27th February 2015

Tendring Topics……on line

Is our economy safe in their hands?

            One of the main points of the Conservative Party’s election campaign is that the country’s economy is safe in their hands.  Vote for any party other than the Conservatives, they say, and you’ll have Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. Our economy – your money – is safe with David Cameron.   Well, I’m not all that keen on Ed Miliband but I really don’t think his economic policies are materially different from those of David Cameron.  It doesn’t seem to occur to either of them (or perhaps they’re both too scared of well-off voters to mention it) that cutting essential public services is neither the only nor the best way of reducing that deficit. 

The deficit is the difference between the government’s income and its expenditure.  Why not try increasing its income?   A penny on income tax would hurt no-one (even with the skewed-in-favour-of-the-wealthy income tax system we have today) and would have an instant effect on the deficit.  Instead David Cameron is talking about cutting income tax!  Both he and the Liberal Democrats are convinced that they’re doing a tremendous service to the poor by raising the level at which income becomes liable, thereby taking some low-paid workers out of the income tax system altogether.  Sometimes they say, ‘Out of the tax system altogether’, as though income tax were the only tax we all pay.

In fact, by raising the  threshold at which income tax becomes payable, they are helping everyone who pays income tax – but they are not in the least helping those whose income is already too low to be subject to taxation.

 One way in which the Government has wasted our money is in the maintenance of our Trident Nuclear Submarine ‘independent Nuclear Deterrent’.  It is not independent (can you imagine us using it – or even threatening to use it – without the OK of Washington?) and it hasn’t deterred any of the many acts of aggression that have occurred in the post-war years.  When the Falklands were invaded by Argentina neither our ‘nuclear deterrent’ nor our ‘special relationship’ with the USA were the least help to us.  Nor does everyone think that the lavish cost of an all-but-a-state-funeral of a politician who deeply divided the country and whose flagship ‘right to buy’ legislation is responsible for our current housing crisis, was money well spent.

Perhaps though the most absurd and obviously crazy way in which the Conservative dominated coalition government has frittered away our money has been the replacement of area Police Committees with directly elected ‘Police and Crime Commissioners’ with power to appoint and sack Chief Constables and to determine the general direction of police work though operational control remains, thank goodness, with the Chief Constables.   The former Police Committees were, so the coalition claimed, ‘undemocratic’.   How can one man or woman, elected by a tiny fragment of the total electorate, possibly be ‘more democratic’ than a committee, at least some members of which had been elected locally?

The obvious way to make the police answerable to the local public was to make them the responsibility of the local county or unitary authority council. They would elect some of their members to serve on a ‘Police and Crime Committee’ with the same responsibilities as those of Police and Crime Commissioners.  These police committees would be more representative of their whole area than any single individual could hope to be.  They’d also be much better able to co-ordinate police activities with those of other local or regional services such as education, social services, highways, and parks and gardens, for which the County Council or Unitary Authority is responsible.  What’s more, they’d cost less, which I would have thought would have been a prime consideration of our Prime Minister and Chancellor.

You’ll recall that the public showed its contempt for the whole idea of directly elected Commissioners (an idea imported from the USA) by failing to turn up at the polling booths.  Nationwide the percentage of those bothering to register their vote was the lowest recorded in any election – and Essex set a splendid example by having the lowest turn-out of the lot!

Of course there has always been the possibility that those of us who were convinced that the appointment of Police and Crime Commissioners was a costly mistake were quite wrong. There could have been a dramatic fall in crime and rise in the detection rate, and we might have all been sleeping easier in our beds in the knowledge that we had a Commissioner looking after our interests.  Essex’s own Commissioner – Nick Alston - seemed a pleasant enough chap.  Perhaps he could work miracles.

Headlines in the local Daily Gazette suggest that he can’t; It’s official……crime is rising in Essex.   In fact, that is only partly true.  The number of domestic abuse cases rose from 9,222 to 10,825 in 2013 and there was 35 percent rise in prosecutions against Class A drug dealers. The solved crime rate fell to 27.63 percent.   On the other hand there was an 11.6 percent drop in the number of burglaries and there were 900 fewer incidents of rural crime.

 While the government exercises tight control of the purse strings there is little that either the Crime Commissioner or a Police Committee can do to reduce crime.  Mark Smith, chairman of the Essex Police Federation is quite sure that the politicians are to blame:

 It is quite clear that what we are being told by the politicians is not true.  They say crime is down.  It is not and we are not even recording new crimes like cyber crime and ‘grooming’.

We have already had cuts of £72.5 million and have heard that in the next five years we are going to have to save another £80 million. We will probably lose 200 officers this year, so we will have gone down from 3,600 to 3,000. In five years there will only be about 2,000 if the cuts go ahead.

I’m not a great Ed Miliband fan and intend to vote Green in the General Election. However I’d support Ed Miliband’s promise that a future Labour Government would put more coppers on the beat and pay for the change by scrapping those expensive and largely impotent Police and Crime Commissioners.

