Taxed to death

Our justice system was yet again shown as a complete embarassment when 76 year old Richard Fitzmaurice was locked up for 34 days for refusing to pay his Council Tax. Mr Fitzmaurice owes West Norfolk Council about £1600.

In 2005, 73 year old Sylvia Hardy was jailed for 7 days for refusing to pay Devon County Council the sum of £63.71 which was owed on her Council Tax for the previous year.

First point to be made is that it is unbelievable that these people have been put in prison when extremely dangerous criminals and repeat offenders continue to get pathetic community sentences because "there isn't enough space in prison".

Personally I class violence against a person or against property as quite serious offences, but there are plenty of cases where vicious assaults or robberies are committed and the offender walks away with a week of gardening or scrubbing graffiti off walls as punishment. But for a minor offence like avoiding the Council Tax they can easily find a jail space for an old age pensioner? It's pretty crazy to me.

I guess this isn't really the main point. These two Council Tax crusaders have stated that the reason they wont pay is because it's an unfair tax. I think most people would agree with that but what can you do about it? Most people have a lot to lose and can't think about contesting it, but pensioners can: they are also the ones hit hardest by the Council Tax.

Council Tax is supposed to support local amenities, rubbish collection, transport, Police, and so on. The problem is that it's calculated in a completely unfair way: it's based on the value of your home.

Given huge increases in fuel and electricity bills its easy to see how pensioners are being hammered by this tax, because pensions are not increasing at the rate of Council Tax. If you're a pensioner on a normal state pension but you're living in your family home that has been passed down through the generations you will struggle to pay because your home may be worth a lot. How can councils justify increases of up to 20% per year when the old age pension increases by around 3%?

It's pretty simple to me - they can't justify it at all but they don't need to either. I can't actually think of any improvements our local council has made except to build a leisure centre near my house. The roads are awful, the traffic management is a joke and only assists frustration rather than congestion, there are roadworks everywhere all the time. To park in the town is an absolute rip off and streets are littered with parking meters and little Hitlers to slap tickets on cars.

As an aside, in the centre of Glasgow it costs £1.20 to park your car for 2 hours. In the centre of Wigan it's apparently 50 pence to park for 2 hours. Centre of Blackpool? £2.20. Rip off. You could understand it if it was worth it but it isn't. The buildings of the town are really, really poor and the selection of shops is pathetic. When you can go to the centre of a big city and pay less to park and have a nice modern and clean experience with lots of choices of shop, why would anyone want to come to old and dilapidated Blackpool?

A couple of years ago we had our rubbish bins collected every week and they would take whatever you left out. Now it's every two weeks, you have to have 4 different wheelie bins and seperate your rubbish into them for recycling and they wont collect the bins if they are over a certain weight. Furthermore they only take one bin per week.

This is the case amongst almost every council and must save them an absolute fortune considering they also profit from your waste now that you so kindly seperated it for recycling. Council tax time and boom, 8% increase.

There's more antisocial behaviour than ever before, amenities such as local swimming pools and gardens are being closed down due to "lack of money". Everywhere you look the council are cutting back. So where's all the Council Tax going?

Simple. Like MP's, Councillors are fuelling their space rockets with it and passing the bill on to members of the local area. Our local Council employs some people on £250,000 per year contracts to basically bullshit about nothing. We've had a million white elephants proposed such as "Storm City" which completely failed when it was first brought out in the Midlands, the Super Casino which wont ever happen plus endless Las Vegas style revamps which wont ever happen. Revamps of the bus station that wont happen, Pharaoh's Palace and international hotels along the sea front that wont ever happen. A world class conference centre which wont ever happen.

All these artists impressions to deceive the council tax payer that the council wants to improve. Unfortunately I look at the facts not the propaganda that hits the front page of the local newspaper (the Evening Gazette).

Absolutely loads of money was creamed off by the Councillors and their cronies beneath that Super Casino umbrella. They must have spent about £50,000 on free holidays to Las Vegas under the guise of factfinding. Casino "consultants" were employed on huge contracts to do the best part of nothing.

Money is leaking everywhere within Councils. Fylde council has been slammed for wasting over £600,000 on a waste disposal project because it's causing two local attractions as well as a swimming pool in a nearby suburb to face closure due to lack of money.

How can these muppets come up with this nonsense? Sure you save money by closing swimming pools, leisure centres, lakeside attractions, parks, gardens, and so on. But then you don't have any services. And Council Tax would still go up. Maybe closing the town hall down would work.

Our local town hall planned to waste almost £1million on a Lowry painting "for the people of Blackpool to enjoy". What a load of bollocks. They would stick it in the town hall where they can wank themselves silly over it. Whichever stupid twat came up with that idea should be fired on the spot. If they can afford that painting, they can afford to keep our services going.

They have even closed all the public toilets and a private company called Danfo has been contracted to provide them. You now have to pay to use the toilet because the Council wanted to save some money on staff. It's indirect taxation.

Council tax pays for all the misdemeanours of the local authorites in Britain and is utterly and completely unfair. It should be scrapped immediately. The much hated Poll Tax - a personal tax rather than one based on the value of your house - was far fairer.

