I've just watched Zak Goldsmith's interview with Andrew Marr (HERE). His Quality of Life Policy Commission will be proposing that if your house is 'environmentally friendly' you will get a reduction in stamp duty when you sell it. Only one problem with that, as far as I can see. It is the buyer who pays stamp duty, not the seller. I think the detail will need to be explained.
However, I welcome the concept, as it incentivises people. As I have said before, I think we need to offer carrotts rather than sticks. People respond much better to that approach than to tax rises.
I also think the idea of forcing electronic product manufacturers to limit the use of Standby Buttons is a good one. I'm as guilty as anyone of leaving my TV on standby for hours on end. Rather than banish them altogether, limiting the time they can stay on would be a good thing. It's a shame the manufacturers haven't taken this upon themselves.
So far so good, but I still remain anxious about what they may propose on air travel and cars. More on that in a bit.
65 comments:
Looks like plenty of employment opportunities for the sort of petty bureaucrats who love to rummage through our houses. I thought your mob was against regulation and complex taxation devices...
Iain, you say you believe in the carrot not the stick, but on an earlier blog it was emphasised that you wish to BAN plastic bags. YOUR Ban does not involve the carrot or stick. Colleages bloggers then went on to list your record of BANS. Sometimes your thinking is a bit muddy for my liking.
As someone who is in the process of selling my house and now our joing marital home is on the market - the suggestion you have highlighted did make me smile.
So I can spend lots of money making my house environmentally friendly - and the buyer of the house benefits with a reduction in stamp duty? Surely some mistake.
Surely the latter idea will fall foul of some EU regulation somewhere? If we can force manufacturers to do that then can we force mobile phone manufacturers to change the design of mobile phones so that music cannot be played through the speaker? It is so incredibly anti-social.
I do actually like the idea, although I have heard that standby prolongs the life of the appliance because it keeps the components warm so they don't suffer the stress of heating up and cooling down all the time. Hmm, prolonging the life of appliances - that's another idea that needs looking at in our age of disposable TVs and DVD players.
A bit OT but Jacqui Smith was on too talking about "focusing down"on youth gangs. I hope that this government gets hung by its own trendy management speak.
It makes no difference whether it is the buyer or seller who is legally liable to pay the stamp duty, it is a transaction cost and its reduction will benefit both parties - buyers will get more house for their money, and sellers will get more money for their house.
Exactly what I was about to say Steve. A grounding in simple economics really would benefit most people. And to think we are the educated and politically engaged ones.
Steve - how?
If someone is buying my house I dont really care whether they have to pay 10% stampt duty or 5% I am not seeing any of that money.
I think the suggestion is that there'll be Council Tax and VAT breaks for eco-friendly measures, though as Steve Roberts has implied above, a reduction in stamp duty will still make the property more saleable. Sounds good so far, though I'm sure there'll be some less Conservative measures (tax increases) somewhere in the report as well. Ho hum.
Don't go all David Cameron on us, Iain! Once you get onto "the environment" and "green taxes", you are a slippery slope to "man made global warming".
Skip all this language usage and don't bother with the concepts, because they are designed to convert you to one-worlderism. It's like "political correctness" - aka "Marxist thought fascism". It is intentional, and it is effective unless people resist it.
For example, I for one don't give a monkey's about the jungle - now aka, on the same theory, as "the rain forest". Anyone who has ever been in a jungle knows that this usage is absurd.
1. The Government can't ban standby in electrical products - its an EU competency
2. So what if it increases my electrical use? I'm paying for it! Its not up to some fascist bureaucrat to tell me how to use my own electricity that I have paid for. If I am prepared to pay for the circuitry and electricity to run it because I like the feature that's down to me.
3. If you're really concerned about manmade CO2 emissions (which Im not) then you should be looking at electricity generation (eg going nuclear), not piddling little nonsense like this
I just hope that there isn't a huge fallout between different policy groups, as John Redwood seems to have already fired a warning shot across the bows of the report on the environment.
Committing suicide (as an individual, or as a political party) is one sure way of reducing your carbon footprint.
I'm beginning to think that Labour is paying Cameron to kill the remnants of the Tory party...
Having spent nearly 30 years in the electronics industry, one can trace back these kinds of things to our education system and the strong segregation between science and the humanities.
