‘Are any other readers incensed that after months of trying to keep people from making pre-emptive announcements about the deliberations of the Tax Commission before they are put through party democratic processes we are now told in the weekend press that there will be policy announcements this week? The Commission has not yet met to ratify what it will send to F[ederal] P[olicy] C[ommittee], let alone Conference consider them.’
It’s signed Jock Coates, Secretary of ‘Lib Dem ALTER’ (the exciting ‘Action for Land-value Taxation and Economic Reform’ group…). Jock is a reader of this blog, so very well done to him!
Jock is a reader of this blog, so very well done to him!
ReplyDelete...but you've obviously not been reading mine if you think this is the "first sign" of discontent...:) I've been bleating on and off for a while about what the Tax Comission might recommend.
Mind you, since the letters deadline for LDN was well before Ming's speech, my criticism was/is not so much about anything he did say, than that he was due to say anything at all on tax, direction or specifics, until the democratic processes had been concluded (perhaps especially about "direction" which should come before specifics).
But having discussed the speech quite widely, including with people on the Tax Commission, I'm much more sanguine about what he said and what it probably means about what the Tax Commission may recommend.
Because, of course 'Dave' always has a full policy Conference before announcing sudden u-turns on the policies and manifesto commitments the Tories fought the last election on just 12 months ago.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see that football fan Mr Dale is busy posting blog comments during the England match
ReplyDeleteanonymous, well it wasn't exactly riveting was it? Had to do something to relieve the tedium. Unlike you, I can do two things at once!
ReplyDeleteThe second half demonstrated just how stupid it was to only taje four strikers. If he had to take Owen off, Defoe would have been the obvious replacement. Oh well.
Does anyone really care about the internal workings of the Liberal Democrat party? It's not as though they will ever be in a position to enact these supposed policies.
ReplyDeleteAs for Bob Piper, that odious runt of a Labour councillor - perhaps he will remember the sudden u-turns his own party under Neil Pillock, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown performed during the 1980s and 1990s? Or is he memory so short that he cannot remember back that far?
The first sentence of that quote is extremely awkward.
ReplyDeleteIain, I feel this is a job for you: could you perhaps (if you agree with me) begin a campaign to have football commentary as an additional choice rather than being forced upon us? John Motson drives me to despair.
Neil, just use the mute button. Works well for me.
ReplyDeleteThing is Bob - the reason I want tax policy put to the membership before the media is to argue for more change than I feel is emerging.
ReplyDeleteIn 1998 the party set out its "direction of travel" on tax policy as shifting taxation off of incomes and other economically stimulating activities and onto resource use and pollution.
To me, the 50 pence rate and the Local Income Tax have been the well-intentioned and pragmatic meanderings of that policy directions in response to specific needs and egregiously unfair situations like the Council Tax and the end of "free" higher education.
So it's right to me that they should go as soon as practical and as soon as some better mechanism could be found. Me, I wanted a canal dug to take us straight and direct to our 1998 policy goal rather than have to negotiate the practical meanders and rapids of year by year political challenges.
SUBTEXT: I'm not arguing that this is a change too much or too soon. I just want the opportunity to argue for greater change to the party membership before the media and public get the impression that this is all now set in stone with the blessing of the powers that be.
Chris, then I lose the general atmosphere from the games as well. Football should not be watched in silence, nor should the viewer be subjected to the "observations" of John Motson.
ReplyDeleteI turned the sound down and put BBC Five Live on.
ReplyDeleteThat works fine until Allan Green takes over the commentary.
Iain - remind me, when did the Tory party conference vote to say that all those things the party's candidates claimed to stand for in the 2005 general election would now be junked ... ?
ReplyDeleteMark P, er, I don't remember yours voting to do it either, and yet that's what Ming has done. The difference is that our conference has never had any policy making power anyway, as I'm sure you well know!
ReplyDeleteBy the way Iain, all what things has Ming changed?
ReplyDeleteI can think quickly of only one that was in the manifesto that he has indicated the Tax Commission is suggesting should be changed, but on the proviso than conference agrees. And I can think of one that he has modified that was not a manifesto commitment but was a conference endorsed policy.
Suggesting that party policy making should be different is exactly what CK said immediately after the General Election and was the main part of the remit of Meeting the Challenge.
The bit of policy making that both have criticised is the narrowness of the "expert working party" that sends a report to conference for final decisions. Both have said, and I cannot see why anyone who might consider themselves a democrat would argue with this, that a wider participation of the membership before conference decides definitively is desirable.