Week 15 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

Reviving the Poll Tax?

          It was the introduction of a Poll Tax, a government demand for an equal sum per head from every adult without consideration of ability to pay, that provoked the Peasants’ Revolt in the 14^th Century, a revolt that was put down only by the treachery and cruelty  characteristic of rulers in ‘the age of chivalry’.

It was the Poll Tax (the government preferred to call it the Community Charge) that in 1990 finally led to Mrs Thatcher’s downfall as Prime Minister.   She had long promised to get rid of the rating system – raising a proportion of local government finance from a local tax levied on households calculated on their home’s estimated rental value.  It wasn’t popular (no taxation system ever is!) and by the 1980s was out of date. It had been years since there had been a revaluation.   However, imperfect as it was, the rating system meant that there was at least a rough relationship between the amount on the ‘rate demand’ (that was an unfortunate word if there ever was one) and the wealth, or lack of it, of the ratepayer.

            Mrs Thatcher abolished the rates and, as had been promised in her party’s election manifesto, replaced it with the Poll Tax levied equally on every adult resident in every flat, bungalow, dwelling house, mansion, or palace in the local authority’s area.  The rate per head (per ‘poll’) was set by each local authority.  There were modifications.  The unemployed paid only 20 percent of the local poll tax for instance but generally speaking ‘the rich man in his castle’ paid exactly the same as ‘the poor man at his gate’ or in his tied cottage or squalid tenement.  ‘What could possibly be fairer?’ –  that’s what the rich man in his castle asked!

            As in the 14^th century there was fury among the have-nots. There were protests all over the country and, particularly in London, demonstrations that evolved into riots.  Mrs Thatcher faced a revolt from her colleagues in government. She resigned as Prime Minister and Party Leader and was replaced by John Major.  He abolished the Poll Tax and replaced it with ‘Council Tax’, very similar to the old ‘rates’ except that there were ‘bands’ according to the estimated value of the property; undeniably less unfair, though still very generous to those in really palatial homes.

            Now, Lord Warner, a Labour Peer and one time Health Minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government is suggesting something very similar to the old discredited poll tax to fund the NHS which, he says, is facing financial collapse.

            He thinks it would be a good idea if every adult in the country paid £10.00 a month for their ‘membership of the NHS’ and their right to NHS services. He also suggests that adult patients should pay £20 a night for stays in hospital.  There are a number of exemptions including us pensioners!  I’d like to think that this is out of genuine concern for the old and not just because all politicians (including those who have safe seats in the Lords) are aware that it is us greybeards who actually bother to vote at elections.  We’re the ones who can decide election results. 

            Supporters of Lord Warner’s idea say that there’s a black hole of insolvency in the finances of the NHS – and how else is it to be filled?   I believe that this can be done, without reducing anyone into either homelessness or starvation, by using the income tax system.  Income tax is the one form of taxation that, by its very nature, can never reduce anyone to penury.  Thanks to the latest budget no-one whose taxable income is less than £15,000 a year has to pay it at all and even the highest rate taxpayers,  those with a taxable income of £150,000 a year or more, only have to pay in tax 45% of their income above that level.

            First of all I suggest that all state benefits – children’s allowances, disability allowances, job seekers’ allowances, attendance allowances, pensioners’ winter fuel allowances, free tv licences, NHS prescriptions and bus passes be added on to any other taxable income, and income tax at the appropriate rate charged.  The state retirement pension is taxable so why should other benefits be tax-free?    Those with an income below £15,000 a year (and there are plenty of those, both in and out of work) would be completely unaffected by this change.  The rest of us would have to pay a little extra.  I, for example would have to pay income tax at the standard rate on my winter fuel allowance, my attendance allowance (that I get because of my very limited mobility), my free tv licence and an estimate for the cost of my free prescriptions.  I wouldn’t have to pay it on the cost of my bus pass because my mobility is so limited that I can’t use one.  I think that that is all.