Yet another NHS reorganisation?

In this blog I have again and again criticised the action of successive governments – both Conservative and Labour – of stripping local authorities of the powers and responsibilities that were theirs in the 1930s.   When in 1937 and aged sixteen, I stepped onto the very lowest rung of the staff ladder of Ipswich Corporation’s Public Health Department in 1937 the Department was responsible for a General Hospital, an Isolation Hospital (infectious diseases like diphtheria and scarlet fever were much more common, and deadlier, in those days), a Maternity Home and a Tuberculosis Sanatorium. The department was also responsible for the domiciliary midwives and district nurses and the school medical service, as well as the environmental health services for which it is responsible today.  There may well have been other services of which I was not aware.  I was very young, on the very lowest staff level – and my local government career was interrupted after just two years by the outbreak of World War II!

After the war I was older and, I hope, wiser than I had been.  I was one of the returning servicemen who voted for Clem Attlee’s Labour Government – but I was a little dismayed when all those local health and medical services were taken over by the NHS.  However I thought that the advantages of a truly National Health Service outweighed the disadvantages, and – until the last year or so – I have had no reason to think otherwise.   I wasn’t impressed with the Government’s last NHS reorganisation.  It sounds wonderful to make GPs responsible for all their patients needs – seeing a consultant, getting a bed in a hospital and so on.  But GPs are fully occupied examining patients, treating them and passing them on to consultants when necessary.  They really didn’t have the time for administrative work.   I wrote in this blog that they were getting rid of one layer of bureaucracy and replacing it with dozens of smaller layers as GP practices took on extra staff or formed consortiums to deal with this work.  Now it seems the Government is really trying to localise the Health Service in at least one part of the UK.  They are making the local authorities that comprise Greater Manchester a single comprehensive Health and Welfare Authority, responsible for both Health and Social Services.  It sounds a brilliant idea but there are several matters on which I’d like further clarification.

The government will fund this new authority.  This government isn’t famous for its lavish support of public services.  Will there be adequate funding?

He who pays the piper calls the tune.  Are we quite sure that this new authority will not find itself directly under the thumb of bureaucrats in Whitehall?

Just now the new authority will be under democratic control by elected councillors.  But I understand that within a few years the area will have an all-powerful ‘Mayor’.  Will a Mancunian equivalent of Boris Johnson dictate Health Service policy?

   Services inside the new authorities’ area will inevitably be different (not necessarily either better or worse) that those outside.  What will happen when someone complains that ‘That woman over the road got into hospital immediately.  I’ve been told I’ll have  to wait two months – it’s just a post code lottery?'

      

           

24 January 2015

Tendring Topics………on line

Keeping things ‘in proportion’

          I am not one of Lord Mendelson’s greatest admirers.  He was one of the creators of New Labour which, to win elections, surrendered the Labour Party’s soul and converted British politics into a pale imitation of the politics of the USA. There is precious little difference between the objectives of the two main parties.   They only differ in how best to achieve them.  In office Tony Blair, Lord Mendelson’s friend and political colleague, continued the process begun by Mrs Thatcher of turning the UK into a Prime Ministerial dictatorship.

            However, I am inclined to be on Lord Mendelson’s side in his current disagreement with Ed Miliband and his shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.   It is, I think, shameful that multi-millionaires in this country are likely to pay a much smaller proportion of their income in taxation than those whose income is so low that they pay no income tax at all, but do have to pay the government every time they buy an object or service that is subject to VAT or purchase something that is subject to customs duty, like a packet of cigarettes or a pint at a pub.  Multi-millionaires also, of course, pay a much smaller proportion of their income in taxation than do those mythical beings who David Cameron always claims he is eager to help – average hardworking wage earners who pay income tax and, of course, the indirect taxes and custom duties that this government prefers

Ed Miliband’s mansion tax may not be intended to be a one-off tax to help the NHS – or any other good cause – out of its current crisis, by taking a few hundred thousand pounds from the bank accounts of the super-wealthy, but that’s how it sounds.  I think that the government should be fair to both the wealthy and the poor by claiming an equal percentage of the gross income of all of us to fund public services.   The obvious way to do this is by means of the income tax system, the only tax that is linked to ability to pay.  I think we should consider it not as an imposition but as a privilege to pay our annual subscription towards the not-inconsiderable benefits of being a British Citizen, or towards our permission to live and work within the UK.  We would then all have an equal stake in the prosperity or economic failure of our country.  We really would be all in this together!

            Income tax is the obvious means that a government could use to level the economic playing field but another way that would help to do this would be – as Lord Mendelson suggests – adding additional tax bands to the Council Tax system.