'Standby' is designed by engineers, and nowadays will be running in milliwatts. They know that's bugger all, but do not have the language skills to get on TV or newspapers and tell people not to fret. The people on TV or newspapers have the language skills, but no scientific education, or deeper maths skills, and fret easily and publicly.
Iain - would you know the difference between (say) a megawatt and a milliwatt?
The same inability to mentally handle huge and tiny numbers affects every other debate, e.g. Global Warming. It's a debate run by emotion, not understanding.
G.
"enviro-friendly" examples given by green pressure groups are rarely as simple and clear-cut as they seem. Food Miles was recently outed as being a stupid concept as it took no account of the energy used to produce the food in the first place (where in numerous cases the regional disparity in which far outweighs the energy used in transport).
The energy consumed in electrical devices is another of these. For years we have been urged to switch off lights - yet some years ago, as stickers exhorting the turn-off were affixed to light switches in offices throuhout the land, a typical flourescent tube used more energy in the 'firing up' process than it did when lit up for 24 hours.
Additionally, the simplstic concept tha "standby uses electricity, so is therefore bad" ignores the possiblities that both more energy is consmed in the start-up process, and that life-reducing damage may be caused to the applicance each time it is turned on.
Reducing the life-time of an apliance, and necessiating the purchase of a new one, is almost certainly far more environmentaly damaging than a piddling bit of electricty.
Neil I think the idea of offering council tax breaks much better than breaks for stamp duty. The house I am selling has been built in the last 4 years with low flush toilets and the like.
Now if paying for measures to improve its environmental impact meant a reducation in council tax for the owner - people could see na immediate return. if however it led to a reduction in the stamp duty - it would not automatically lead to an increase in the value of your house and as such would not convince me to do so.
As a homeowner you could conceivably increase the value of your house and therefore your return more by having a conservatory built (perhaps one of the most environmentally unfriendly addition put on anyones house).
It's all bollocks.
1. who will properly measure thermal efficiency? (note PROPERLY instead of some surveyor who is bribable?
2. Actual efficiency depnds on usage: so if someone heats the house all day, they WILL use more energy than someone who heats 1 hour a day
and 3.
What about:
street lighting.
Office lifghting after hours? (See Gov't offices - the worst?
Airport lighting.
Unless you live in the deepest countryside, the night is light.
And of course IF we were serious about global warming... which we are not - we would ban:
all military aircraft.
Anyone imagine how much fuel a military jet uses on taekoff with full afterburner?
So we are building 2 new aircraft carriers...
Joined up government anyone?
Joined up hypocrisy...
Anonymous 2:36 - Well said that man! (or woman). If I want to leave my computer on standby all night, I'll bloody leave it on, as is my right if I am paying for my electricity consumption. No one is telling me how much electricity I "should" use in my own home.
I run eight ceiling fans on full, 24/7, whether I'm in or not, because I feel like it. So yah, boo, sucks to the green fascists.
I was on a football website earlier when a thread was started about the Tories 'proposing a ban on plasmas'.
There was instant universal outrage at the suggestion and I couldn't help but think that Cameron seems intent on alienating the very voters he needs to woo.
When is Cameron going to realise that 90% of people don't really care about the enviroment or at least not nearly as much as they care about their plasmas and holidays.
He isn't tethered to reality and at the moment I can see Brown massively increasing the Labour majority.
It would be much better t impose a ban on politicians from going on pointless PR trips around the world, and in some cases to ban them from speaking to reduce the amount of hot air going into the atmosphere.
Another stupid vote-losing proposal from the Tories. Are they suicidal or something?
Jonathan Shepherd, what a good little soldier you are! A real environmentalist's ally!
BTW, if council tax were to be reduced as a reward for toeing the green line, that would mean councils didn't have as much income and therefore the services would suffer. No?
People care about the dire quality of teaching in state schools, the dire performance of the behemoth, state-run NHS, immigration, too many islamics in the country and too many lefties catering to them, mass unemployment, the surrender of our sovereignty to the EU, corrupt politicians.
If David Cameron thinks the voters give a monkey's about the environment, except in general terms, he is way too disconnected to be in politics at all, never mind being a party leader.
Verity - how cheeky! Though owning two houses probably doesn't count of being that environmentally friendly.
Mind you - we have no kids - and surely having more than the average number could count as being environmentally irresponsible (I kid you not - Ive heard that argument).
