Landing Celebrities

Sunday was a wet, wet afternoon; it was a good time to go to the Dome to listen to a presentation on The Killing Fields billed as being introduced by Vanessa Redgrave and Carlo Nero. Despite its title, it was nothing to do with one of the most horrific cases of mass murder in Cambodia, the name had been stolen for a charming environment film primarily on the loss of wild life and their habitat in Britain. It proposed the need for land reform.

The introduction by Vanessa Redgrave was an eloquent two minutes, before she disappeared for the remaining two hours. Not quite what I expected. In contrast Carlo Nero stayed with the 4 other panellists on the stage and spoke more than the rest, again not quite what I expected.

Already the stage was packed with minor “celebrities”, whose CVs seemed to be endless, with lists of degrees as long as your arm There was a professor who lived in Russia for 10 years, who constantly told us what Shakespeare would have thought of a land tax and told us we had a solution without a problem. What he meant was that there was no wide public understanding of the problem. This kind of obfuscation, speculation and sweeping generalisations beset the conversation that followed the film.

The excellent chairperson, Richard Joly, needed no celebrity marketing. Where does a Land Tax exist and work most effectively, he asked?…. Taiwan,we was the response , whose success was the envy of the world. Silence….really? A little search on the web shows that Taiwan has found it challenging to keep land prices down and to limit land speculators. Surely it would have been good to hear about the annual wealth tax in Spain and other countries closer to home?

Which countries are supporting this initiative?

Bolivia, with a Universal Declaration on the rights of Mother Earth. Well Bolivia is a fascinating country, where my son is at the moment, but -with all due respect- it is not going to challenge the power structures of the EU, USA , Russia, China etc. ( G8 +5). Would International Law would create the structure for implementing a land tax? Only a lawyer could possibly suggest this, as international law has to be agreed first politically by all the States who are parties to it, i.e. by the politicians in governments, while most international law is unenforceable. This is sad perhaps, but there are no global policemen or tax inspectors. Furthermore a Declaration is a declaration, not a Convention, and is not an instrument of hard international law.

What are good sources of information and background reading? Google it in were told! When just one of the panellists did give a useful source, Sods law struck and my biro ran out of ink! Mason Gaffney possibly?

Land tax would mean the abolition of all other taxes and lead to the efficient use of land, with unused land reverting to its natural habitat. It’s a delightful idea, but is this real?

Would this stop wealthy, retired bankers buying large estates for their grandiose pleasure?

Would this stop even more intensive agriculture?

Does this mean that a Tobin tax – a Robin Hood styled a tax on all spot conversions on currency trading- should be forgotten? It could yield tens of billions of pounds in revenue each year from bankers and speculators.

Does it mean that the richest in society would have 0% income tax?

There were some excellent points made on topics such as the UK government and the EU CAP. They subsidise some farmers to the tune of millions of pounds a year, who also escape inheritance tax, while there is little for the impoverished small hill farmers and smallholders. Furthermore everyone should be trustees and not owners of land. It is here and elsewhere that we needed the tough, rigorous questioning of one or two panelists by Richard Jolly. He knows the realities of international economics and how to tackle social injustices in the UN; his record on child poverty with UNICEF is second to none.

Which political parties were supporting this initiative?

Even the panelists did not know that this was Green Party policy and had to be told this by the audience. It did not bode well for the one practical initiative of the celebrities. This was to meet Caroline Lucas later in the week. Good as she may be, she is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer and this group needs to have a much better idea of how to review rigorously an interesting proposal and move from pie in the sky to taxing the land.

The celebrities need to come down to earth and build on the respected local scholars and the campaign movements already in Brighton. They could learn from IDS on the one hand and the successful allotment campaign in Brighton “Don’t lose the Plot”. These are two sources that are in fact easy to find by Google. They are where people have got their hands dirty for decades in serious scholarship on development issues, including land, and secondly in a recent for campaign for allotment rights in Brighton.

Surely this is more sustainable than landing too many celebrities?

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