            Blog readers past the first flush of youth will recall the ‘bad old days’ in which local authorities, County, Borough and District Councils raised part of their income by means of ‘the domestic rates’.  These were an annual charge on each dwelling within the district.  Nobody enjoyed paying them but they were based on the estimated rental value of the property. They therefore had at least a rough relationship to the income of the occupier of the occupier or occupiers

Mrs Thatcher’s government changed all that.  Instead of the rates we were to have a ‘community charge’ (almost instantly rebranded ‘the poll tax’) which taxed each individual equally regardless of whether that individual was a millionaire or a refuse collector.  It took no account whatsoever of ability to pay. The rating system may have been disliked but the poll tax was actually hated.   It was just such a tax that had provoked the medieval ‘peasants revolt’.  In the late twentieth century it produced wide-spread demonstrations, riots and the eventual fall of the Thatcher government.     

The Poll Tax was replaced by the ‘Council Tax’. This is based on the estimated purchase value of the property and therefore makes a pretence of bearing some relationship to the income or wealth of the householder.  Properties are classified as being in one of eight ‘tax bands’, the lowest of which is under £40,000 and the highest £320,000 and above.  A glance will make it clear that those bands are hopelessly out of date.   I suppose for £40,000 you might, just possibly, get some kind of a shack in an area like the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick  just a couple of miles from my home – but that estate has been declared to be the most deprived area in the UK!

At the other end of the tax bands the situation is even more ridiculous.  The highest tax band for Council Tax is £320,000 and above. I agree that in the Clacton area you would get a very nice property for £320,000 – but not in many other parts of the UK

Do you ever watch ‘Escape to the Country’ ­on BBC tv.   Briefly it’s about very fortunate (and often very hard working and gifted) folk who have made a fortune in London, or Manchester or Sheffield or wherever and are now seeking a residence ‘in the country’.  A BBC presenter introduces them to three or four ‘desirable residences’ in the area of their choice.   It’s not a programme I like to watch.   I have spent too much of my professional life trying to help people who are homeless, or overcrowded or living in squalid conditions, to enjoy seeing well-heeled folk looking over a luxurious home and complaining that ‘the view isn’t quite what we’d hoped for’ or ‘the paddock isn’t really big enough for Rosalie (their spoilt brat!) to exercise the pony we’ve given her for her birthday’.

It’s very unusual for one of those very comfortable and very desirable homes ‘in the country’ to change hands for as little as £320,000.   That sum would probably buy a roomy three bedroom home in one of London’s more pleasant suburbs.  That means that an executive officer of a biggish enterprise or a middle-grade civil servant, living in a comfortable but hardly palatial home in Cheam or Twickenham would pay exactly the same Council Tax as the owner of a ‘Downton Abbey’ or similar stately home or family mansion.

There should be at least three higher tax bands, ending at homes valued at £2 million pounds or more, to bring something like fairness to the Council Tax system. The Council Tax bands, like the income tax system, need urgent reconstruction to make sure that those who have done best from our market economy should pay at least as big a proportion of their wealth in tax as those who have been less fortunate.

A trusted ally – or a ‘pariah state’?

In recent months I have been quite proud of the fact that I am a member of the Church of England as well as of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).   I welcomed the Church’s decision to ordain women as Bishops as well as Priests.   I have applauded the Archbishop of Canterbury’s campaign to replace ‘pay day lenders’ with local ‘credit unions’ and his criticism of economic policies that have led to the proliferation of Food Banks throughout the UK.

That enthusiasm suffered a severe blow this (23^rd January) afternoon when I learned that, to comply with government guidelines, the authorities of Westminster Abbey would be flying our national flag at half-mast in mourning for the King of Saudi Arabia.  It suffered a further blow with the news that the Prince of Wales (a future ‘Defender of the Faith’) together with our Prime Minister were to fly to Saudi Arabia to express their condolences.  I suppose that the Prince is aware that any expression of the Faith that he will pledge himself to defend is strictly forbidden in Saudi Arabia and that any Muslim in that country who converts to Christianity is likely to be executed!

Saudi Arabia’s disregard for democracy and human rights makes North Korea seem like a liberal Paradise!  Torture is routinely practised in Saudi gaols and public executions, amputations and floggings are daily occurrences.  The case of a blogger who considered the possibility that Saudi Arabia might become a secular state and who is being publicly flogged with fifty lashes every Friday until, if he survives long enough, he has received a total of 1,000 lashes, has recently made the press headlines.  Women in Saudi-Arabia are said to be much more free than they were a decade or so ago – but they are still forbidden to drive cars or leave their homes without a male escort (husband, father or brother).

Most of those involved in the 9/11 outrages in New York were Saudis.  Saudi Arabia is the home of the noxious fundamentalist Islamic faith that IS (the Islamic State) is trying to impose in Syria and Iraq and that Boko Haram is imposing, even more blood-thirstily, in sub-Saharan Africa. Donations from oil-rich Saudi millionaires financed IS during its early days. They possibly still do so.

Do we really need oil (and arms sales) so badly that we are prepared to befriend a state whose philosophy is the exact opposite of the British values that David Cameron and his colleagues are so eager to propagate?

