Thank you.

The Henley By-election fades! And so shall I!

Please don’t adopt British Universal Inheritance unless and until the party decides it would be a good thing to leave the EU – when I would be with you again – but I am not counting the days!

I think the position is a little greyer than this. I guess it depends on one’s definition of “campaigning”. Sometimes, the line between campaigning and “information provision” is a little blurred – or at least is contested by some.

For example, the Short funds received by opposition parties come from the public purse. This pays for – inter alia – the party’s press office and policy & research unit (or to be strictly accurate, the press office and policy/research unit of the Parliamentary party).

You may also remember that – at the time of the 2006 leadership election – Michael Crick did a number on Chris Huhne. Chris had distributed a leaflet to constituents providing information about his work as an MEP prior to the May 2005 General Election. The Eastleigh LibDems bought advertising space in this document to promote his work and campaigning as the party’s PPC for Eastleigh. I should stress there was absolutely nothing remotely illegal (or even particularly unusual) about what Chris did (as I was at pains to point out to Michael Crick at considerable length in the thirty minutes leading up to broadcast), but it again underscores the hazy area between information and campaigning.

I think it’s fair to say that there are ambiguities about how MPs have previously used their Parliamentary postage allowance (e.g. how many Xmas cards can you actually justify sending to constituents?)

All of this inclines me – despite all my instincts to the contrary – to be sympathetic to some sort of state-funding of political parties if the right model can be found. I’d much rather some localised, opt-in system than big chunks of money being dished out to party HQs.

All UK parties in Parliament pay some of their researchers using money from the UK. Most local Councils fund special advisors or political staff to support the work of Council Executives and the opposition.

Political parties though don’t get funding from either the EU, UK, regional, or local government for campaigning.

Well my point still stands – it’s all declared in the accounts posted on the Electoral Commission website. Go and find some evidence.

I doubt you will be the last person to spell my name wrong

Do you mean the real debate about why you did so badly – FOR A BY-ELECTION – in the Henley By-election?

If you read back, you will see that that is what I have been addressing, with criticism, constructive ideas and finally a question that I suspect no one is going to answer.

“Now can we get badk to the real debate?” Apart from one creep to Chris/Lord Rennard, I thnk this is your first posting on this thread – possibly spurred by my awkward question!

We now all know you’re a Eurosceptic member of Continuity Liberals.

Point taken etc.

Now, can we get back to the real debate?

Sorry I spelt your name wrong.

I was asking about finance for the LibDems as a whole, rather than for the Henley By-election in particular. Does the party get any support from the EU financially or in other ways, either directly or indirectly?

You do rather resort to personal remarks, I must say! The last resort of the loser in argument?

Whatever the LibDems are, I do not see them as a broad church on the question of In or Out. But perhaps you have done an opinion poll with your members on the question?

Would-be condescending to the last, with your gibe about getting up to date, I see!

I leave others to judge who is or is not addressing the issues!

Inheritance Tax would be renamed Donor Tax on giving and bequeathing capital and its rate dropped from 40% – with all the scandalous exemptions for the wealthy – to 10% – with no exemptions at all. The Donor Tax would be deductible from the progressive lifetime Unearned Capital Receipts Tax ( a clearer way of describing the Accessions Tax), itself starting at 10%.

You are right that every British-born British citizen would receive £10,000/£9,000 on their 25th birthday, and that therefore those over 25 will not be pleased, although they will receive an offset of that amount against any tax payable, thereby giving them a tax-free threshold of £90,000. But above the threshold the rate of tax will start at 10% – not at 40%. I invite you to try some figures with varying capital gift and estates sizes and numbers of children, etc. For those within the 10% band (to be determined according to politica taste) the 10 % tax will have already have been paid by the donors.

