Week 40 2014

 Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the red flag……

          …….tucked away safely out of sight’.   That seems to be the message of Ed Balls, Labour’s shadow chancellor, at the Labour Party Conference.  Mr Balls appears to be determined to demonstrate that he’ll behave ‘responsibly’ with public money if Labour wins next year’s General Election.  He proposes to do this by emulating the policies of George Osborne with just one or two differences.  He is just as obsessed with reducing ‘the deficit’ as Mr Osborne and just as determined ‘to reduce government expenditure to do so’. 

 No, the government expenditure he has in mind is not the £100 billion pounds ring-fenced for those totally useless and vastly expensive Trident submarines pointlessly patrolling the high seas.  He is going to freeze increases in children’s allowances and, to prove that he really is the friend of working people, he’s going to remove the entitlement to winter fuel allowance of the wealthiest pensioners, reinstate the tiny tax increase on the incomes of the very highest earners, and impose a ‘mansion tax’ on the owners of stately homes valued in excess of £2 million!  Oh yes – he’s also going to pursue those who avoid paying their due amount of income tax; but (while they’re out of office) they all say that don’t they?

 Both Labour, and the Greens (with whom I agree about most things), seem determined to tax the wealthy simply because that’s what they are.  The Green Party promises that in the unlikely event of their forming a government they’ll impose a special ‘wealth tax’ to relieve the wealthy of some of their fortune.  Everybody also seems to imagine that by raising the tax threshold of liability for income tax and taking increasing numbers of low-paid workers ‘out of the tax system altogether’, they are doing the poor a service. Raising that tax threshold helps all income taxpayers.  The only folk it doesn’t help are those whose income is so little that they are already outside the income tax system. Freeing more people from income tax liability reinforces the myth that there’s a large tax-free underclass supported by hard-working tax payers!  In fact every one of us pays taxes in VAT or customs duties virtually every time we buy goods or services, especially when we buy tobacco, alcohol, or petrol, and every time we buy lottery tickets. That’s one of the reasons why I have never bought a lottery ticket or scratch card!    People not liable to pay income tax, may pay a larger proportion of their income through these indirect taxes, than do some income tax payers.

 I believe that income tax should be regarded by every adult as his or her annual membership fee for the very considerable privilege of being a citizen of the United Kingdom. It should be paid by the very wealthiest and the very poorest.  What’s more, paying that subscription should impose exactly the same burden on each one of us.  This could be achieved by making it an equal percentage of every adult’s gross income (before any of it can be salted away in ‘charitable trusts’ or overseas investments).   I reckon that a tax (membership fee) of 20 percent of every adult’s gross income would probably meet virtually all the government’s financial needs.   The actual percentage could be calculated each year.

Obviously 20 percent of a billionaire’s income would be a considerable sum while 20 percent of the minimum wage or the job-seekers’ allowance would be very little.   That minimum wage or allowance would need to be raised, to enable even the poorest of us to pay the ‘membership subscription’ without being reduced to starvation or homelessness.  Then everyone, rich and poor alike, would have a stake in our country’s future and get rid of the myth that hard-working tax payers support an ‘idle poor’. ‘The rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate’ would be making an equal sacrifice.

Basing taxation on a percentage of total income may seem revolutionary but there’s nothing really original about it.  The Church at one time demanded ‘a tithe’ (one tenth, or 10 percent) of everyone’s gross income. That was quite reasonable in an age when the Church provided many of the services (education, relief of the poor and so on) that are now considered the responsibility of the State. In the public services negotiated pay increases are always a percentage of the existing salary.  Thus, the Chief Executive and the junior clerk get the same percentage salary increase though, in pounds and pence, the former gets many times more than the latter!  

Percentage taxation isn’t going to happen overnight or even in my lifetime; probably not in my sons’ or my grandchildren’s lifetimes either.  There’s one obvious measure that could be introduced here and now to reduce that deficit without causing hardship to anyone. It would also, at a stroke, reduce the anomaly of the wealthy receiving benefits that they don’t need, without the need to submit claimants to always-hated ‘means testing’. 

This would be to make all state ‘benefits’ taxable.  Our state retirement pension is added to any other income we may have and is subject to income tax.  Why on earth should other benefits be tax-free?  Other benefits that could be made taxable include winter fuel allowance, free tv licences, social security payments, attendance allowance  (I receive that because of my poor and deteriorating mobility), children’s allowances and so on.

Even with our present income tax system it would be much fairer to both poor and wealthy than at present.  Those whose total income, even with the benefit, came to less than the threshold of the lower tax rate would continue to pay no income tax.  They would be unaffected by benefit becoming taxable.  Those of us who are better off would pay according to our income but no one would have to pay more than the appropriate rate on their taxable income.  Income tax never resulted, nor ever can result, in either starvation or homelessness – no-one has to pay more than he or she can afford to pay. Of course, it would be much fairer if the threshold for the highest rate of income tax were to be lowered or if, as I have suggested, everyone paid income tax as a percentage of their gross income.

