ALTER's Fringe at the Liberal Democrats' conference in Liverpool last month heard the recently en-nobled former leader of Newcastle City Council announce that his city could be a study area for the Party's policy of Land Value Taxation. Cllr Lord John Shipley, who has served on the Council for 35 years, was speaking a month after resigning as Leader to become a full-time working peer. The Liberal Democrats have run Newcastle since 2004.
ALTER has added a speaker on Bank of England Reform to the panel at its fringe on Saturday. Alongside Brian Hodgkinson, economist and author of "A New Model of the Economy", who will be answering 'yes' to the question in the event title "Does the Banking Crisis Strengthen the case for LCT?" will be Ben Dyson, a young Yorkshire-based financial sector entrepreneur who is campaigning on reform of the entire money-creation system. Ben's answer to our question is likely to be "Maybe"!
The Mail's online version featured a piece on Saturday 11th September about the debate at Party Conference next Tuesday on "Fairness in a Time of Austerity", which mentions "taxation" and "land values" in the same sentence! As one would expect, they don't approve.
ALTER is confident of having a 'good' Party Conference this year, having noted that two policy motions on the agenda feature the role that resource taxes can play in helping to turn around the UK economy.
ALTER's Executive committee has met to decide on its Party Conference fringe event theme at Liverpool in September. Speakers will be asked to comment on a new chapter in the successful book (The Case for a New Peoples Budget) which ALTER published last year, by Brian Hodgkinson, probing the links between the global banking crisis and failure in land markets.
The motion which ALTER had supported (although it was not our idea) on radical reform of the way that money is created "from thin air" by banks has not been accepted by the Party's Federal Conference Committee (FCC).