As I said: so it’s okay to make poorer people live in areas with no public services (and to price them out whenever public services are brought in to an area) because this kind of thing already happens speculatively with rental prices. This is a problem with the free market, yes – well done. It is.

I do see that you would be formalising and making more efficient what happens already, but I can’t see that it would actually keep rental or house prices down by more than you’d end up paying in LVT.

* . . . yet people still keep coming back reciting the same old canards as if they are being startlingly original.*

I’m not trying to be original, just to get a straight answer.

I can understand it’s frustrating to have to repeat yourself (for us mere mortals) but collectively LVTers don’t seem to be doing that good a job of convincing us – which suggests to me that there’s something wrong with the way you’re trying to push the message.

Patronising us probably doesn’t help, whether you think our lack of grasp of economics is pitiful or otherwise.

Not taxing land values encourages speculative rises in house prices near public services – the problem you are complaining about is something we face on a daily basis right now.

Taxing land values disincentivises this. The higher taxes people in areas with high land values will pay will be reflective of the benefit they get from those public services. There is simply no way you can claim that is less fair than the status quo.

Yes, a band C house near a railway station is taxed at the same rate as a band C house away from a railway station. But the band Cs near the station are fewer in number and generally smaller. The equivalent house is more likely to be band D, E or even higher.

With all that said, yes, there are social justice-related issues surrounding the transition from our current system to an LVT-centred one, but that’s why no-one is arguing for a big bang approach, why there is much talk about homestead allowances and allowing people to defer payments until the asset is realised. Sometimes it seems that it is all we ever talk about, and yet people still keep coming back reciting the same old canards as if they are being startlingly original.

Ultimately, your beef isn’t with LVT, it is with free market economics and the brutal reality that some places are more desirable to live than others. I can’t help you there. Try Cuba.

At least council tax is uniform across a local government area (ie band C near a railway station pays as much as a band C across the other side of the borough) and so it’s only rental price that changes. You seem to be agreeing that with LVT there would be both a higher rental and higher LVT for property near facilities. I suppose you might suggest this was *fair* – if you live near a railway station and shops instead of on an estate miles away you should pay for it. Great – a decent place to live would (even more than currently) be open to everyone, like the Ritz.

Great diary. I worry that I was obsessing about panto with everyone all weekend. Do you have the photos?

one speaker suddenly rivets the attention of the Lib Dem Voice team by a totally gratuitous attack on “a new generation of overweight computer geeks”

That wasn’t Sandra Gidley by any chance was it, having her revenge on my rant last week?

I think the woman from South Shropshire, sadly not now housing portfolio holder I believe since it’s one of those authorities we lost last May I tink, is called Kidd, but I can’t remember her first name. She also spoke last year at the LDYS/Shelter event on housing if it’s the person I’m thinking about.

PS – Vince wasn’t a late addition to the ALTER line up – we booked him in early January. The reason for the move was that they said they would be building in the area where the rooms outside the main auitorium was. Although it made for an empty looking room it was very welcome – we would never have got so many people into one of those break out rooms!

Incidentally, it’s interesting about ‘nimby-ism’ – I’ve been to four local paarish and town councils in the last two months to talk about community land trusts and every one of them are keen. The sticking point appears to really be the district council level and in particular their planners, not communities themselves. Also even CPRE support CLTs. The main point is that they answer a local need – they are not about district councils plonking loads of affordable houses in your community to whicih they will send people on the list from the other side of teh district.