House of Comments podcast - Episode 2

Myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog are doing a series of political podcasts called "House of Comments". The website for the podcasts is here and the second episode which we recorded yesterday is now live and available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

The format is to invite one or two other political bloggers each week and discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week, we were joined by leading Lib Dem blogger Alix Mortimer, and Will Straw, founding editor of the Left Foot Forward blog. We discussed various issues including Nick Griffin's Question Time appearance, government sex trafficking figures and their veracity, the continuing recession and women only shortlists.

I hope you enjoy it.

Lib Dems lead the way on fairer tax

I realise that title could be directly from a Cowley Street press release but it is true.

Labour have had twelve years to do something like this but have pussy footed around terrified of being seen as too left wing. They have even done stupid and wrong headed things like abolish the 10p tax band which has taken us in the opposite direction.

Now, the Lib Dems are proposing to increase the tax free band to the first £10,000 of income paid for by closing tax loopholes for big business and the wealthy such as:

• Restricting tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate
• Taxing Capital Gains at marginal income tax rates, allowing for indexation and retirement relief
• Tackling Stamp Duty Land Tax avoidance and Corporation Tax avoidance
• Subjecting benefits in kind to National Insurance Contributions as well as income tax and applying National Insurance to multiple jobs
• Switching aviation taxes from per person to per plane and increasing taxation on non lifeline domestic flights.

I am 100% behind this move. This is the sort of measure we need that will put £700 in people's pockets who are actually more likely to spend it, and we really that at the moment. It will be interesting to see how the other parties react to this.

I see Alix is already praising this move from the rooftops. She is a long standing proponent of this sort of thing.

LDV has a CIL post on the measures from Vince also.