Best Of

I went here today. With my older daughter

She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes



Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well

Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...

It's just so incredibly beautiful

I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit

Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom

And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea

Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)

We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!

Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world

I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.

'Treasury officials consider shake-up that could see tax paid by sellers of homes worth more than £500,000.'


https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/aug/19/explainer-potential-property-tax-stamp-duty

Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.

Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.

Full details are in the proposal linked to in the Guardian article: https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Onward-A-Fairer-Property-Tax.pdf

As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.

Presumably on top of their council tax ?

Who’d buy in those circumstances ?

If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.

I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.

Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)

* Yes, I know the market always clears.

But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.

Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.

We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.

Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too

Yes my parents did this, very glad they did too.

What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax

The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.

I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.

Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:

"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."

"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."

(original policy document)

Hah ok, that'd be a massive winner here in Nottinghamshire where I reckon the council tax as a % of value is probably just about the highest in the country.
But can't see that proposed by Reeves or err "Treasury officials"

What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax

The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.

I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.

Indeed.

Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.

Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.

As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.

It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.

I'm suggesting you would always link the tax to the local HPI.

So you buy for £100k. You make £50k improvements. House prices increase by 25%. You pay tax on £125k, even though the house is worth £150k.

'Treasury officials consider shake-up that could see tax paid by sellers of homes worth more than £500,000.'


https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/aug/19/explainer-potential-property-tax-stamp-duty

Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.

Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.

Full details are in the proposal linked to in the Guardian article: https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Onward-A-Fairer-Property-Tax.pdf

As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.

Presumably on top of their council tax ?

Who’d buy in those circumstances ?

If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.

I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.

Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)

* Yes, I know the market always clears.

But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.

Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.

We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.

"CGT on primary residence"

Where has that been mentioned?

It's in The Times. I literally just read it and came onto PB to see the reaction.

I'm mixed on this. Making housing a rubbish investment - other than to live in - is a good thing, kills off a lot of demand. OTOH, also stops transactions as people cling on.

As ever, a simple annual property tax indexed to your postcode HPI and based on the last transaction price is the solution.