In my last post I discussed just how awful the Lib Dems’ ideas are. I hadn’t heard of this one which the Telegraph has just warned about: Nick Clegg’s plans for VAT on new homes attacked.

The tax of between five and seven per cent would add up to £14,000 to the cost of buying an average newbuild property, with this figure increasing as the housing market recovers.

First-time buyers are already struggling to get on the housing ladder because mortgage lenders are demanding deposits of up to 25 per cent.

Young couples have traditionally looked to buy newbuild ‘starter homes’, which are cheaper than older properties and attract special deals cutting the costs of stamp duty and deposits.

Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dems’ Scottish affairs spokesman, risked infuriating first-time buyers by saying they should buy and improve older properties.

Of course they should. While working and bringing up a family. Stupid man. Notice how all the parties pretend to care about the young and the old, families, the sick and disabled and unemployed and yet poop on them endlessly. People have to start taking their lives back and stop trusting politicians to deliver them into a paradisiacal Britain: all fair and equal and pink and fluffy.

But developers described the plan, which is buried in the Lib Dem manifesto, as “sheer madness” and said it would worsen the deepest housing crisis since the Second World War.

I would call it sheer sickness rather than sheer madness. They know what they are doing, so they aren’t mad. Just a nasty party like the others.

The Home Builders Federation, whose members build 80 per cent of new homes in England and Wales, led criticism of the proposal.

Stewart Baseley, the organisation’s chief executive, said: “The Lib Dems’ plan is an extremely poorly thought through proposal that would constrain much needed housing development still further and potentially increase the cost of housing.”

Homes for Scotland, which represents the house building industry north of the Border, said its members had already lost half their directly-employed workforce.

Jonathan Fair, the organisation’s chief executive, said: “Any measure increasing the cost of new homes is sheer madness and will simply exacerbate the problems we as a country already face.”

Opposition parties have vowed to increase scrutiny of Lib Dem policies since Mr Clegg’s victory in the first television debate and the surge in support that followed.

Oh good. The masses might be treated to some policy for a change. Will it matter?

The party’s general election manifesto promises to “equalise VAT” on the cost of buying a new home, which is currently zero-rated for the tax, and repairing an old property.

It’s our old friend equality aimed at messing up lives again.

This would require VAT to be charged on the sale of all new homes, the average price of which in Scotland is £201,701.

If the levy was set at seven per cent, at the highest end of the scale allowed, this would increase the cost by an average of £14,119.

Scottish Executive figures show there were 2,346 new private homes built between April and June last year, barely half the 5,853 total in the same period two years previously.

First-time buyers in Scotland had to find £15,016 more for a deposit last year than in 2007.

Launching the Scottish Lib Dem manifesto, Mr Carmichael said no decision had been taken on what rate of VAT would be charges but conceded it would be at least five per cent.

“It’s going to be an extra cost,” he conceded before adding: “It will be an opportunity for first-time buyers to come into the market buying existing properties and adding some value to them by doing them up.”

I would love to buy an old property and do it up (or have others do most of the work!), but it’s only an opportunity if that’s what you want, have time for and can afford.

But David Mundell, Tory Shadow Scottish Secretary, said: “Like so many Lib Dem policies the closer you look at them, the less they stand up to scrutiny.”

Among the other proposals in the manifesto are introducing road charging across the UK after 2015 and re-establishing the Bank of Scotland in Scotland.

The Lib Dems plan to keep Britain’s nuclear deterrent but think the Trident replacement is unaffordable and want a cheaper version.

They would spend £400 million refurbishing Scotland’s shipyards to build wind and wave farms and ban medium-sized and large firms from asking for people’s names on job application forms.

…and they all lived happily ever after.