   

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.

           

           

29th November 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

'That’s the way the money goes…….'

        .  I was mildly surprised last week to get a communication from H.M. Revenue and Customs telling me, in some detail, how much money I had paid to the government in income tax during the last financial year and how that money had been spent. To make sure that I read it, the document announced in bold print This is for your information.  You do not need to contact us as this is not a demand for payment.   That was quite a relief.   

          It really was an admirable, easily readable and enlightening document and I understand that all income-tax payers will get one every future year.  On the one side was a summary of my taxable income during that year (state pension plus public service pension), how much of it was subject to income tax at the basic rate (20 percent), how much had been deducted from my total income and how much was left.

            On the other side was an estimate of how my contribution had been divided among fifteen sources of public spending.  The biggest was Welfare to which I had, so it seems contributed £513 and the very least (which must come as a surprise to Ukippers) was £24 for overseas aid and just £16 towards the UK’s contribution to the EU budget.  I don’t grudge a penny of it because I know that I’m extremely fortunate to have an income large enough to be liable for income tax.  By its very nature the payment of income tax, which is a relatively small percentage of total income, never has, nor ever could, result in homelessness or serious deprivation to anyone.

            But, of course, income tax is by no means the only way in which the government extracts money from our bank accounts, wallets and purses.  During the Thatcher years and continued by New Labour there was a shift from ‘direct taxation’ – income tax and death duties – to indirect taxation (they’re called ‘stealth taxes’ by political parties when in opposition!) such as VAT and customs duties.  They are regarded as ‘fairer’ by the wealthy because they do not depend on ability to pay.  The ‘rich man in his castle’ pays exactly the same amount of VAT on most goods or services and exactly the same customs duties on his petrol or bottle of Scotch as ‘the poor man at his gate’.  It will, of course, be a much larger percentage of the poor man’s income than that of the rich man – but that’s just his tough luck.

            Often we’re hardly aware that we’re paying 20 percent more on our bills for goods or services and that that 20 percent is going to the government in Value Added Tax (VAT).  When it’s a big bill though, we become aware of it.  A couple of years ago, for instance, I had to replace my existing central heating boiler with a new one.  Taking out the old boiler and fitting the new one cost £3,000.  Twenty percent of £3,000 is quite a lot of money and I bitterly resented having to pay the government for having carried out essential work on my home.  It would, of course, have been exactly the same had I paid for mending a leaking roof or repaired a car or a bike needed for work!  That extra 20 percent is just petty cash to the millionaire banker with his Rolls.  It’s a lot more than that to the workman with his car or bike

VAT is the most obvious indirect, or ‘stealth’ tax, but it is by no means the only one.  We contribute to the government’s coffers whenever  we fill up our car with petrol, buy a packet of cigarettes, some cigars or some tobacco, buy a glass, bottle or can of beer, cider, wine, whisky or any other alcoholic drink,  take a flight in an aircraft whether on holiday or for business, or are silly enough to buy a lottery ticket or a scratch card in the vain hope of winning the fortune that we know we’ll never acquire by hard work.  That’s how it is that someone who pays little or no income tax may in fact pay a bigger percentage of his or her meagre income back to the government than does a fat-cat higher-rate income tax payer.  I am not a teetotaller but I no longer drive a car and no longer fly away on holiday.  I don’t smoke and I have never bought, nor do I intend ever to buy, either a scratch card or a lottery ticket.  I don’t avoid indirect taxes altogether (that must be really difficult!) but I have reduced my payments to a bare minimum.  

Indirect taxation barely gets a mention in the Annual Tax Summary that I have received.  I am advised ‘For more information or for a list of indirect taxes such as VAT go to our web site; www.gov.uk/annual-tax-summary.  That yields little more information that the fact that VAT is currently 20 percent but that there is a lower rate for some items and other items, of food for instance, are VAT exempt.

One small piece of information on the Annual Tax Summary that particularly interested me is that the amount that I paid in income tax during the year was just 10 percent of my taxable income, so that for every £1 of taxable income I paid 10p in income tax.   That’s a tenth (or as they used to say ‘a tithe’) of my income – and that’s the proportion of everyone’s income that the medieval church expected to receive from from its members.  It is interesting to reflect on the fact that the medieval church then undertook many of the responsibilities that we now consider are those of the government – education, helping the poor, the provision of hospital services for instance – as well as, so it was believed, holding the keys of Heaven and Hell.

I reckon that today, if everyone (including Richard Branson, Lord Sugar and the like) paid a tenth of their income to the government as I do, George Osborne would find that ‘deficit’ that causes him so many headaches, disappearing without the need to penalise the poor and the disabled.  I believe very strongly that all adults, rich and poor alike, should pay the same proportion of their income to the government as a universal tax (or annual subscription for citizenship of the United Kingdom).  Furthermore that tax should be levied on gross income, before the taxpayer has a chance to channel it into offshore accounts or charitable trusts or some other tax avoidance dodge.