Why do solar panels, loft insulation and bicycles incur VAT?
Wouldn't it be simpler to apply a zero rate to energy saving equipment?
Oh, I forgot, the EU wouldn't allow a zero rate. What would DC do about that?
Anon @ 3:02pm
Do you know the difference between a megatwat and a millitwat?
I saw the interview. You'd have thought Zak could afford a comb.
Switching on a television set from cold causes a surge of current that will almost certainly shorten the life of the appliance.
These silly busybodying ideas to make everyday life even more inconvenient seem to be snatched out of the air at random. They represent the sort of "sticky-flypaper politics" that we used to expect from the Liberal Democrats.
Here is clinical proof at last that David Cameron has no connection at all with the average British voter:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=480841&in_page_id=1770
... in which the Tories announce plans to ban plasma TV screens, personal computers, white goods, and most other things.
The clinically insane group that drew up the proposals "will also suggest scrapping Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of the nation's success in favour of a model that measures people's happiness drawn up up by Friends of the Earth."
Further quotes would be superfluous.
Chocolate Orange, no, this is a policy commission. they make proposals and the leadership decide which ones they adopt. From what I understand most of them won't be touched with a proverbial bargepole. The Happiness thing is just insane.
Does Cameron not realise that the proposals of this 'policy commission' will be used as a stick to beat the tories with?
It doesn't matter that they won't be touched as the damage will already have been done by putting the suggestion in voters minds that the tories are going in this direction.
It's electoral suicide and as a lifetime Conservative voter i'm pretty dissolusioned and frankly embarressed to associate myself with the party at the moment.
Let's write off the next election and let Cameron hang himself at the polls and then we can get on with preparing properly for 2012/13.
Oh, OK, Iain. It said the group were expecting their proposals to be welcomed by the leader, but that doesn't mean they will be. So we'll see. But the proposals are just delusional and lefty enough for Cameron to think that the average person, who he has never met, would welcome them.
Back to the cars thing, us sheep botherers love it when Whitehall make noises about punishing us to drive to work and back.
A few years ago I used to run a petrol turbo car that did 25mpg, it cost £5 a day to get to work and back.
Now I run a turbo-diesel car that does 50mpg, it costs £4 a day to get to work and back.
I feel increasingly at the mercy of OPEC and the Saudis. Oil is cheap, tax on fuel massive.
The more I have to spend getting to work and back the less I can spend in other peoples businesses, but hey, as long as climate change fanatics in Whitehall get a pay rise every year and a gold-plated pension who cares?
I'll need a new car soon, and the last thing I will be thinking about is how much carbon it chucks out. I'll probably buy an old banger that pollutes as much as a new V6.
"...a typical flourescent tube used more energy in the 'firing up' process than it did when lit up for 24 hours."
According to the TV series Mythbusters, this is a myth. You should always turn lights off.
They're just chucking ideas out to see what gets a good reaction. It's all a bit cynical and the very opposite of principled politics.
Nor does it help when they are guilty of basic misunderstandings such as the one Iain highlights over stamp duty.
The EU will soon be setting the taxes involved in buying and selling houses. Cameron and Goldsmith need to get onto serious matters.
Generally speaking, I rather dislike this particular attitude but... who the hell does Zac Goldsmith think he is?
Is he a climate scientist? No.
Is he an engineer? No.
Is he an electronic engineer? No.
Is he famous for dumbing down The Ecologist? Yes.
Might I suggest that he shuts his trap and gets on with spending his £300 million inherited fortune on drugs and booze, like any other civilised human being, and stop trying to run my damn life using the most spurious and increasingly discredited science?
DK
What about elderly and disabled people who have trouble getting up to turn TVs and other electronic equipment on? The only way many people can watch TV is because of the standby button. Take that away or make it switch off after a certain time and they can no longer watch, which hardly seems fair.
>Iain
They may very well be proposals BUT
I'm a voter.
What do the Conservative Party propose?
Lots of proposals on tax (Redwood ), Society(IDS) and Environment (Goldsmith/Gummer).
The proposers all of course have form:
Redwood: to all but the diehard Conservatives , a failed right wing politician.
IDS: to everyone: a failed right wing politician.
Gummer: a failed politician with such lack of credibility any proposal of his will be considered wrong.