The figures work out broadly on an average basis with a flat 10% tax and a British Universal Inheritance of 10% of average wealth. The higher progressive rates would cover collection costs and quirks of distribution curves and could allow tapering down to the age of 30, together possibly with very old age elegibilty for those who could declare they had never received any capital, with the age reducing over the years. But I think the latter would be fiddling too much. There are always losers with new policies. Just as those who were not eligible for the Baby Bonds or Child Trust Funds will not be pleased. You have to start somewhere.

It is not the under 25′s who would receive it, but those who became 25. Yes, they would choose to spend it in different ways, as do those fortunate enough to receive inheritance now. All would have to have a bank account in order to receive it. It would help to some degree to reduce alienation, financial and social exclusion, poverty and income welfare state needism. It would indeed for some encourage entrepreneurial activity and home ownership and enable others to pay off their educational loans. The governmnent could if it wished subsidise interest rates for loans from banks after the age of 18 against the certain receipt at 25 for approved purposes such as education or towards a deposit for a house. To the extent that 25 year-olds are, or are soon to be, parents, it would help towards reducing child poverty.

I put the proposal before the late John Flemming, a former tutor of mine when I was reading for my finals in PPE in New College in June 1974, either side or the February and October elections of that year in which I was so nearly elected Liberal MP for Newbury. By then he was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford and had been a Director of the Bank of England. His only criticism was that the amount was too small, which is a political question related to the rates and their bands. Again, you have to start somewhere.

As for voter appeal re the EU, we will have to see what are the results of opinion polls are on your suggested In or Out question for a referendum.

So as I understand it you are proposing that, instead of following in the footsteps of the Labour and Conservative parties and public opinion, in rasising inheritance tax thresholds. The Lib Dems would lower them to £90,000.

A flat rate tax of 10% will raise far more than than 40% (not that you provide any figures) presumably because while the richest will still avoid it, everyone else will start paying it.

Everyone “British” will recive £10,000 on there 25th Birthday. This will be well recieved by everyone 26 yaars old and over.

The under 25′s however will be transformed into stakeholding capitalists enterpreneurs and not think oh, that’s nice I’ll go on holiday, buy a new car, pay off some of my student loan/overdraft, put down a despoit on renting a flat.

Meanwhile to further cement their voter appeal, the Lib Dems should take full responsibility for every flaw in the EU on the very sensible basis that although it has been a succession of Labour and Conservative Ministers responsible for negotiating things like the CAP the Lib Dems are Europhiles and therefore guilty.

There are alternatives to optimism, for example pessisim. I would have to be very pessismistic to join the continuing (sic) Liberal Party.

On what was included, do you think ‘we won’t allow anything to be built’ and ‘we’ll help your kids to get housed’ can be both included without a reference to how they can be reconciled?

It’s funny that the broad LibDem church is called fanatical by an obsessive elitist – take your blinkers off!

And it’s totally boring to to listen to your sleight-of-hands as a form of justification for your digressions – try addressing the subject!

Whatever the subject you wish to talk about here you’ll find there are plenty of threads to do so, though you may need to do some revision in order to catch up with the state of current debate.

If they did, would the rest of us know about it?”

Go and look at the accounts with the Electoral Commission and the Henley expense returns where this information has to be declared. Then let us know whether you have anything to support your bizarre conspiracy theories.

I was arguing the case for clarity of expression in response to your “crescendo on the thematic style of our first citizen” when talking of Nick Clegg’s possible new narrative, or political programme, for the LibDems.

Your “I find it hard to listen to your continual NEGATIVE griping in an adequately grave manner to hold your abeyance” in response to my POSITIVE suggestion that we cut income taxes for low income earners and cut large payments to rich land owners by leaving the EU and the CAP does not get us very far.

You suggest that I would get nowhere in a one man battle (although there are many who would agree with me and the Liberal Party) against the EU-fanatic LibDems. I was pointing out to you that the EU-fanatic wing, bird, beak, etc. of the LibDems’ fading (Phading?) Phoenix would get you nowhere in a battle against majority EU-sceptic public opinion following the LibDem Lisbon referendum mistakes. That is why I hope you will change your mind.

