13th January 2015

Tendring Topics…….on Line

The Jihad goes on!

          I don’t think that anyone who has read my previous blogs will accuse me of being indifferent to, or tolerant of, the murderous activities of Islamic extremists or jihadists, holy warriors as they think themselves. On the contrary, I think these activities are the biggest man-made peril facing civilisation today, and one of the most difficult to combat.  Our efforts so far, aimed at confronting the extremists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, only encourage undecided Muslims to rally to the jihadist cause. I remain convinced that only a movement from within Islam itself, authoritatively denouncing terrorist outrages as blasphemous and wholly evil, will lead to its downfall.

            The latest outrages in France have really stirred up public anger.  Millions, so the newspapers say, have marched and demonstrated in protest at the killings and in defence of ‘free speech’. Scores of the world’s political leaders have linked arms to demonstrate their unity in the face of the jihadist assassins.

            I wonder how many among those demanding ‘free speech’ have during the past few months, demanded the immediate resignation of an MP, or a local councillor, or a tv presenter because, in a moment of thoughtlessness, he or she has used a word or an expression that was perfectly acceptable during my childhood and early adulthood, but is nowadays pounced upon by self-appointed verbal vigilantes and denounced as either racist, antisemitic or homophobic. Are all of us really all that keen on unrestricted ‘free speech’ at all times for everyone?

  I wonder too how many of the political leaders who have denounced the jihadist assassins, have used, or acquiesced with the use of unmanned drones operated from a place of safety, to assassinate anyone they consider to be a threat to their country (and, of course anyone who happens to be in the immediate vicinity at the time!)   Are all our leaders totally opposed to assassination, including that of those whom (without due process of law) they decide is dangerous.

It doesn’t in any way excuse or minimise the guilt and enormity of the actions of the jihadist terrorists, for us and our leaders to ask ourselves whether we too are  without blemish

Four Months of Name Calling

          We’ve only just moved into the New Year and the Parliamentary General Election isn’t until early May. Already though, the first salvos have been fired by the major contestants in the political battle that will decide which of them will form the next government.   It is surely significant that neither Labour nor the Conservatives are promising us a bright future if we’ll only vote for them.  So far they’ve done no more than tell us what a disaster it will be if that ‘other lot’ achieve a majority in the House of Commons.

            Labour says that if the Conservatives are returned to power they will completely wreck the NHS.  Well – the Conservatives have been the dominant force in a coalition government for the past five years and, as I write, many hospitals are in crisis and, at least in the Clacton area where I live, it has become increasingly difficult to get an urgent (or even a non-urgent) appointment with the doctor of your choice. I certainly have less confidence in the NHS than I had five years ago. 

The Conservatives, on the other hand, say that they’re the only party that can be trusted with the economy.  If Labour were to be elected Britain’s finances would soon be in utter chaos.   They might even forget to try to reduce ‘the deficit’. As they’ll gleefully point out, Labour Leader Ed Miliband had forgotten all about it in his final stirring speech at the 2014 Labour Party Conference!

            As for the Liberal Democrats – the best they can hope for is a ‘hung parliament’ in which they’ll be asked to help form a coalition government.  I think they’d be prepared to coalesce with either the Conservatives or Labour.  They’re happy to attack both and claim that, in another coalition government, they would curb the excesses of either party.  The results of European election and recent parliamentary by-elections suggest to me that they won’t get that opportunity.  I voted Lib.Dem in the last General Election but I’ll never do so again.  I am sure that I’m not alone in that.

            Both of the main parties (and the Lib Dems will string along with any policy that will bring in a few votes) have, in fact, the reduction and eventual elimination of the deficit – the gap between government expenditure and government income – as one of their main objectives.   Both seem to imagine though that the only way to do this is to cut government expenditure.  During the past five years the Conservative led coalition has done this relentlessly.  Hence, our pot holed roads, failing educational, health and social services and growing queues at the Food Banks.  They have cut expenditure on our armed services too – but instead of going for the obviously wasteful and totally ineffective Trident Submarine fleet (if it ever does go into action it’ll be ‘goodbye civilisation and goodbye us!) they have depleted the army that even in peacetime can help us out when some private enterprise fails to provide the public service that it promised. The government still hasn’t learned that we’re distrusted and disliked throughout the Middle East and that we should keep our, now depleted, armed forces out of that area.

            The other, and I think by far the best way to narrow that deficit is by means of taxation – not the indirect taxes like VAT and customs duties on, for instance, petrol, alcohol and tobacco.  These disproportionately penalise the less-well-off.  Income tax is the one tax levied in accordance with our ability to pay.  A penny on each band of income tax would have a tremendous effect on that deficit and would drive no-one into poverty.   The state retirement pension is subject to income tax and I can’t understand why other state benefits such as Winter Fuel Allowance for the elderly, children’s allowance, free tv licences for the elderly, attendance allowance (that I get because of my now very limited mobility) should be tax free.  Those whose income is so low that they pay no income tax would be unaffected. The rest of us would find ourselves paying a little, not more than we can afford, for those benefits.

            Instead of this, politicians take a perverse pride in raising the threshold at which income tax becomes payable thus, so they claim, taking thousands of people out of the tax system altogether.  It only takes them out of the income tax system.  They still have to pay those indirect taxes (VAT and Customs duties) that place a much bigger burden upon the poor than on the wealthy.  MPs never seem to grasp the fact that raising the threshold at which income becomes subject to tax helps all income tax payers but doesn’t give even a crumb of help to those with really low incomes who do not pay any income tax anyway.

            At the end of the financial year those Westminster financial geniuses announce that they’ll have to make more savage cuts in public services because income tax revenues are less than had been expected.   Of course they are – because all income tax payers have had their payments reduced!

            Income tax could – and should – be used to reduce and eventually eliminate that deficit.  It would also reduce that other, to my mind much more worrying, gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and those of the poorest of our fellow-citizens.  We have the widest such gap in Europe and it actually widened during the decade of New Labour rule.  Statistics demonstrate that when that gap is narrowed, it is not just the poorest people, but the whole of society, that benefits.