But that, at present, no political party is prepared to endorse.

‘The tongue is an unruly member’

Says St James in his New Testament Epistle.  I certainly agree with that. It has been my over-active tongue that has got me into trouble in the past.  There was the time when I was Tendring Council’s public relations officer and I told the Chairman of the Council that……………..  No I won’t reveal the extent of my idiocy, and it was a long time ago!  Their tongues have brought embarrassment to people much more important than me.   Only last week they did so to both the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition. I think that the Prime Minister really should have known better.  

On the occasion of a meeting of business men and women in New York, he was overheard remarking to a former mayor of that city that H.M. the Queen had ‘purred’ when he had phoned her with the result of the Scottish referendum, and that she had shown great relief at the fact that Scotland would not separate from the remainder of the UK.  One of the reasons why the British monarchy has survived among a sea of republics is that the Sovereign, as head of state, never expresses a political opinion.  She is the confidante of Prime Ministers and can advise them in the light of her much greater experience of the national scene – but the content of any conversation with her Prime Minister, of whatever political persuasion, is never revealed by her and should never be revealed by the Prime Minister.

It is true that the Prime Minister’s gaffe was part of a private conversation and never intended to become known by the general public. However, its content should never have been revealed to anyone, certainly not to a foreign politician.

Ed Miliband’s tongue’s failure was one of omission rather than commission. He gave a stirring ‘leader’s speech’ to the faithful gathered together at the Labour Party’s annual conference – the last such conference there’ll be before next year’s general election.  It was a speech all the more effective for the fact that he made it without notes. 

Now I’ve done quite a lot of public speaking (on much less important issues and to far smaller audiences) in my time and I have always tried to speak without notes.  There’s no doubt at all that it is the very best way to connect to, and hold, one’s audience.  Sadly, on my way home I’d often think ‘that went down well but – oh dear, I forgot to make this, that or the other point that was of particular importance’

I reckon that Ed Miliband must have been having very similar thoughts – possibly even before the applause had died away.   If there’s one thing that the public feel the Conservatives do better than their Labour opponents it’s managing the economy, in particular reducing that deficit – the gap between government expenditure and government income.  If there’s one issue that accounts for UKIP’s meteoric rise in public popularity it’s their strong opposition to overseas immigrants ‘pouring into this country, taking our jobs and bankrupting our public services’.   I think it likely that the Labour Party has policies on both these issues – but sadly Ed Miliband, perhaps carried away by his own rhetoric – had temporarily forgotten all about them.  They didn’t get a mention!

Ed Miliband’s error was surely much less culpable than that of David Cameron – but I think it likely that it will do him and his party more long-term harm.

  

 

Week 36 2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

‘Underneath the Street Lamp…….’

          Last week in this blog I wrote of how a recent photograph of a Red Cross Parcel had brought back memories of my life long ago.  These were reinforced a few days later by a tv interview with Vera Lynne, several years older than me but still very active and living quite near those ‘white cliffs of Dover’ over which her metaphorical bluebirds can now fly freely! No-one, ex-service or civilian, who lived through World War II can ever forget her melodious voice on the radio assuring us all that ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day’ and that some day we and our girl-friends would again be, ‘Arm in arm together, just like we used to be.  Arm in arm with you sweetheart meant all the world to me’.

            I was reminded of another song of World War II that is not primarily associated with Vera Lynne (though she did sing an English paraphrase of it to its by-then-familiar tune)  It is the one song that became popular with the rank and file of the opposing armies.  Originally a German song, loved by the Afrikakorps and broadcast over the German forces radio in occupied Belgrade, it was first ‘captured’ by the British 8^th Army in the North African desert.  I understand that it was equally popular on the Eastern Front and that there was a Russian as well as an English version!

            It was Lili Marlene (the Germans spell her surname Marleen) derived from a poem entitled The Song of the Lonely Sentry’ written  in World War I, about a young woman who stood under the street-light by the gate of the barracks, waiting for her boy-friend to emerge. It did not have a happy ending. Her boy-friend, a young soldier, kissed her ‘beloved mouth’ in his dreams and vowed that when the cold mist of death overtook him he would return to that street-light ‘Wie einst Lili Marleen, Wie einst Lili Marleen’ (‘where once was Lili Marlene, where once was Lili Marlene’).

            It was a universal theme among soldiers of every nation on active service.  We all knew that some of us would never go home to our wives or girlfriends.  Out of my own artillery regiment of some 700 to 800 men, mostly volunteers still in their early twenties, 100 never returned. Needless to say it was not a message that the Nazi authorities wanted spread.  Goebbels tried to ban the song but General Irwin Rommel commander of the Deutsch Afrikakorps, then a popular hero, liked it and his will prevailed.   Its singer though, Lale Andersen, Vera Lynne’s German opposite number, was regarded with suspicion and forbidden to sing her most popular song on the radio.  She remained out of the limelight for the latter part of World War II.