Goldsmith: a Billionaire's son whose money can be the only appeal cos he has no real world experience. And his father was a failed rightwing politician (after being a ruthless business man who did not give a stuff about the environment).
Notice any common themes?
Frankly I would trust NONE of them to come up with any real world achievable policies.. since they themselves failed to do so when in power or have no experience in the arts needed to do so.
Being lectured to by Gummer is an insult. The man ignored BSE and was totally incompetent: makes DEFRA look successful.
And finally: what policies will the CP adopt. I'm confused. (yes I know it's easily done). It's all giveing GB lots of open goals..
another Tory proposal backfires - look at the headline in the Daily Mail:
Tories plan to ban plasma screens
at this stage i wouldnt be surprised if Cameron is actually working for the Labour party - he seems to be so intent on ensuring that the Tories lose the next election.
"they make proposals and the leadership decide which ones they adopt"
yes we know that Iain - but its the HEADLINES that matter. week by week, drip by drip - its the HEADLINES that Joe Public remembers.
it seems to me that the Tory party just hasnt go what it takes to win office - it doesnt have that ruthlessness with the media, that sheer will to win.
Yes JN 3:59
That would 10 to the nine twats.
Your point is?
My point: too many people lack the education/tools to know what is, and what isn't important due to an inability to understand the scale of the issue.
For example, the UK makes 2% of global man-made CO2. We won't achieve it, but we are meant to reduce this by 10 or 20%. China and India combined make 10 times more CO2 than we do, and grow by around 10% a year.
IT DOESNT MATTER WHAT WE DO IN THE UK, WE ARE INSIGNIFICANT IN WORLD TERMS.
Switch everything off if you like, permanently, and in one year the growth in CO2 in China and India will cancel it out.
G.
Interesting about council tax. How about asking local authorities to turn all their lights off at night too!!
"carrotts"
Jaspers or diamonds?
Hail the New Puritan, his decadent sins will reap discipline.
I just love it when non-engineers start talking bollox about "green" things. Ooh yes, lets turn off all the TV standbys and street lights at night to save a bit of that evil carbon based fuel. Whoops, what's that? The poor old gas turbine in the power station doesn't like thermal cycling and has fallen apart causing hundreds of thousabnds of pounds of damage. Oh what a shame. especially as the power station runs on natural gas which is mostly Hydrogen.
What do you mean you went to a state school and don't know what the chemical composition of methane is? Of course I was forgetting, you are an environmentalist, for which state education is mandatory and ignorance of science is a pre-requisite.
Never mind, the customer will pay, for the damage we'll just call it a "Green Surcharge". What's that? Your TV has packed in because it doesn't like thermal cycling either. Well just buy another one.
Shame about all the extra carbon emissions used to replace everything that has broken. Spend a pound to save a penny and bugger engineering logic.
Lets see. I buy a house and intend to live in for 20 years. Do I recieve through stamp duty ANY incentive to improve it?
After 20 years : yes..
Do I think about that in years 1 to 18? I might die first.
It's complete imbecility...
Madasafish - I'll put your memory loss down to lack of iodine in the water, but this is wrong:
"Goldsmith: a Billionaire's son whose money can be the only appeal cos he has no real world experience. And his father was a failed rightwing politician (after being a ruthless business man who did not give a stuff about the environment)."
Agree about ol' Zac, although I personally would not capitalise the word billionaire. However, you go on to say that Sir James Goldsmith was a failed righwing politician. Well, only if you consider dying before you were able to complete your mission a failure. He started the Referendum Party, and it was doing well for a fledging party, remember? And he poured millions of his own money into it.
You are correct, however, that he was that glorious thing, a rightwing politician, and you are also correct that he didn't give a stuff about the environment, which would, again, have earned him my vote.
We already pay over the odds for electronic equipment in the UK. An unintended consequence of banning standby-only equipment will be to restrict choice and increase prices as manufacturers decide whether to bother introducing UK-only models.
The UK market is not big enough to sustain many limited edition electronic gadgets, therefore there are plenty of DVD players, TVs etc. that are sold in Japan but not here.
It clearly doesn’t matter WHO “pays” the stamp duty. It is obviously the seller that benefits from any reduction. A buyer has an amount he is prepared to expend on moving to a new home – if his stamp costs, legal costs or moving costs are reduced, he can ascribe more of that total to the actual house price, which benefits the owner of that asset, the seller.