It should also be levied on all state benefits and allowances.  Currently the state retirement pension is taxable but other state benefits like children’s allowances, winter fuel allowances for pensioners, the cost of free tv licences, an estimate of the cost of free prescriptions, attendance allowances, job seekers allowances and so on are all tax free.  Under the present system, if these benefits became taxable those who pay no income tax would continue to get all those services free and unchanged, while those who do pay income tax would pay just a little bit more – but certainly not enough to cause serious deprivation.  I personally would have to pay extra tax amounting to one tenth of my winter fuel allowance, my free prescriptions, my tv licence and the attendance allowance I get for my very limited mobility.  None of that would distress me if I could be assured that top bankers and their equivalent in other fields of activity were paying the same proportion of their gross incomes as I was.

Ideally, I’d like to see every British adult – the wealthiest and the very poorest – paying this universal tax of the same proportion of their income.   This would mean that the minimum wage, job seekers allowance and other subsistence allowances would need to be increased so that recipients could pay their proportion without their being rendered either homeless or hungry.

Then that shameful gap between the wealthiest and poorest in the land would be seriously reduced, we would be a true ‘commonwealth’ and we could truly claim, to quote George Osborne,  to be all in this together.  Yes, I know I have said all this before – and I’ll no doubt say it again because it is so important for Britain’s future, if Britain is to have a worth-while future.

'What's in a name?  That which we call 'a rose' by any other name would smell as sweet'

      So asked the love-lorn Juliet in one of Shakespeare's best-known tragedies.  Her family, the Capulets, thoroughly detested that of Romeo, the Montagues.  I am quite sure that neither family, dislike each other as they did, ever thought for a moment of sneering at them as 'Plebs'

I am astonished at the importance that has attached itself to the word 'pleb' in the long-running 'Plebgate saga'.  My trade is words.  The only real skill I have ever possessed is that of stringing words together to create a readable narrative. I thought too that, thanks to seven years as a gunner in the Royal Artillery including three as a POW in Italy and Germany, I was familiar with every word of abuse in the English language, and quite a few in Italian, German and Russian. I feel almost ashamed to admit that until I learned of the heated exchange between the government's then chief whip and the policeman on duty at the gates in Downing Street, I had never heard the word Pleb used by anyone.  It is presumably short for Plebeian the name given to the underclass in Ancient Rome; not much of an insult really.  After all, it was those Roman plebs who did all the hard work and the fighting that made Rome great.

Perhaps I'm just showing my age by suggesting that I would have expected one of the Eton-and-Oxbridge 'upper class' to display his anger and contempt for someone he regarded as of the ignorant lower classes by referring to or addressing him as 'an oafish Oick!'    Now had I been that affronted copper, that is a phrase that might have found me searching my mental vocabulary for an appropriately insulting response!

But 'pleb'?   Mr Mitchel really used much more offensive words than that during his fit of bad temper, but it's his use of 'pleb' that has cost him his job, lost him his libel action and is - according to press reports - going to cost him millions of pounds in legal fees!  In the 21st century there can be more 'in a name' than 16th century Juliet Capulet could ever have imagined possible.

!

           

           

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 28 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

A prophetic blog reader!

            A fortnight ago I published in this blog an email received from a regular reader on the subject of the jihadist extremists in the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and Africa.   It contained the following sentence:

The day surely cannot be far away when they succeed in overthrowing the government of a major country, or carve out a completely new country by annexing bits of other countries.

            Today it seems that that is happening.  The Isis invaders of Iraq and Syria have declared the areas that they have occupied to be a new Islamic Caliphate under their control in which ‘Sharia Law’ will be enforced.  The Shia Iraqi President desperately needs western help but apparently is not quite desperate enough to be prepared to widen his government to represent a truly united Iraqi nation.  That, he says, would be a negation of democracy – that word again.  It clearly means whatever its user wants it to mean!

            We have seen the inspiring spectacle of hundreds of young Iraqi Shia militia volunteers marching up and down with automatic rifles on their shoulders shouting words of defiance against the fighters of Isis.  I’m afraid they’ll discover that there’s a big difference between posturing at patriotic gatherings safe in the middle of Baghdad and actually facing a resolute enemy, with mortars and shells bursting all around you, comrades killed and wounded, and machine-gun fire sweeping the battlefield.

            I think it unlikely that 300 American troops can train an Iraqi army to a standard in which they can defeat those Isis fighters in the few weeks – or perhaps only days – available to them.  It would surely be disastrous for the UK or the USA to become more involved in this conflict than they already are. When we and the Americans withdrew our forces from Iraq after that disastrous and illegal invasion, I wrote in this blog that I thought it likely that within a few years Iraq would be divided into three separate states; an independent Kurdistan in the north, Shia Muslim with close ties to Iran in the south and a Sunni Muslim state in the centre.  It really took someone as ruthless as Saddam Hussein to hold those three opposing factions together.  Already there is virtually an independent Kurdistan in the north and it seems apparent that Sunni and Shia Muslims can’t and won’t live together in peace.  They’ll learn eventually (just as Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians in Europe eventually learned to live together) but we can’t, and shouldn’t try to, hasten the process by force of arms. 

