The Shepheard-Walwyn Podcast

Duncan Pickard - Challenging the Status Quo: How One Farmer is Rethinking Land Ownership and Taxation

Today, we continue our celebration of the ebook release of Rent Unmasked: How to save the global economy and to build a sustainable future – essays in honour of the late great Mason Gaffney, edited by Fred Harrison.  This podcast features an interview with Duncan Pickard, a farmer in Fife, Scotland, who discusses his journey into farming, the principles of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the challenges of modern farmland valuation and usage. Duncan has written a number of books on creating a fairer and freer society through tax reform and contributed to Rent Unmasked. 
Key topics in the interview include: Pickard's early farming experiences, his strategic land purchases based on economic cycles, the continuing relevance of Adam Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers, the main problems with current farmland valuation and recent changes to inheritance tax for farmers under the Labour Government and the potential benefits of an annual ground rent system.
 
If you are interested in purchasing the ebook version of Rent Unmasked, please visit: https://bit.ly/3YGxQxy

Francis Peddle - Rethinking the Common Good: How Mason Gaffney's Ideas Can Address Today's Challenges

In this podcast, the first in a short series celebrating the release of the ebook of Rent Unmasked: How to save the global economy and to build a sustainable future - essays in honor of the late great Mason Gaffney, we interview Francis K. Peddle, a leading tax lawyer and philosophy professor. Rent Unmasked explores Mason Gaffney's economic philosophy and Peddle discusses Gaffney's influence on economics, the ideas of Henry George, his work with the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, and how he helped apply Gaffney and George’s ideas in setting up the BC Assessment Authority. He emphasizes Gaffney's philosophy of reconciliation, which aims to avoid trade-offs between efficiency and fairness. Peddle critiques mainstream economic views, advocating for a land value tax to address issues like tariffs, farming, and inheritance taxes. He highlights the transparency and fairness of such a system compared to current taxation methods.
If you are interested in purchasing the ebook version of Rent Unmasked, please visit: https://bit.ly/3YGxQxy

Jonathan Brown - "Taken for A Ride" - How can we create an economy for us all?

In today’s podcast, Shepheard-Walwyn podcast host and editor of the updated "Taken for a Ride – Trains, Taxpayers and the Treasury" Jonathan Brown, concludes our discussion of the book sharing key ideas and quotes from the work.
This episode is dedicated to Dave Wetzel, former Vice Chair of Transport for London and author of the book’s postscript, who sadly passed away as we went into post-production of the episode. Like Don Riley, Dave was a tireless campaigner for a fairer society and worked hard to improve the lives of Londoners.
 
If you’re interested in reading the book, please visit https://bit.ly/SW-TFAR-Pod

Steve Norris - Why is the Treasury the biggest barrier to increasing UK prosperity?

In today’s podcast in our Taken for a Ride miniseries celebrating the unique work of property entrepreneur Don Riley, we speak with Steve Norris, the former transport secretary who forced the treasury to invest in the extension (and incidentally) got Crossrail approved in 1995. Steve contributed to the book and doesn’t hold back in his criticisms of the Treasury there and he does the same in the interview.  
He began in industry and then began a dual career as a politician in the 1970s, eventually serving as an MP in Margaret Thatcher's government. He was transport minister in John Major’s cabinet from 1992-1997. In 1997, he stepped down from politics to return to his business career. 
Today he chairs and advises a number of different companies and charities and leads a small but highly skilled team of people specialising in complex property, infrastructure and transportation projects. He also runs a business that builds more affordable homes for people in and around his adopted city, London.
 
If you’re interested in reading the book, please visit https://bit.ly/SW-TFAR-Pod

Dave Wetzel - How New Transport Systems Deliver Extraordinary Profits

Welcome back to the third podcast celebrating the second edition of Don Riley’s Taken for a Ride – Trains, Taxpayers and the Treasury. Today we are speaking with Dave Wetzel, a committed socialist and environmental campaigner. Whilst he had diametrically opposed political views to Don, they were friends and campaigned together to change government policy. 
 
Dave was the first vice chair of Transport for London working with Ken Livingstone to spearhead a mesmerising number of improvements to London’s transport, especially buses. In this interview we look at how he and others worked to improve communities through better transport and how we could have much better cities and lower taxes if we focused on the value added by well thought out public transport investments. 
 
If you’re interested in reading the book, please visit https://bit.ly/SW-TFAR-Pod

How Property Prices Are Actually Created and Who Benefits – What Every Property Owner Needs to Know

Welcome back to the Shepheard-Walwyn podcast. Today we continue our exploration of the second edition of Don Riley’s classic work Taken for a Ride with a conversation with the legendary Fred Harrison. Fred worked with Don and supported his research into land value uplift and helped Don write the first edition of Taken for a Ride. In this interview he talks about Don’s research and the specific reasons why any landowner needs to understand the impact of public investments on their properties.  
 
If you’re interested in reading the book, please visit https://bit.ly/SW-TFAR-Pod

Every property owner - and future owner - needs to buy this book. Here's why. A conversation with Phillip J Anderson

Welcome back to the Shepheard Walwyn Podcast. Today we begin a series to celebrate and explore the work of Don Riley. We have revised and fully updated Don’s classic work, Taken for a Ride – Trains, Taxpayers and the Treasury. 
Don was an entrepreneur and landlord in Southwark, London who benefitted massively from a new underground extension, the Jubilee Line Extension in the 1990s. He was able to document through research and through his bank balance just how profitable that public investment was. As a committed entrepreneur he was incensed that he was benefitted from a taxpayer investment. Instead of quietly counting his profits he wrote a book about the corruption that he saw in the economy.
The book has been revised by Fred Harrison, the economist who supported Don writing the original book, Dave Wetzel, former Vice Chair of Transport for London and me. We also have a fascinating contribution from Steve Norris, the transport minister who pushed through Treasury approval for what has become the most profitable and impactful public transport investment London has seen since the War.
In this interview, I interview Phil Anderson, author of The Secret Life of Real Estate and Banking. Phil was friends with Don and spent time understanding his approach to investing and the work he did that you can benefit from in Taken for a Ride. Here are the time stamps.
If you’re interested in reading the book, please visit https://bit.ly/SW-TFAR-Pod

Edi Bilimoria - Unfolding Consciousness: Why Sapolsky is wrong, and how to get in tune with life

Welcome to the Shepheard-Walwyn Podcast. In today’s episode, we welcome back one of our favourite authors, Edi Bilimoria. Since we last spoke to Edi, his book “Unfolding Consciousness” has won book awards. He’s appeared on many podcasts, launched a reader series with Dr Alex Gomez-Marin, long term collaborator with Ian McGilchrist, launched the eBook version of his incredible work and is about to launch a series with the Theosophical Society of America (spaces still available).  We talk about all these topics and jump straight in with a conversation about free will and whether we are “Determined” as the latest bestseller from Robert Sapolsky asserts.   
 
To buy the eBooks, visit amazon.co.uk  
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unfolding-Consciousness-Exploring-Universe-Intelligent-ebook/dp/B0CGRHF336/
To get a copy of Edi's beautiful book set, go to  www.shepheardwalwyn.com

Philip Allan (Part 2) - The New School of Economics

Welcome to the second part of our interview with Phil Allan to celebrate the second edition of The New School of Economics.
 
Pre-order your copy on:
www.shepheardwalwyn.com