Readers' Letters Of The Day

From The Evening Standard:
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Allowing London to retain Council Tax and Business Rates revenues* would be a huge leap forward, encouraging the GLA to focus investment on transport and housing and increase the tax base.

Can Boris Johnson now resurrect Herbert Morrison's 1939 Site Value Rating for London Bill? An annual levy on some of the most valuable land in the world should sort out the capital's spending constraints nicely.

Mark Wadsworth, Young People's Party.

* My original list was much longer and also included Stamp Duty Land Tax, the Mansion Tax Lite (known colloquially as the "Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings") etc.
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And lower down the same page:

Economist Danny Blanchflower recently published a study demonstrating that high home ownership is strongly correlated with higher unemployment.

How timely of the Nimby residents of South Bucks to provide an example of this by obstructing the creation of jobs at Pinewood Studios.

Joe Momberg.

Even the Daily Mail has started saying it...

House prices in Britain are still too high. They are unaffordable on almost every measure ever used, except for those cooked up by using mortgage interest rates, which are currently at a record low and will one day rise. And then we'll really be in trouble.

 

The comments are surprisingly supportive. So far no Home-Owner-Ists have piped up saying how great it is when housing becomes even more unaffordable. Presumably they're over at the Express and the Telegraph.

Election update

Our first ever candidate Rohen Kapur campaigned his socks off and got 0.11% of the vote in the Corby & East Northants by-election last year. Our second ever candidate Robin Smith campaigned [even more than his socks] off and got 0.26% in the Croydon North by-election.

 

I didn't do much campaigning apart from a few posts here; having my leaflet delivered to every household; and sticking a big poster in my front window, and I got 0.44% in the Essex County Council elections yesterday, (or just over 0.4% if you exclude the votes cast by me and Mrs W).

Your most 'umble and obedient servant...

From The Daily Express:

 

I BELIEVE you can judge a government's values by how it treats the groups most likely to vote for it.

 

The last Labour government spoke endlessly about looking to restore the link between the level of welfare payments for any particular age group and the likelihood of people in that age group voting, but when it came to it, foolsihly did nothing. Within weeks of walking into the DWP we introduced the "triple lock" to provide a proper mechanism by which we increase welfare payments to core voters.

 

We believe this was the right thing to do for people who have spent their lives doing the right thing – turning up to vote for whoever gives them the most generous handouts. Now there is a debate about whether regular voters should continue to receive benefits like the winter fuel payment, free bus passes and TV licences.

 

The vast majority of our core voters are relaxing at home without a care in the world apart from putting a cross on a bit of paper every year or two. For many, retirement is about careful budgeting and trying to persuade their families to help out. So their votes are relatively cheap to buy and I'm amazed that Labour weren't more keenly aware of this. Again, how government responds to this is a mark of their priorities - like being re-elected.

 

It is that desire to buy votes as cheaply as possible which was behind the Prime Minister's pledge to protect universal voter benefits for the lifetime of this parliament and that's what we're doing. I make no apology for it.

 

For some, the winter fuel payment is not a necessity. The free bus pass an unexpected and welcome extra. But for others these represent valuable lifelines. Ensuring the heating is turned up in winter so that they stay alive to vote for us again the next spring. Making it easier to get to the polling station. For people who would vote for us even without the winter fuel payment and want to return it, then they can do that.

 

But as I made clear on the Today programme this week, I am not asking nor demanding anyone to do this. The policy has not changed. Pensioners have contributed our hold on power throughout their working life and they deserve a kick back in retirement. This government can be proud of having done this simple electoral calculation, of what it has done and continues to do for our core supporters. This is a measure of what we think is important, not only as government, but as a group of self-serving insiders.

 

And if you behave nicely, who knows? Maybe one day you'll start receiving interest on your savings again.

 

Your most 'umble and obedient servant

 

IDS

It's quite nice being able to vote YPP

I thought the logo came up pretty well on the ballot paper and was easy to spot.

And it's also quite nice being able to vote for yourself :-)

No doubt tomorrow's result will be a bit depressing but you never know, sooner or later we'll move up from "last" to "also ran" to "fringe party" to "minor party" etc.

Corporate Welfare

Taken from HM Treasury's Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis, Table 5.3.

"Current grants to persons and non-profit making bodies" is mainly old age pensions and welfare payments plus a chunk for fake charities; "Pay" means public sector pay, 7 million people @ £25,000 each. And then they spend as much again on corporate welfare.

A special mention must go to the £28 billion "accounting adjustments":

They own land! Give them money!

From the FT:

 

Buy-to-let landlords could be the biggest beneficiaries of the Bank of England's expanded Funding for Lending Scheme, providing another state-backed fillip to the property market. The BoE gave the go-ahead on Wednesday for banks tapping its new funding mechanism for small- and medium-sized businesses to be allowed to lend the money on to property investors...

 

Landlords have already benefited under the existing FLS as banks and building societies have passed on lower borrowing costs. The average buy-to-let rate has fallen from 5.09 per cent in August, when the FLS was launched, to 4.28 per cent today, according to figures from Moneyfacts, the financial data provider. This helped push buy-to-let lending up 19 per cent [of all new lending] last year, with the number of buy-to-let mortgages reaching its highest level in four years.

 

So that's the landlords sorted, and how much are the banks paying for the benefit of these taxpayer-backed loans?

 

From City AM:

 

WHAT FUNDING IS ON OFFER TO BANKS?

 

■ Banks and building societies can now access ultra-cheap funds from the Bank of England until January 2015 – an extra year on the previous setup

 

■ For institutions expanding their lending, the funds cost just 0.25 percentage points per year

 

■ Those reducing lending have to pay more, on a sliding scale up to a maximum of 1.5 percentage points per year

 

■ Funds provided under the scheme then last for four years.