Tag Archives: dominic lawson

LibLink: Jonathan Portes on wealth taxes & ensuring the ‘rich’ pay their fair share

Jonathan Portes, director of NIESR and former senior Treasury official, is not a Lib Dem — he recently contributed to LibDemVoice to critique the Coalition’s economic policy — but he is addicted to robust evidence. And the recent spate of right-wing commentators rubbishing the Lib Dems’ call for increased wealth taxes to help tackle the current economic crisis has roused his ire:

The Liberal Democrats call for a “mansion tax” (that is, a higher rate of council tax for the most expensive properties), possibly supplemented by some form of wealth tax seems to have provoked a peculiarly illogical misuse of

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , , and | 6 Comments

In other news… the NHS, human rights and levels of spending

Liberal Democrats seek changes to health reformThe Observer on the aftermath of the party’s spring conference vote on the NHS.

“Nick Clegg has just won a powerful victory over the Conservatives, appointing a Bill of Rights commission which is certain to leave the ECHR intact” – The Spectator has the news.

And in The Independent, Dominic Lawson is unimpressed with some of the comments made about public spending:

As Dr Tim Morgan points out in his incisive Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet, Five Fiscal Fallacies, “No one should imagine that the Coalition’s plans amount to a major reversal

Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
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  • cim
    Agreed with a lot of the above, "compulsory voting" is just a way to mask the symptom that there's not much in our current democracy that gets people excited to...
  • SteveTrevethan
    Thanks to all for a most interesting and relevant article and set of comments! From the information and possibilities therein contained, is it the case that ...
  • David Evans
    Let's be honest here. The whole thing is a political carve up, by an instinctively centralising and authoritarian Labour party, emboldened by a huge parliament...
  • George Thomas
    Perhaps my most illiberal "opinion" is that automatic freedom of movement for immigrants is possibly a bad thing*. I remember speaking with a recent refugee who...
  • Chloe
    'underlying emotions are fear, resentment and inadequacy relating to their own lives' Are you saying the residents of Crowborough or Bicester who've protested ...