Liberal Vision

Thoughts on the LibDem Manifesto – At first glance

Our Best Policies:

The £10k tax threshold – easily the best policy in any of the three manifestos and certainly the most radical. Would vote LibDem for this policy alone.

Constitutional change: The power to sack corrupt MPs, reform of the voting system, an elected House of Lords and a Freedom Bill to restore civil liberties etc. Would also vote LibDem for this policy alone…

Passing a new Mutuals, Co-operatives and Social Enterprises Bill – Hallelujah! Not quite sure this needs a specific minister though…

Rule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system – Good!!

Our Worst Policies:

General wetness on public sector bureaucracy – it’s not liberal to have government micromanage our lives so we should be getting rid of a lot more.

Investing £400 million to refurbish shipyards in the North of England and Scotland – those shipyards need investment but it shouldn’t come from the government. Turning them into industrial economic free zones (areas where Corporation tax, Capital Gains tax and Stamp duty do not apply) would do the trick instead…

The entire international development section – it’s one big massive facepalm.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

HAT TIP : The Drinkers Alliance  have put together this very nifty little video, made in response to the fear that alcohol taxes are going to Sky Rocket at the upcoming budget. 

Yes we know this Government has spent money like a man with no arms, brought the country to its knees and we’ve got to find the money from somewhere. But taking away the anaesthetic, (or at least making it so damned expensive we can’t afford it) while our arms and legs are being chopped off, is downright insulting.

It’s less than a minute long and jolly well made…..definitely worth viewing in our book..

An (almost) two thousand per cent tax rise on nice, frothy beer

Some people, strange folk, think Liberal Vision’s all about fags and booze. Yes, we do like fags and booze, and yes, this post is about booze. So maybe they’re onto something.

T’other day I railed against Lord Avebury, as I’m prone to do, for his comments on alcohol tax. I am quite appalled at the level of tax on various alcoholic beverages in the UK, but as this story from over the pond shows, things could be worse:

Oregon state to raise beer tax by 1,900%

Yes, really. 1,900%.

Of course this will absolutely hammer their micro-breweries, while the likes of Bud and MDG will be able to ride the storm.

Not cricket, Oregon, not cricket.

New LibDem tax policy (sort of)

Two-and-a-half cheers for Nick Clegg, who seems finally to have settled on the policy the party will take into the next election – namely, raising the basic income tax threshold to £10,000, shedding about £700 off the annual bill of the average worker.

The party leader loses half-a-cheer for having moved away from an overall tax-cutting agenda to one of “tax neutrality”, although I’m reliably told by Cowley Street that Nick’s overall long-term aim to reduce the overall tax burden remains in place.

All those of us who applauded Nick’s determination to go much further in cutting tax last September when he spoke to the Sunday Telegraph’s Melissa Kite, need to continue to press against the old approach of recycling 100% of identified expenditure cuts back in to alternative public sector programmes. Economic times may be tough, but we don’t want to fall into the trap of simply shifting government expenditure from one department to another. If spending reductions can be made, at least some of these savings should be passed on directly to the taxpayer.

I gather that the reasoning behind changing the tax policy from a “4p cut in the basic rate” to a “raising of the threshold” is because Chris Rennard believes it’s easier to communicate to voters a £700 tax reduction rather than a 4% cut. £700 sounds bigger too.

The key thing now – as I argued on the BBC’s six o’clock news this evening (15 mins in) – is to make sure this message is aggressively communicated. The party’s spent four years arriving at a new tax policy, but only has one year before the election to make the case to an electorate who will probably find it counter-intuitive that the LibDems want to lower the average income tax bill.