This proposal is more feeble-minded rubbish. A genuinely green government would abolish stamp duty altogether (preferably by reducing government spending but otherwise by increasing taxation elsewhere). Commuting distances and therefore the environmental impact of commuting are increasing and one reason for this is that stamp duty discourages people from moving house.
If electricity use is damaging, there is a simple mechanism for encouraging people to save electricity - the price of electricity. VAT on fuel would be (and always was) a sensible starting point, but if the environmental costs are shown to be as great as the ecolobby makes out, then a further tax should be used to internalise the negative externalities of pollution. Fiddling around with bureaucratic nonsense and form filling solves nothing and drags more potentially-productive human capital into the public sector.
Madasafish
I defer to no one in my contempt for Gummer, but the fact that he was sceptical about BSE is not a good reason.
Like so many scare stories, here was another one that attracted apocalyptic headlines for a few years and now seems to have completely disappeared.
If you're completely gullible, you can believe that it was because MAFF forced the destruction of our beef industry, but there was never any good epidemiological evidence to support the original panic.
Gummer, arse though he unquestionably is, was probably right to be sceptical.
"towcestarian said...
Oh what a shame. especially as the power station runs on natural gas which is mostly Hydrogen.
What do you mean you went to a state school and don't know what the chemical composition of methane is?"
sorry to be a nitpicker, but its actually methane, not hydrogren.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane
"Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4. It is the simplest alkane, and the principal component of natural gas."
"Burning one molecule of methane in the presence of oxygen releases one molecule of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and two molecules of H2O:
CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H20"
i do agree with the rest of your arguments.
as for Zac Goldsmith - if he has such a fortune, and is so concerned about the "environment" , why doesnt he have a PhD in climate science or meteorology or biology yet?
There was a time, about a hundred or so years ago, when Victorian gentlemen sought out degrees from the likes of Oxford and Cambridge , and the aquiring of such degrees and DOING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH for the benefit of the Empire was the epitome of the Victorian society.
How far have we fallen - into a cesspit of pseudo-science, half truths, greenie religiosity and a neo-fascistic revival of Heimat, Lebensraum and all those nice green things that the Nazis loved.r
Verity
Goldsmith founded the referendum Party? Correct.
And where is it now? Dead ?
Or UKIP.
Either way it's a failure.
>Sceptical Steve.
He (Gummer) was wrong . Full Stop. And He and MAAF ruined most of the UK livestock industry.
So yes: appoint him to suggest environmental policies? Forget the enviro bit: it's mental.
Since politics is all about presntation first and substance second, the Conservatives are managing through these proposal to
1.screw up the presentation
AND
2. produce no policies of substance - no decisions yet.
I despair.
The CP is doing its best to piss off most of its natural voting supporters (no not its core vote) but the floating voters.
The words "political ineptitude" are somehow not strong enough.
I am sick and tired being told how to live my life by all these eco people. If I want to leave my tv on stand bye I will. Its for me to decide and pay the bill if I waste things. I have never known anything like it. So many people telling us what to do all the time. Please give us all a break and look elswhere. We the public are just soft targets and those that can realy make a difference are just left alone. I could recycle lots more but my council does note take it. I have to travel a 20 mile round trip to get rid of it all. If some one wants to buy a house they will buy it its just MORE TAX.
Madasafish writes: "Verity
Goldsmith founded the referendum Party? Correct.
And where is it now? Dead ?
Or UKIP.
Either way it's a failure."
So?
You weren't accusing the Referendum Party, to which you didn't refer at all. You were accusing James Goldsmith of being a failed rightwing politician, which he indeed was not.
Don't understand the reference to UKIP in the context of Sir James Goldsmith. No connection.
Johnny Norfolk - in the big city I live in in Mexico, we have three garbage pickups a week and one of them is only for recyclables. The cost for this excellent and dependable service is £1 a month - collected by the garbage company itself; the city selects the contractors each year, then steps out of the picture. (Cuts one step out of city administration costs.)
Britain is intolerable, jammed with threatening notices telling freeborn citizens what they cannot do. The biggest reprimand I'm going to get in my city is, if I put out normal garbage on recycle day, they just leave the bag lying outside my door. The only bag of garbage left on the block. Rather embarrassing. No one does it twice.
