The Lib Dems have been lecturing everyone for years on the iniquities of property taxes but today announced a new one of their own.

It would be a temporary measure pending the introduction of a local income tax.

It might be based on a whole new valuation or an old valuation that is uprated for property inflation.

Councils would collect it but central government would spend it – not very localist. read more

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There’s a bit more detail on the schools budget “savings” – don’t you dare call them cuts! – Ed Balls shared with The Sunday Times.

About £330m could be saved by “federating” schools and economising on senior positions – including head teachers.

Mr Balls’ team say they would not remove a head teacher from any secondary school but they would remove some primary heads as well as deputies, assistant heads, heads of subject in primary and secondary.

He also thinks he could save £800m in smarter procurement, £100m cutting curriculum advisers, over 300 of them, £600m in clawing back “excessive” surpluses, where schools seem to have a lot in the bank for no particular reason or project. read more

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The first party conference of the era of cuts and the top story is, you guessed it, cuts.

Nick Clegg promises to be “savage” about cuts and drops a heavy hint that the biggest internal cut will have to be the party’s commitment to the abolition of tuition fees. read more

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A small demo greeted the opening of the Prime Minister’s speech – some delegates held up “no cuts” signs until their arms got tired.

It was a generic sign for all occasions and who can blame them? No one knows what the cuts will amount to… we will learn more in the Pre-Budget Report and beyond.

Mr Brown says the choice (already lost count how many times he uses that word) at the election is between the “people’s priorities” and back to the 1980s.

The cuts quotes are in the script as promised – Mr Brown’s aides insist the cuts story is all a figment of the media’s imagination. read more

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“We’re going to get a hard time off the public sector unions,” one No. 10 aide said to me. “If we don’t, we haven’t done our job.”

Relationships in the Labour movement are rarely straightforward. I’m in Liverpool for the TUC Conference and Gordon Brown’s speech.

It has taken many weeks and a mighty effort to get Gordon Brown to jettison his own instincts and to use the word “cuts.” Cuts were implicit in the government’s last Budget, Alistair Darling wanted them to be more explicit.

But Mr Brown has not wanted to acknowledge looming cuts in public. In private he started this process talking about super growth rates round the corner which would help to plug the deficit.

Then he dug in his heels refusing to use the word because it would confuse the public and detract from the message that the Tories loved cutting and were indiscriminate about it. read more

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David Cameron is speaking in the very room where Gordon Brown launched his uncontested leadership campaign in 2007.

He is announcing cuts in ministerial salaries, ministerial cars and MPs’ perks, like subsidised food and drink prices in the Palace of Westminster.

He believes he must do this to have credibility when he announces planned cuts in public spending.

As he puts it, this is about “taking the whole country with us”. It saves – he admits – a “pin prick” in terms of the deficit.

But once again he has an eye-catching, crowd-pleasing mini-announcement read more

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The refinement of the government line on “cuts versus investment” got a helping hand from Welsh Secretary Peter Hain today.

In an article in the Western Mail, he repeats some of the lines agreed in last week’s Cabinet – including a variation on “the next 10 years can’t be like the last 10 years” – but adds one of his own which takes Labour one step further from the Prime Minister’s simple dilemma rhetoric and appears to accept that cuts will come whoever takes over after the next election.

Peter Hain’s phrase is: “prudence with a conscience” (from Labour), versus “savage cuts” (from the Tories).

Prudence is, of course, a word Gordon Brown couldn’t stop saying not so long ago. Will we ever hear the PM utter this variation on an old theme?

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Cabinet this morning acknowledged that the “cuts versus spending” line of attack which Gordon Brown has been pounding out at top volume for weeks has been a bit of an own goal and ministers this morning talked about “refining” the message.

The new mantra is supposed to be “more realistic”, I hear, with messages like “the next 10 years are NOT going to be like the last 10 years”.

There will be more talk of “targeted investment” not pure “spending”, more focus on “efficiency savings”.

One Cabinet minister said there had been a feeling that, given where Labour was in the polls, the party needed to “take risks” and hope that when voters heard the “cuts versus investment” chant their thoughts were dominated by images of 1980s Tories, not lines from David Cameron and the commentariat saying that it was a false dilemma and that cuts were coming whoever came into power.

That strategy is now being rethought.

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So where’s the money coming from for the Building Britain’s Future policies announced today?

The government says that some PFI contracts got cheaper recently… money had been set aside thinking the poor economic climate would stay poor, but it wasn’t needed. There’s also been a raid on some departments’ “underspends”.

But on the biggest spend – the £1.5bn to boost social housing – the biggest loser is the Department of Communities and Local Government itself.

Around £750mn is coming from “reprioritising” its own budget. Within that £750mn around £500mn is coming from the Homes and Communities Agency. read more

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