            I wouldn’t enjoy paying that extra tax, but it would only be a percentage of my total income and wouldn’t leave me either hungry or homeless.

            It may be that that reform alone would be sufficient to fill the ‘black hole’ in NHS finances.   If not, then an extra penny or two on income tax would certainly be unpopular – but not, I think, as unpopular as the imposition of a new ‘Poll Tax’ on every adult to fund the NHS.

            I am beginning to think that the big divide in our society is not between black and white, between atheists and believers, or even between rich and poor – but between those who believe that ‘fair taxation’ is achieved when everyone, wealthy and poor alike, has to pay the same amount (poll tax, VAT, customs payments and so on) to finance the purposes of central and local government, and those who believe that we should all pay the same percentage of our income   The strange thing is that those who are most opposed to taxation being based on an equal percentage of taxpayers’ income are those who are most insistent on percentage rather than flat rate pay increases!

‘We won’t play with you – so there!’ 

            That childish playground threat came to my mind when I learned from a tv news bulletin that, because of the Ukraine/Crimea crisis, NATO was ceasing all co-operation and ending all communication with its Russian equivalent.   I’d have thought that a time of crisis was just when it was important for the two sides to get together and each try to see the other’s viewpoint.  The Presidents of the USA and Russia have recently had an hour-long telephone chat and their foreign ministers have also met – sadly fruitlessly – but this is the time to try, try and try again!   It is not the time to draw apart, start to mobilise forces, and make vague threats.

            I had feared that, in suggesting that Russia’s claim to the Crimea might have some justification, I was a loan voice crying in the wilderness.  Agreement has come from unexpected areas. In an interview on tv, a right-wing American Republican Senator has affirmed from his visit to the Crimea last summer that most Crimeans were either ethnic Russians or wanted closer friendly ties with Russia.  He fears that NATO is dragging the USA into distant squabbles in which the USA has no interest.  I had thought that Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, was blinded by his Europhobia when he suggested that the EU was partly responsible for the riots in Kiev that had preceded Russia’s recovery of the Crimea. He had even found a kind word to say for Vladimir Putin, the current favourite bogyman of the press. However, a thoughtful email from a regular blog reader has made me wonder.  Here it is:

Crimea is a problem isn’t it?   I do think though there has not been much effort to see it from the Russian point of view. Putin sees the “enemy” – NATO – getting closer and closer – and in the end threatening to take over his main naval base.  The pattern is always the same; first of all the EU woos nations with promises of open markets, infrastructure investment, a stable currency etc.,  and then the NATO boys come in behind and sign them up to an organisation which was actually set up to confront the Soviet Union. So ‘annexation’ without a shot being fired has been a pattern of NATO for the last 2 decades.   As a result the Baltic States which border Russia and have large minority groups of Russian workers, become part of the enemy – in Putin’s eyes. Clearly he could see Ukraine going the same way, and I think he may have been right.  Even the EU trade deals will probably disadvantage Russia by cutting off its access to Ukrainian products.  He probably thinks Belarus might go the same way, leaving Russia isolated economically and militarily.   He comes over as “tough and dictatorial” but do you really imagine he could have secured his Naval bases in the Crimea by negotiation?

On top of that, the “democratic and legal high ground” is not all with the West. After all, the elected government of Ukraine was overthrow.  There has not yet been an election to confirm a new mandate, yet already deals with the EU are being signed. It looks very much as if when the Pro-Russian government came to power, the EU continued its discussions with an opposition that had no legitimacy. They thereby aided and abetted civil unrest. Now that Crimea is not part of Ukraine, remaining Ukrainians will probably vote to go West.  That might not have been the case while Crimea was still part of Ukraine.

  

The most important part of that email is right at the beginning.  No effort whatsoever has been made to see the Russian point of view.  Fortunately we do know how the USA would react under comparable circumstances.  In the Cuban missile crisis the then USSR wanted to put missile launchers on Cuba to protect it from the very credible threat of an invasion from the USA.  There had been such an attempt at the Bay of Pigs, that had been foiled.