            I wasn’t surprised to learn that very few members of this Isis Army that is trying to take over Syria and Iraq are actually either Syrians or Iraqis.  They are a hotchpotch of fanatics convinced that they’ve got God on their side, from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kosovo, Chechnia and, to our shame, from the United Kingdom and, no doubt, from wherever else there are Muslim communities with a few fervent jihadists or malcontents among them.

            But just as the members of Isis are from a number of different countries there is quite a surprising array of countries opposing them. I remember that when during World War II the Fascist government of Italy was overthrown and the Italians changed sides – we couldn’t bring ourselves to call them ‘allies’ – they were co-belligerents.  Perhaps we’ll have to use that expression again, though most of those concerned aren’t actually fighting yet.

            One that definitely is, is the army of President Assad in Syria.  We seem to have conveniently forgotten that Isis had its origins in Syria and was one of the groups that we were supporting in their efforts to topple President Assad.  The Syrian army is no doubt grateful that Isis has transferred its main attention to Iraq, but Isis definitely intends Syria to be part of its new Islamic Caliphate! 

Then, of course, there’s Iran.  It seems but yesterday that Iran was considered by ‘the west’ to be the centre of all evil in the Middle East.  'We' were quite sure they were  trying to make weapons of mass destruction (just as 'we' had been sure Saddam Hussein had been doing the same in Iraq!) and had to be stopped at all costs.  However Iran is now definitely keen to support Iraq’s Shia government against a Sunni invasion – and we’re welcoming that support.

Finally, Russia has supplied the Iraqi government with some second-hand jet fighter aircraft!   Who knows?  If Iraq has the trained pilots to fly them they could make the air strikes on Isis targets that Barak Obama is so reluctant to authorise, unnecessary.      

            What a muddle!  And most of it brought about by the interference of foreigners in the affairs of both Syria and Iraq.  I think it likely that if all those in Syria and Iraq who are not citizens of those benighted countries were to go home, the natives – those who haven’t yet either fled or been killed – would find a way of resolving their differences and living at peace with each other.

A footnote

Reviewing, in the Radio Times a tv programme about the 'Bay of Pigs' episode in 1961 that ended in total disaster, when the USA sponsored an armed attempt by Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and oust Fidel Castro, Gill Crawford quotes an unnamed US academic as saying: 'Every country has a right to figure out its own destiny......every time we intervene........we produce consequences that are ugly and resonate for generations'.

 If I may quote the Book of Common Prayer, I'd like every American President and every British Prime Minister, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, that quotation.

The Idol with Feet of  Clay!

            A recent story-line in Holby City  BBC 1’s popular hospital ‘soap’ related to a terminally ill man in his nineties who came into Holby City Hospital accompanied by his granddaughter in her late twenties or early thirties.  She obviously loved him dearly and was very proud of his Polish origins and of the fact that, after coming to England in the immediate aftermath of World War II he had worked in the Fire Service, saving the lives of others at the risk of his own.  He was brave, loving, kind and generous. He was admired, not only by his grand-daughter, but by all who knew him.

            Except - that research revealed that he wasn’t Polish at all but German, and as a young man during World War I he had been a member of Hitler’s dreaded Waffen SS.  He had been a guard at a concentration camp, where he had been feared by all for his cruelty and disregard for human life.  At the end of the war he had stolen the identity of a dead Polish prisoner, in whose name he had come to England and found work in the Fire Service.  Neither his English wife nor his grand-daughter had known anything of his Nazi past and that he was, in fact, a still-wanted war criminal.

            I felt something like the shock and horror and – in the first instance – disbelief, that the grand-daughter felt on learning of her well-loved grandfather’s past, when I realized that Rolf Harris, a tv personality for whom I had felt warm and sincere admiration, had for decades been an abuser of any personable young girl who had the misfortune to make his acquaintance.

            Somehow, although I was shocked at the endless string of offences of which Jimmy Savile is  said to have been guilty, I really didn’t feel the same about him.  My early 20^th century sensibilities had been suspicious of his hairstyle and his very professional showbizzy manner.  Although I watched several of his ‘Jim’ll fix it’ programmes  and had felt admiration at his apparent working as a hospital porter, I wasn’t all that surprised when he was revealed as having been a predatory paedophile.

            I really had been taken in by Rolf Harris though. He was just as much part of the ‘showbiz’ scene as Jimmy Savile but somehow he always managed to give the impression of being an extremely gifted amateur.  And he certainly was gifted, both as an artist (he wouldn’t have had the opportunity of painting the Queen had he not been) and as an entertainer.  He gave hours of innocent pleasure to thousands of viewers and listeners and, like Jimmy Saville, did a great deal of work for thoroughly deserving charities. He had even played a leading role in a film warning children of the danger of paedophiles!