UK is in the EU, what does the all-knowing EU say about "standby" ?
If the UK requires unique products manufacturers will either pull out of the market or simply charge the UK consumer even more than they do now.
I don't think the Conservatives really want to win the next one.
verity said:
"I for one don't give a monkey's about the jungle "
Funny :)
Johnny Norfolk says, "If I want to leave my TV on stand-by, I will."
That is the problem for the socialists. You, Johnny Norfolk, are in control of your remote. This is wrong.
Johnny Norfolk,the Tonys and Gordons and Eds don't want you to have the decision as to whether to leave your TV on standby, because the time factor hasn't been authorised by The State and you may be missing programmes The State wants you to watch.
I advise everyone to get out of Britain and Europe and come West to the New World. Or down to Oz or NZ. Abandon the old world. It's been taken over by Marx - as has been the plan for 100 years. And the Brits allowed it.
Too bad, but they gave up their culture without a fight - afraid to be called "racists".
What a way to lose 2,500 years of history and the bedrock democracy that you spread throughout the world, eh?
With a submissive whimper.
More neo-marxist b/s from the Tories.
bobdoney,
""carrotts"
Jaspers or diamonds?"
Sorry to be a pedant, but the diamonds are measured "carats"...
DK
Sky+ boxes now have this feature - they turn off standby after a couple of hours of not being used. Quite simple to implement - not a hassle for users, so whats the problem?
Sound like a good policy.
I'm off to Rwanda, I'm off to Switzerland, I'm off to Italy. I am doing my bit for global warming.
At best I would have described Gummer as not being the brightest penny and Zac Goldsmith as a spoiled dilettante who gives the appearance of always being ready for a wizard jape. His home is with the LibDems, they need a donor or two.
At worst I would say that most of their proposals are bunkum. Mind you, if Cameron rejects them they will be off to act as advisors to Gordon Brown like that Icelandic chappy who had his 15 minutes of fame.
What is being disconnected is any sense that the Conservative leadership is in touch with reality. We talk about too much regulation and out of the other side of our collective mouth we have all sorts of wizard wheezes to control more of people's lives.
As always - Anonymous Victor
What’s this about council tax breaks? Where’s the logic? How does a more eco-friendly house use less of the services provided by the local authority? All the benefits relate to privatised services like energy and water. Such houses have no relationship with the demand for policing, libraries, social workers, or education services. Even rubbish collection and re-cycling is unaffected. This half-baked idea just means that a house full of people making huge demands on local services, could be rated more favourably than a similar house lacking the approved amount of loft insulation or a condensing boiler, yet occupied by people making minimal demands on the same services. It’s plain stupid; just the sort of thing we expect from rich kids with little common sense and too much time on their hands.
Things about "standbye" that the scientific illiterates always miss... Firstly the energy consumption of modern devices on standbye is infinitessimal and secondly, the energy consumed is converted to heat - which in a cold country like ours means that your other heating systems have to work fractionally less hard for at least half the year.
A minor point, but just goes to reinforce those made by "anonymous G" at 3:02.
I pay for the electricity, so I will use it as I would use any other object i own, ie in any way and in any quantity I see fit.
If the lunatic fringe representing themselves as the green movement have a problem with that let them try to form a government and ask for votes. Oh, sorry, they did - and they have no MP's at all.
If this or any other government tries to raise the cost of power to manage demand they will be destroyed at the ballot box and good riddance too.
Wake up Dave - this environmental rubbish hasn't got a single vote in it for us because in the end voters vote on other priorities.
You would be better off examining the Conservative credentials of the lunatics we have accepted into the Party who push this nonsense.
Global warming - my arse - excuse to boss everybody about like Nanny Whip more like!
Anonymous - The "problem" is, the government has no business trying to legislate how you use appliances you own in your own home. We don't want the government in our homes. We want it out of our lives in toto.
Ron Todd
My understanding was that if I bough a house then made it more energy efficient I would get a refund on the stamp duty that I had slready paid.
The Cameron Conservatives have to learn to engage brain before opening mouth. 'Idea of the week' is now being replaced by 'idea of the day' and still the idiots keep churning out ammo for the enemy. I couldn't believe that the clowns are now proposing compulsory car parking charges at out-of-town shopping centres. The nonsensical idea is that it will help inner city shops to rejuvenate. What a load of crap!
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