I do not like the Mansion Tax. I do not, in general, like taxes on the notional value of people's homes. They are among the many ways of avoiding the simple and just taxation of income.
But I am enjoying the furore over the Mansion Tax, between the self-important Labour Party in Scotland and the self-important Labour Party in London.
Each believes its territory to be the heart and soul of the Labour Movement.
In fact, Labour was a pronounced minority interest in each of them until the late 1970s at the earliest; this is also true of several English cities, often in stark contrast to staunchly Labour rural areas nearby.
A number of those cities have been run by the Lib Dems in fairly recent years. Whereas, for example, Durham County Council has not been.
And while London has elected Boris Johnson twice in a row, Scotland has elected Alex Salmond twice in a row.
Labour is on course for an overall majority despite having lost dozens of seats in Scotland.
In 2005, Labour won a comfortable overall majority without holding almost any of its seats in the allegedly all-important wider South East region.
In 2005, Labour won a comfortable overall majority without holding almost any of its seats in the allegedly all-important wider South East region.
As in Scotland, it is not going to win very many there this year, either. That is unfortunate in principle. But it is wholly irrelevant in practice.
I agree about the mansion tax-how can someone's home be considered an asset unless they plan to sell up and live in a tent? Its just the word "mansion" that gets dimwit Leftwing MPs excited.
ReplyDeleteAs you say the term mansion is purely subjective as it refers to the notional value of the property which changes over time and varies dramatically with location (this is really a tax on the South East to pay for Labour's Scottish voters; 1,000 Scottish nurses indeed).
But a party that thinks tax and spending is always a Good Thing and the state has an automatic right to as much of our money as it can get, will always do things like this.
You mean UKIP?
DeleteThis kind of money would pay for an awful lot more than a thousand Scottish nurses. That would be just be Scotland's Barnett allocation from it. Not very much.