I believe they should implement a local income tax for local services. I believe the Police should be paid out of national income tax. I certainly don't think councils should be able to waste all our Council Tax money and slap a bill for more on your doorstep every year. I think better controls and management of council spending is needed. More efficiency is needed to keep council spending down and give value for money.

Their jailing might be a sad reflection on our "justice" system but I don't feel sorry for the two Council Tax evaders, Sylvia and Richard. I believe their cause is just and that sooner or later the camel's back will break on this issue. MPs are starting to get rumbled with their hands in the coffers and it's time to start slamming Councillors for the same and bring shame upon this archaic tax.

These people were all voted in by you and I yet they continue to flaunt our trust by selfishly lining their own pockets or pursuing their own self-benefitting agendas. It doesn't even seem to be about Government or Local Government: you can see this by the crazy schemes they implement which don't benefit anyone whilst letting core services and building rot. Pandering to pressure groups and corporations instead of practising the will of the people.

My town, formerly the UK's premium tourist resort, is in freefall. But all the fat cats in the Council care about is making more money for themselves to waste.

Fake guns, pointless laws

Today the home secretary Jacqui Smith announced a new law banning deactivated firearms. She said,

"Tackling gun crime is key to making people feel safer and more secure in their communities. We already have the tightest controls in Europe but there is more we can do to remove the threat of gun crime."

In this nanny state we have the tightest controls on just about everything, Jacqui. So why is it that according to the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College since 1997 (when legally owned guns were banned in the UK) gun crime figures have gone up year on year? Don't tell me it's because of fake guns.

It's no coincidence that more guns from Eastern Europe are entering the UK just as more people from Eastern Europe are. It's no coincidence that about half of the gun crime in the UK happens in London. Bizarrely, over 50% of gun crime is actually air guns. I thought these were banned?

It doesn't take a genius to see that making legally owned firearms illegal makes no difference to crime, unless you actually think that criminals used to obtain a firearms license before committing armed robbery. Looking at the figures they don't and at least now they don't have to either.

And what of these deactivated firearms that people like to collect, for example old guns from World Wars. Now they are banned, what difference is it going to make? Are all the criminals that use them going to hand them in? Me no think so.

"The police tell me these pre-1995 weapons are turning up more and more in gun related crime and I want to address these concerns to effectively eliminate the threat from our streets."

Oh really? You mean like the last gun law effectively eliminated real gun crime? Wait a minute...

Call me Brave

So Dave Cameron has been in the news today with his latest suggestion for tackling perpetual benefits claimants and that is to make them all do community work in order to get their wages (benefits). He is right that the benefits system needs a reform, however I am not sure this almost communist idea is the one that will do it.

Apparently benefits cost the UK £100 billion per year which seems like a lot, although I'm not really surprised when for those that are on benefits there is no incentive to try to get a job.

Benefits are the gold paving on the streets that many people crave. Get on benefits and you get all your dental and optometric care for free, you get a free house, a free car (in many cases as its cheaper than paying bus & taxi fares), free money and you can sit on your arse all day watching Judge Judy on Sky. If you aren't on about £20,000 you are probably better off on benefits when you consider all the free stuff you get.

Why would you get a job on minimum wage and be worse off than having no job? It doesn't make sense to me, and evidently not to those on benefits as they don't apply for jobs either. Indeed, a large percentage of those that apply for jobs in this area are Polish immigrants - it's the indigenous lazy Brits that are the ones claiming. People on benefits create jobs though - I daren't think how many civil servants are employed to administer the benefits system. In addition people on benefits create jobs for patronising wrong-righting, crime-fighting (maybe) talkshow hosts like Jeremy Kyle.

You have to bear in mind that people are on benefits either because they can't be arsed to get a job; they can't work due to disability; they have 5 million children by 3 million different partners or because they have criminal records, no qualifications and are on drugs.

They took an example of a mid twenties chav on the BBC News this evening and asked him what he thought of Dave's great new idea. He said he thought people on benefits already did community work and that many are on benefits because they can't get a job. He was obviously on drugs.

I have trouble being sympathetic to people like him because he ruined his own life by getting a criminal record and by skipping school. The result being a youth with no aspirations and no qualifications that is a drain on society. The kind of person that probably aspires to go to prison in order to get a better life. Making him do community work for his benefits wont solve the root cause of this guy's problems, wont make him any more appealing to an employer and wont make him any less of a drain on society. He will still be an unqualified convict.

I guess Dave is thinking that if those on benefits that are doing the community work they might think "hey! I could be doing the same amount of work in a proper job and get paid more!" Unfortunately when you get a job you lose all the stuff you were getting for free as well.

Dave also said he plans to punish people that refuse to work. How? He's not going to let them starve or kick them out of their council houses, so whats the plan? Send them to jail? It costs the state 40 grand a year to jail a single person but in this age of crazed judges that dish out completely bizarre sentences such as giving people that are a danger to society a community sentence and jailing an old lady for not paying her Council Tax I would not be surprised if jail was the threat.

I'm sure many on benefits would be glad to go there.