            All of that though counts as nothing compared with the now-revealed activities that have led to his downfall and exposure as an abuser of young women and girls.  I feel desperately sad and sorry for Rolf Harris’ victims, and for the thousands who have seen their idol shattered. Was Rolf Harris' prison sentence too lenient?  I reckon that he found his very public shame and disgrace, after years of adulation, a harsher punishment than any number of years in prison.  There's a couple of lines from Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol that may come to his mind:

All that we know who lie in gaol is that the walls are strong,

And every day is like a year - a year whose days are long!

Supporting Clacton’s Tourist Industry

          It isn’t very often that I find myself eye to eye with our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell – a right-wing, climate-change-denying Europhobe; a Crypto-Ukipper if there ever was one!  However I am right behind him in his support of a campaign for the reduction of VAT payable on such tourist-specific items as accommodation in hotels, guest houses and caravan sites and on, for instance, the attractions on Clacton Pier, from the current 20 percent to 5 percent.               

            I believe that the Chancellor could recover the cost of this from income tax – perhaps by making all ‘state benefits’ (including the Attendance Allowance I get because of my very limited mobility!) subject to that tax.  It is the nature of income tax that no-one is ever asked for more than they can afford to pay, whereas VAT hits the poorest the hardest and the very richest the least because, of course, the VAT on any purchased goods or services is a much smaller proportion of the income of the wealthy purchaser.

            Clacton-on-Sea does not attract the very wealthy.  In fact it attracts precisely those whom the government claims to support – the hardworking man or woman who can just afford to take his or her family for a seaside holiday on Britain’s sunny east coast but for whom a few extra pounds one way or the other make all the difference. 

 .

                          

Week 13 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘The paths of glory………’

          Last week in this blog I discussed the approaching referendum on the future of Scotland.  All residents in Scotland over the age of sixteen (now that is a revolutionary change in electoral law!) will be given the opportunity to declare whether they want their country to remain part of the United Kingdom or become an independent sovereign nation-state.  The UK government has stated that the majority decision will be accepted and acted upon, whatever it may be.

            Just over a week ago a rather similar referendum was taking place in the Crimea about the future of that peninsula.  Crimea is a federal state of the Ukraine and voters were invited to declare whether they wished to remain part of the Ukraine or to become part of the Russian Federation.  That was certainly not an option that they were given in 1954 when Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Government had decided, presumably on the grounds of administrative convenience, that Crimea would no longer be part of Russia as it had been from the days of the Tsar, but of the Ukraine.  It had made little difference then, because both Russia and the Ukraine were constituent republics of the USSR.

             The referendum has been declared by Barak Obama to be ‘illegal’ (it may have been 'invalid', but how can establishing whether voters would prefer to be Russian or Ukrainian possibly be against any law?), William Hague, our verbally belligerent Foreign Minister described it as ‘a travesty of democracy’, and our Prime Minister has declared colourfully, but with no evidence whatsoever, that the result was obtained 'under the barrel of a Kalashnikov!'  I have seen no reports of ballot-rigging, multiple voting, or bullying of potential voters, as there have been after elections in Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East and Africa. We can be quite sure that any such reports would have been given full publicity by the Russo-sceptic press. The pro-Russian majority of 96 percent established what had already been made obvious  The way in which the Crimeans had welcomed Russian troops and had voluntarily displayed Russian flags; provided ample evidence that the population of Crimea preferred a future with Russia rather than Ukraine.    Since ethnic Russians are said to comprise only some 58 percent of the population of Crimea, that enormous majority suggests that quite a few ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars also voted for the Russian option.

            It would be that sort of majority we would expect to get if the inhabitants of Gibraltar were asked if they wanted to be citizens of the United Kingdom or of Spain  – and for much the same reason.

            Russia’s subsequent ‘annexation’ of the Ukraine has been described as an illegal ‘land-grab’. Perhaps it was, but it was surely unique in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the land that was ‘grabbed’ had wanted it to happen. It has also been unique in the fact that so far (even, it seems, after the forceful Russian take-over of the Ukrainian naval base reported this, Monday 24th March morning)  has been achieved with remarkably little bloodshed – less bloodshed, in fact, than in the violent demonstrations in Kiev that had preceded the Russian action.

            I recall that when it was decided to support the separatists in Kosovo (where I doubt very much if a referendum would have revealed over 90 percent of inhabitants wanted to break away from Serbia) the campaign included the RAF's bombardment of Serbia’s capital, the City of Belgrade.  When the UK government, after deceiving parliament and the British public about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, decided to join the USA in enforcing a regime-change in Iraq, the campaign began by inducing ‘shock and awe’ with terror air-raids on Baghdad.  As a direct result of that illegal invasion thousands of innocent lives were lost. Iraq is still a divided country in which terrorism flourishes; the same terrorism that perpetrated 9/11 and had been unknown in Iraq prior to our invasion.  I really don’t think that Crimea faces a remotely similar future.   I have referred in earlier blogs to the USA’s illegal blockade of Cuban ports, the use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War and the totally unprovoked invasion of Grenada in the West Indies (then part of the British Commonwealth!)