            The siting of missiles capable of striking into the heart of the USA was sufficient for President John F. Kennedy to threaten the USSR with armed retaliation and the world with nuclear war.  Fortunately Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet President, was wise enough to communicate with John Kennedy, and to withdraw his missiles; but – no doubt as a result of that friendly chat between the two Presidents – there was no invasion of Cuba.

            ‘Treat others exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated’, is sound advice for Nations as well as individuals.   How many bloody conflicts might have been averted had governments followed that advice!

Late comment

I have this morning (7th April) heard on the tv news that there have been riots in several towns in the Eastern Ukraine.  The suggestion was made that Russian Agents had provoked them.  This just as likely (and just as unlikely) as the suggestion that British and/or American Agents provoked and encouraged the riots in Kiev and elsewhere in western Ukraine that led to the overthrow of the elected pro-Russian President.

I think the situation is a very dangerous one and I hope, for the sake of all of us, that both Russia and NATO will refrain from interfering and from encouraging either side.  Certainly this is not the time for threats or promises of reprisals or other 'consequences'.

           

                                                                              

           

           

           

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Week 27 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘The King was in his counting house, counting out his money’

            These days, of course, it wouldn’t be the king but the Chancellor of the Exchequer.   For me, Chancellor George Osborne lost all credibility and respect when, at the same time as introducing an austerity programme that penalised the poor and disadvantaged, he reduced the liability for income tax of the seriously wealthy; those with a taxable income in excess of £150,000 a year!   Quite apart from the flagrant injustice of penalising the poor and rewarding the rich, I find it incredible that any Chancellor of a country with a serious deficit problem should deliberately, and despite widespread protest, cut off a source of revenue. That the source consisted of very wealthy people who would barely notice the loss compounds the irresponsibility of the action.

             The Chancellor expects to be credited with ‘helping the poor’ when he raises the threshold of liability for income tax, thus ‘taking thousands of low-paid workers out of the income tax system altogether’. It isn’t only the poor who are helped.  Raising the tax liability threshold benefits all income tax payers, including the very wealthiest.  What’s more, being ‘taken out of the income tax system altogether’ automatically makes those affected into second class citizens, patronised by ‘we tax-payers who have to support a nation full of slackers and scroungers!

            Last week’s financial statement continued the tradition that the Chancellor and his colleagues have established.  Can they possibly really believe that the poor are to blame for their poverty and that that there is work in plenty available for those who genuinely seek it?  Extending to seven days the time that elapses before an unemployed person can sign on to claim job-seekers’ allowance suggests that they do.  Unemployed and penniless people and their families still need to eat, pay the rent, and buy other necessities during those seven days.  How else can those without savings do so without resorting to the ‘help’ of a loan-shark or one of those pay-day loans that are so deceptively easy to obtain and so very, very difficult to pay off.

            It isn’t likely that very many people will criticise the decision to deny the winter fuel allowance to elderly Brits. living in countries enjoying milder winters than those in the UK. It hadn’t even occurred to me that those who choose to live permanently overseas had been receiving it!  The countries affected are residents in European Union countries bordering on the Mediterranean, including France but excluding Italy.   At first glance that seems ridiculous. Surely winters in, for instance, Calais and Rouen must more closely resemble those in Britain than do winters in Naples or Palermo?

            Probably so – but the decision is made by a comparison between the average winter temperature in south-west England and the average winter temperature throughout the country concerned.   Italy’s average winter temperature is brought down by the permanently snow-capped Italian Alps and by the peaks of the Apennines extending down ‘the spine’ of Italy. I doubt if many, if any, ex-pats live among those peaks…………… but rules are rules!

            I really don’t understand why the Chancellor is so reluctant to use income tax to make winter fuel allowance and other benefits fairer, and yield revenue to narrow that deficit much more easily and painlessly than anything that he has done so far.  The state retirement pension is subject to income tax.  I can see no valid reason why all benefits (in fact, all sources of income) shouldn’t be similarly taxed.

