that empty and low occupancy planes pay for their emissions.

How can someone call them self the Political Editor, when he appears to not know the policies of all three main parties. Perhaps he also failed to notice that the Lib Dems gained more than 16 seats at the last election, having won an equal number of seats for the Tories - taking votes off Labour where the Tories failed to increase their vote.


Nick,

You seem to have missed a rather notable fact, perhaps in the now common goal of getting stuff out quick rather than getting thorough journalism out.

It is not just the Tories, whose policies have been plagiarised. It has been Liberal Democrat policy for over a year to "tax pollution, not people". Replacing the Air Passenger Duty with a tax on the plane has now been copied, first by the Tories, and now by their successors.

I do find it quite strange that as political editor, you didn't comment on just how "old hat" the APD change is... such that Easyjet have been running adverts calling for the change.

Perhaps you might at some point find time to look at how a policy like this comes to be copied. I'd say that it's because it was from a party that still involves it's grass roots in policy making, and has the sense to debate these things at conference...