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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Ming the Marxist

Here's a jolly wheeze from Ming Campbell for solving the housing crisis:

Local councils strong-arm local farmers into selling land to the council by refusing them planning permission unless they do.  Having expropriated the land, the council then sells it on at a profit to developers, who build the houses.

Read that through a few times and then remind yourself that this man is supposed to be a liberal.  The BBC reports:
When buying green field sites, farmers would be told that planning permission would only be granted if they sold the land to the council.

The council would then secure planning permission and sell the plot on to developers, keeping the profit to pay for local services.

The Lib Dems said landowners would take part because they could still sell for more money than the land was worth without permission.

But the Lib Dem scheme was criticised by the Country Land and Business Association, who described it as "completely divorced from reality".

President David Fursdon said the system was "open to so much abuse" as councils would be deciding whether to grant permission for schemes that would make them huge sums of money.

"And why is it that it's OK for the local authority to do something on the land when it's not for the private landowner?" he asked.
Well, if you are a liberal, then it's very much not OK.  But the Liberal Democrats are very far from being a liberal party these days.  Instead they are the nearest of the three main parties to an old-fashioned socialist party.  Even the Labour Party has seen the point of economic liberalisation, even if it very frequently fails to follow through.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the Lib Dems have outlived their usefulness.  With many of its traditional policies now implemented by Labour, the Lib Dems have been obliged to seek a new role, which they have done by and large on the far left of politics.  There is an urgent need for a liberal party on the British political scene.  The Liberal Democrats are not that party.

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