            The only conclusion that I can reach is that the Chancellor’s political outlook, and that of his colleagues sees something morally wrong  in the idea that we should be taxed in accordance with our ability to pay.   A couple of pence in the pound on VAT or customs duty may lose a few votes, but it is tolerable because ‘the rich man in his castle’ and ‘the poor man at his gate’ pay exactly the same amount.  That clearly is the government’s idea of us ‘all being in this together’.

            A tax for rich and poor alike based proportionately on ability to pay?  Unthinkable – that’s the road to red revolution and the end of civilisation for ‘people like us’ (with a Rolls in the garage, a yacht in the marina, and a second home in Majorca).

            Mrs Thatcher must have had much the same idea when she replaced the rating system for the local financing of local government by the Poll Tax.   Rate demands had, admittedly very imperfectly, reflected the wealth or poverty of the householder.   The poll tax was the same for us all, the millionaire, the slum dweller and the rural cottager.  A late 14^th century version of the Poll Tax triggered the Peasants’ Revolt.  The late 20^th century version triggered revolt against Mrs Thatcher and her government and led to her eventual downfall at the hands of her own supporters. I think it unlikely that I shall still be around to see the eventual consequences in the 21^st century, of robbing the poor to make the wealthy even richer.

Clacton County High School

          My two sons were both pupils at Clacton County High School in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.  Both did very well there and I have always followed the progress of the school with a warm interest.

            I was very pleased therefore to read in the Clacton Gazette that the CCHS is in the top twenty percent of schools for raising pupils’ educational standards from admission at 11 to completing their GCSE examinations at 16.   Sue Williamson, chief executive of the Secondary School Admission Test education group, is reported as saying ‘Clacton County High School should be congratulated for their stunning performance in adding value to their students’ achievements.  It is one of the best schools in the country in outperforming expectations for their pupils and improving their future prospects.  There is plenty that other schools could learn from their success’.

            So far, so good.  It isn’t quite the whole story though.   On a back page of the same Gazette are to be found tables showing the percentage of pupils from each school and educational  establishment in Colchester and the Tendring District who went on to University or other Higher Education Institution.  These give a rather different picture.   Out of 110 school leavers from Clacton County High School 44 percent went on to Higher Education Institutions but only 6 percent went to the top third of these (that is, to a good university).  Not a single pupil from any school or other institution within the Tendring District gained admission to either Oxford or Cambridge Universities.  Things have been very different in the not-too-distant past.

  Peter Hall B.A.(Cantab) aged 21, on his graduation day. Selwyn College Chapel is in the background.  He was subsequently made an M.A.     

My elder son left Clacton County High School in 1970 at the age of 17, having sat and passed his ‘A’ level exams with outstanding results,. He had been  accepted by Selwyn College, Cambridge to begin his life there as an undergraduate from September 1971. He would then be just 18.  He spent his ‘gap year’ working in the store room of the Eastern Electricity Board HQ in Clacton, learning something of the ‘real world’ of work before he began his studies.  In 1971 he was one of  at least four CCHS sixth formers who became students at Cambridge University, all of whom graduated with honours.  Those four I knew about personally.  There may well have been others whom I didn’t know who started at either Oxford of Cambridge that same year.

       I don’t believe that young men and women of Clacton at the end of the 1960s were cleverer than those of the first decade of the 21^st century.  While it is possible that they were prepared to work and study harder (there certainly weren’t the distractions then that there are today) I think that their expectations and those of their teachers were higher, and that their teachers were more inspiring – and perhaps more skilled.

            Clacton County High School has proved itself brilliant at instilling a basic education into what may sometimes have been unpromising and perhaps resistant human material.  I believe though that the low percentage of pupils gaining admission to the best Universities – and none at all to Oxford and Cambridge – demonstrates that the school is failing its more gifted and hard-working pupils.   

           

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