Onwards to three weeks of extended silly season

They say silly season ends with the beginning of September, but lets be honest, it doesn't really end until party conferences are over, right? That's the time where, for three weeks solid, we get to hear the top line policy ideas and then the mad cap stupid ideas that usually generate from the great unwashed membership of either sandal wearing hippies in the case of the Lib Dems; donkey jacket wearing shop stewards in the case of Labour; or blue rinsers screaming for the internment of pikeys.*

And so we start this week with the Lib Dems, who have thus far proposed a tax on all homes worth over a million pounds, where you have to pay 0.5% on the difference between a million and the value of your home. The Lib Dems say this will raise a billion or so. How, exactly, you can predict the amount of cash raised from a tax on the difference between one million and a value that is constantly moving because of the housing market I have no idea, but Uncle Vince is apparently going to say you can.

I wonder too what calculation they've done on the administrative cost of taxing someone 0.5 pence on a house worth £1,000,001? More so, who decides what the value of your house is each year? surely the only time you know the value of a house is when you sell it, or the day that you buy. At all other times it's a matter of pure speculation based against a market. Are we going to see tax inspectors become house valuers? Is it going to be a case that they get three valuations and arbitrarily take the highest?

Like I said, silly ideas for the extended silly season. I expect there will be more during the coming weeks. This is politics after all.
* Yay for across the board stereotyping!