Yes, this thread is about the Henley By-election. That includes the fact that the LibDems’ campaign treated it like a local County Council election, with no national political narrative or programme – understandable as that may have been after the Lisbon perfidy that was in many peoples’minds, at least in the Dorchester hustings. I was responding to ‘Gordon’s and ‘Big Mak’s comments, amongst others, on the need for a new national political narrative (current jargon) or programme.

European cooperation is possible without integration. I am a democrat, more so than the EU. I find your arguments for the EU faith sometimes rather in-turned.

While still on the subject of the By-election, it seems to me that £100,000 was quite a lot to throw at Henley. Where does all the money for LibDem By-elections come from these days? Do the LibDems receive any financial or other assistance directly or indirectly from the EU so that they can continue to proselytise the true EU faith, contrary to UK public opinion after Lisbon, referendum, etc, regardless of the EU’s flawed institutions and way of operating, unchecked by signed-off accounts?

If they did, would the rest of us know about it?

But considering your last comment I’d ask you to take your own advice to weigh up your own opinion again: it’s ridiculous to think parties ‘wage war against… opinion’ because politics is about representing viewpoints and using the process to evolve ideas progressively, not trying to dictate to those who disagree in order to gain superiority (which is only ever temporary) – are you sure the whole range of products of the process of European integration is really something we *don’t* want? And is it something that should be unrepresented even though currently a handful more oppose it than support it? 46% of the Irish vote disagreed with your position, which isn’t insignificant and shouldn’t be neglected from consideration.

Maybe you should look at your own attempts to hijack and tyrannise every discussion with your absolutist anti-EU obsession (this thread is about the respons of the LibDem CE to the Henley by-election if you hadn’t noticed).

Maybe that’s why you find it so difficult to grasp the ‘democratic’ part of true liberalism and why you are prepared to cut your nose off to spite your face.

Something which also explains the reasoning behind why the illiberal hegemony of D’Estaings, Browns, Merkels, Sarkozys, Burlusconis and Barrosos is so hesitant about promoting a full debate on the subject of European integration – they have backed themselves into a corner where they would be voting for their own extinction by decisively winning the pro-European argument and paving the way for a properly liberal and democratic future.

The battle between the EU Commission and the EU Parliament is one that mirrors our own story of the struggle for precedence between the Houses of Lords and Commons: the complaints are the same, the terms of debate are the same and the result will be the same.

And our consistency will enable us to endure until we prove coherence prevails, again.

I rather think that it is the LibDem EU-fanatic wing/body/beak/or whatever which is waging a war against majority public opinion in the country, instead of listening to it. We have had enough of being dragged along by the elite by stealth, as Giscard d’Estaing and others have openly admitted, into something we do not want.

You have been stuck in the EEC past mindset for too long and it is time you caught up with what is happening to opinion as a result of New Labour’s and, even worse, your errors over the EU Lisbon referendum. It is you who are going to have to change and be big enough to apologise – as Gordon Brown will never be man enough to do – and then we can start to fight our common enemies.

Incidentally, I do think that your talk of “crescendo on the thematic style of our first citizen” is gobbledegook and that in general it would be helpful to understanding your obviously wide thinking if you expressed yourself in more down to earth language. You might then find that you thought the opposite of what you had thought you thought before!

Which would be good!

Actually, I’m an optimist and I am totally confident that Party members (and indeed the wider country and liberal dissenters like Dane) would be only too happy to respond to a positive lead that ‘felt’ right – i.e resonated with liberal values even if it came up with policy specifics that seems initially strange and unfamiliar.

I know what I stand for, as I’m sure almost all of us here do. What’s important is that we know how to combine our efforts to best effect to crescendo on the thematic style of our first citizen (sometimes I wonder about the title ‘leader’, but that’s convention for you).