            Browsing the internet with the aid of Google I was astonished to come across a statue of Lili Marlene, standing beneath a street lamp, on the German North Sea Island of Langegoog (according to Google it means ‘Long Island’ in the Platt Deutsch dialect).    It is, in fact, a memorial to singer Lale Andersen who lived for several years on the island and, after her death in Vienna in the 1970’s, was buried there.

            It is a fine and appropriate memorial but I have to say that the  attractive young woman sculpted there isn’t my idea of Lili Marlene.  My wartime memories of both England and Germany suggest that, at that time, no young woman of either country would have dreamed of wearing trousers, particularly on a date. 

Heather Gilbert aged 19, my ‘Lili Marlene’! A photo taken while I was overseas, and posted to me while I was a PoW in Germany.  Note the Royal Artillery Badge brooch which clearly says ‘my boyfriend is a gunner – hands off!’

I have two mental images of the Lili who waited under the streetlamp.  The first is of a young girl still in her teens wearing her best dress, perhaps a little faded after three years of war. Her trusting blue eyes anxiously scan the uniformed figures emerging from the barrack gate for a young man whom she hadn’t known for long but whose life she feels she is destined to share.  Yes, I am thinking of my own girlfriend as she was at that time. I believe that we all, British and German alike, saw something of our own girlfriends in that patiently waiting Lili Marlene!    

The other Lili of my imagination is older – in her early thirties perhaps; quite sure of herself and possibly wearing a well-cut raincoat over a tweed skirt, together with a beret, or perhaps a cap, at a jaunty angle.  She would have a friendly smile for everyone, with a surreptitious wink for one or two favoured ones, and a warm embrace for her evening’s escort.   She is perhaps the more likely Lili Marlene of the two.

            The sculpture is of a charming young lady – quite possibly engaged to an ambitious young lieutenant and destined (though not in those trousers) to grace the officers’ mess, delighting the colonel with her respectful smile and impeccable manners.   I don’t really think though that she would have evoked romantic daydreams in rank-and-file soldiers such as I was.

            She is clearly the sculptor’s vision of Lili Marlene - but she isn’t mine!

Nick Clegg – Champion of the poor?

          That is how he would undoubtedly like to see himself and that is how, before the general election, thousands of misled voters were persuaded to see him.  I was one of them!

            Now he has caused a flutter in the coalition dove-cote by making the suggestion that, on a purely temporary basis, the rich might perhaps be persuaded to make a rather larger contribution to the national economy than they do at present.  This suggestion, timid and half-hearted as it is, comes strangely from a politician who a few months ago raised not a discordant voice when the Chancellor of the Exchequer decided to reduce the tax liability of the very wealthy by lowering the top rate of income tax.

            Even this latest very modest suggestion has provoked a wholly predictable response from Chancellor George Osborne.   We mustn’t try to make the wealthy pay their fair share of the nation’s debt because if we do so they might up sticks and depart elsewhere, taking their wealth with them.   Does he really suggest that wealthy folk have so little patriotism and love of their country that they would desert it for a few extra millions?

I have an abiding memory of hundreds of young British men who, in 1939, voluntarily abandoned their careers for a paltry two shillings (10p) a day, and offered their very lives to their country when it was in peril. I can’t believe that seventy-three years later a substantial number of wealthy Brits would abandon their homeland when it is in economic peril rather than surrender to it a fair proportion of that wealth.  And is it not almost equally incredible that also-wealthy top politicians should consider that behaviour to be perfectly reasonable?  Surely great wealth can’t have quite such a corrupting influence.

Sir Walter Scott asked incredulously. Breathes there a man with soul so dead that to himself he hath not said, ‘This is my own, my native land?’   Today it appears that we could assure him; Well yes, there are quite a few of them.  They have all got a few millions safely tucked away offshore – and they are prepared to live anywhere in the world in order to hang on to every penny of them. Sir Walter concludes in his poem that, if there are any such wretches, they are destined to go to their graves 'unwept, unhonoured and unsung’.  I doubt if that thought bothers them much.

If it is indeed true, then ought not David Cameron and George Osborne be thinking of ways of stemming that defection, instead of simply shrugging their shoulders and regarding it as inevitable?  Is it right for instance, that those who have deserted their country to preserve their wealth, should continue to hold British passports, have the right to vote in our elections, and to enjoy the very considerable privileges of British citizenship?

 Once again I suggest that the main source of our national income should be a ‘citizenship subscription’, of say 20 percent of gross income, levied on every British citizen from the poorest of the poor to the wealthiest of the wealthy!  Then we will value and honour our citizenship and only then will the UK become a true ‘commonwealth’ and politicians be able to claim with truth that ‘we’re all in this together’.