What's the average salary in U.K? / Cost of living...

You can't be serious, it's a silly idea from just about any POV. No government in their right minds would introduce such a thing, it would make a rod for their own backs (people with long memories might remember the short-lived Tax and Prices Index which was supposed to replace the RPI to measure the cost of living including taxes, but which was quietly forgotten once they realised they couldn't actually cut taxes).

Also as a practical matter it would be pretty bad to have a holiday which moved around every year and which potentially wouldn't be decided until just before it happened (since the budget is in March). And what if it falls at a weekend? And intrinsically it makes no sense, tax rates are wildly different for different people, and there is no clear definition of how you decide what counts as tax, e.g. do tax credits and allowances get treated differently from benefits? Do corporate taxes count, even though they may be levied on overseas shareholders?

Also of course there's the slight inconsistency between being in favour of lower taxes, and opposing university fees. As I say I think MH is just being opportunist, he doesn't expect to ever be PM so he can promise what he likes. Personally I think it would at least present a real choice if we had a party which was genuinely committed to significant tax cuts, but since in practice that would mean significant privatisation of health and education I doubt anyone will actually propose it. Are the Tories even going to propose rolling back the Labour spending increases they appear to be complaining about? Somehow I doubt it ...

Reply to
Stephen Burke
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"Stephen Burke" wrote

Doesn't that assume that you are "coming to the table" with a balanced supply&demand? When demand currently outstrips supply, you've got to build a lot of houses just to cover the "back-demand" ...

Further, even if you can throw up a house in a few months, doesn't planning permission (usually obtained beforehand!) often take a long time to get agreement on?

Reply to
Tim

It's true that if you liberated planning now it would take some time to reach equilibrium, but it would still be fairly quick, maybe a few years.

Well, that's exactly the point, it's planning permission (or the lack thereof) which keeps prices so much higher than the building cost. By "free market" I was suggesting a state where people could broadly build houses wherever they liked.

Reply to
Stephen Burke

I am serious. I'm all for simple for honest, transparent measures that allow joe public to keep tabs on government.

I'm sure everyone could cope.

Same rules as for any bank holiday.

Dunno, what matters more is that there's a consistent methodology allowing comparisons from year to year. The Adam Smith institute seem to manage it each year with some credibility.

Same here.

I agree, it's a measure of integrity. This lack of integrity and lack of choice and also the lack of policies with which I agree is the reason why I haven't voted since the '80s. Which brings me on to another of my ideas - that the proportion of seats in the house of commons representing the proportion of the electorate that chose not to vote should be covered with dust sheets. Another simple honest and transparent measures that allow joe public to keep tabs on government. You could go further and similarly change the commons voting system so that the proportion of non voters counts as votes against, but this would probably completely undermine government.

Have I lost it yet ?

Daytona

Reply to
gspark

As opposed to meaningless publicity stunts, which is what this would be ...

So all that would happen is that the government would game whatever the system was (e.g. as they are already doing by counting tax credits as negative taxation, or keeping Network Rail off the books). I don't personally think what the AS people publish has any credibility as a serious economic statistic, it's just to get a bit of publicity.

Reply to
Stephen Burke

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