            No doubt Russia has broken international rules by recovering its lost Crimean province without having first attempted negotiation, but ‘Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone!’

            I was not impressed with Vladimir Putin’s triumphal announcement of Russia’s recovery of Crimea in the Russian Parliament. Painstakingly staged, it resembled too closely George Bush’s premature announcement of victory in Iraq from the bridge of a US aircraft carrier.  All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Successful leaders surround themselves with flatterers who feed their egos and lead them on into folly. To suggest that Putin is another Stalin is ridiculous, but I do think that he may see himself as ‘Vladimir the Great’, a worthy successor of the Romanov Tsars.

            He has promised ‘to put the glory back into Russia’. I can only hope and pray that the eight million Russian dead of World War II remind him that the paths of glory lead but to the grave.  The rest of the world's leaders, every one of whom is too young to have personal memories of World War II, also need to remember it.

The Budget

          I once would have described myself as a ‘democratic socialist’. I was for a short while a member of the Labour Party and was, in fact, accepted as a Labour candidate for a county council election.  How glad I am now that I withdrew my candidature, believing that I could do more for the causes that I support in my weekly Tendring Topics column in a local newspaper, than in the Council Chamber at Chelmsford, where I’d have been expected to toe the party line.

            One of those causes (regular blog readers will probably be all too familiar with some of the others!) arises from my conviction that many, perhaps most, of Britain’s problems arise from the enormous and ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society.  To the New Labour Party’s shame that gap widened during their ten years in office and has continued to widen ever since.   I think that I am well qualified to comment on this subject because my own income and possessions are sufficient for my life style. At 92 the opportunities for extravagant living become somewhat limited! I have no desire for more than I already possess – and I certainly wouldn’t be happy with much less.  I now describe myself, not as a socialist but as an egalitarian and I don’t much concern myself with how greater equality could best be achieved. In some fields public ownership (either national or local) would probably be the best way forward, but co-operative ownership and employer/employee partnerships may also have a valuable part to play.  I support – very modestly – the Equality Trust www.equalitytrust.org.uk  that works toward that end.

 My idea of a ‘good Budget’ is one that narrows the gap between rich and poor and a ‘bad Budget’ is one that widens it.  It follows that it is many years since I have seen a ‘good Budget’ and I despair of ever seeing one produced either by our present government or any currently conceivable successor.

Both parties in the coalition government are eager to claim the credit for taking ‘millions of low paid workers out of the tax system altogether’ by raising the personal allowance (the level at which income tax becomes payable) from £10,000 to £10,500 a year.  It does, of course, help low earners but it also helps everyone who pays income tax (including me!) right up to those on £100,000 or more a year.  What’s more it perpetuates the false idea that there’s a hard-working group of ‘tax payers’ whose labours subsidise an underclass of non-taxpayers.  It’s not true.   The non income-tax payer pays tax (VAT) every time he has his car, or his bike or his house repaired.  He pays tax every time he buys himself a pint, fills up the petrol tank of his car or motor bike, or is foolish enough to buy a lottery ticket or scratch card, to put a few bob on a horse, or to play commercial bingo!   He probably pays a higher proportion of his income in tax than bankers or stock brokers with their inflated salaries and bonuses! 

Regular blog readers will know that I believe that every adult citizen, from the poorest to the wealthiest, should pay the same percentage of his or her gross income in income tax as their annual membership fee as a citizen of the UK – and that those who go abroad to escape that responsibility should automatically forfeit that citizenship.

A somewhat controversial feature of the budget would permit those who are saving for a pension on retirement to withdraw all or part of that ‘pension pot’ without financial penalty, at any time.  Fears have been expressed that ‘live-for-the-day’ fifty-year olds might draw out the lot and spend it all on a cruise to the Caribbean or a glorious boozy party, rather than leave it to  mature for a meagre pension that they may never live to enjoy!  I think there’s a much greater danger that responsible middle-aged people faced with a domestic crisis, might draw out a smallish sum from the ‘pension pot’ to deal with it, rather than go to a payday loan firm – or a loan shark.  No-one would criticise them for doing so -  but it wouldn’t take many such crises to empty that ‘pot’! 

I don’t think Mr Osborne and his colleagues realize how their policies have brought so many families to the edge of a financial precipice – and how little it could take to render them jobless,  homeless and relying on the local food bank for their survival.  But then I don’t suppose that the members of a government of millionaires who spend much of their time with fellow-millionaires can be expected to know much about the struggles and the anxieties of the less well off.