Friday 27 March 2015

This is what you want, this is what you get.

From yesterday's City AM:

On 30 March when parliament is dissolved, as the majority of MPs will gear up to embark on the toughest part of their election campaigns, some will bid farewell to the Commons for the last time as they step down from public life.

But among the 77 MPs leaving office, many will be left with a valuable memento of their time in office - a second home part-subsidised by taxpayers.

Now research by City A.M. and online estate agent Emoov estimates that between them, MPs stepping down at the end of this parliament could stand to make more than £9m of gains on properties previously funded by taxpayers.


It is quite surprising that two of the biggest cheerleaders for Home-Owner-Ism, City AM and the TaxPayers Alliance (or more accurately, the financial backers of those two), who are always pushing for more direct and indirect subsidies to landowners and ideally a tax exemption for all land based profits, are taking the line that maybe massive windfall gains on London homes are not so hard-earned after all.

There's no honour among thieves is there? Without these hard working MPs, nobly nodding through Help To Buy, bravely blocking Council Tax revaluations and heroically hiking VAT and NIC to finance a Council Tax freeze, the backers of City AM and the TPA would be well out of pocket.

2 comments:

James Higham said...

Is a Tory by definition a crook, Mark? :)

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, all MPs from all parties are equally as bad.