Stamp them out

The Government is terribly vexed about house prices. They're falling, you see - and much of the pyramid scheme upon which Gordon Brown built our economy depends on this not happening.

So what do they propose?

Something peculiar called a "stamp duty holiday". This isn't even a proper tax cut, and we all know there's no such thing as a bad tax cut. Rather, it's a temporary cut. Oh, but only if the property in question is £175,000 or less.

This will apparently cost £600m, which has not been accounted for and sounds terribly dramatic, but in a trillion-pound economy, it's tantamount to losing 50p down the back of the sofa.

No; the obvious problem is more mundane - what happens if you're trying to sell a house for about £200,000 today, having been trying to flog it for a year or so? Chances are you've already cut it be 10% to match falling prices. Who on earth will now offer anything over £174,999 for anything? So your £220,000 house is now likely to sell for£175,000, or it won't sell. A drop of around a quarter, hastening the national drop in house prices they're so anxious to avoid.

You stupid, stupid bastards.

Gordon Brown: doing the right thing

There's a title I wasn't expecting to be composing too often when I started up this repository for ranting. It's inspired by this:

Gordon Brown to reject energy windfall tax

Gordon Brown is set to defy Labour MPs and public opinion by rejecting a multi-billion pound windfall tax on energy firms.

Remarkable - one must have thought the temptation of a left-wing Prime Minister to remove money from Evil Profiteering Companies would be nigh on irresistible. Particularly when we consider this:

Dozens of Labour MPs are backing a big windfall tax and a poll yesterday suggested that the majority of voters agree.

...

The YouGov poll, commissioned by the left-wing Compass pressure group, showed that 67 per cent of voters support a major one-off tax on energy firms' profits.

I'm not all that surprised a majority of people support such a move, however fabulously ill-conceived it is. Big companies are easy to view as an easy target to steal from (sorry, tax) - and with them being both large enough to withstand it and sufficiently Evil as to deserve it, it should therefore be done.

Jon Cruddas, a former Labour deputy leadership candidate and Compass member said the tax would allow Labour to differentiate itself from the Conservatives.

Mr Cruddas is, of course, a dribbling lefty halfwit, and would think that. If he thinks differentiating Labour from the Tories by being even more left-wing is a good thing, one can only assume he desire electoral apocalypse.

However, Mr Brown is understood to have concluded that a multi-billion pound tax on energy firms at a time when the UK economy stands on the brink of recession would be politically and economically risky. John Hutton, the Business Secretary, has also privately opposed the tax.

Indeed he has. By the dismal standards of Labour frontbencher, John Hutton is one of the few who appear remotely acquainted with the real world, and how it works.

Cruddas, and other dimwitted dinosaurs of the Leftism of old, think that money can simply be taken from profitable companies with no downside. But there is, and it's explained quite beautifully here by the excellent Martin Vander Weyer in the Speccie:

We’ve estimated that over the next ten to 12 years the UK will need up to £100 billion of new investment in our energy infrastructure,’ he told me the other day. ‘That investment is mobile - it can go anywhere it will get a decent rate of return. You’ve always got to structure your tax policy against that background. That’s the new reality. We’ve got to show that the tax framework is as competitive as it possibly can be and I know the Chancellor wants to make sure that it is.’

Genuine long-term thinking is quite rare in politics, and turning down a plan down just because it's wrong is depressingly uncommon - particularly when there is a good deal of (misplaced) support for it. Well done John Hutton. Well done (begrudgingly) Gordon Brown. Shut the fuck up, Jon Cruddas.