Alex Salmond is right to move to block attempts by Labour councils to use the new voter registrations for the referendum to catch people for twenty five year old Poll Tax default. The truth is the Labour Party is motivated not by a desire to collect the tax, but by an intention to chase the newly enfranchised back off the voters register. The Poll Tax is universally acknowledged as unjustifiably inequitable and punitive on the poor – that is why it was abolished. The very idea of digging out these ancient debts is disgusting.
The Guardian report by Labour Party hack Severin Carrell states that
David O’Neill, president of the Scottish councils’ umbrella organisation, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), was furious, branding it “the oddest decision ever to come out of the Scottish government”.
Carrell fais to mention that O’Neill is a senior Labour Party politician. The referendum showed Labour and Tory to be united in Scotland. Seeing the Labour Party now determined to pursue poor people for Thatcher’s tax should drive home the lesson.
The Scottish National Party at Westminster voted unanimously against the current bombing of Iraq – which will cost the money to be saved by freezing desperately needed benefits for a year. Alex Salmond is not perfect, but again and again he shows himself the most senior politician in Britain who has some genuine beliefs founded in humanity, and acts upon them.
If this row is about encouraging or discouraging young people to register to vote, it may means that Labour thinks that the SNP will try for another referendum in a generation’s time when they will hope to win.
But there’s a difficulty. The future PM may decide not to allow a referendum and pass a law declaring Scotland to be part of the UK FOREVAH! Nyah hah hah hah hah! 🙂
Correction:
“forever.” (Omit caps and also the quotation following from Dick Dastardly, as it is irrelevant to the question of Scottish independence).
Voter registration going ballistic in Ferguson, Missouri. No poll tax.
Isn’t/wasn’t the Poll Tax illegal anyway, as it was unfairly introduced in Scotland a year before England et al. Also I think Tammany Hall, aka Glasgow City Council was one of the most vociferous collectors of the unjust Poll Tax.
As for the red Tories (Labour) they have already intimated the depths of cuts to come if they’re elected in 2015, they will easily match or surpass the Tories in ferocity.
Thankfully the SNP’s stock seems to be holding, and even growing to over 75.000 members. We need to use this surge to member elected in the future.
The Lib/Dems are in Glasgow today they are party in decline.
I can remember the running battles in Trafalgar Square in 1990 when the Poll Tax was introduced in England, the police charged into crowds on horse back in scenes that wouldn’t have been out of place at the Peterloo Massacre.
I don’t know whether what Matt Hancock’s tweet said about the sexual orientation of Labour politicians is accurate, but the rest of his tweet is apparently on the mark:
“The truth is the Labour Party is motivated not by a desire to collect the tax, but by an intention to chase the newly enfranchised back off the voters register.”
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“No taxation without representation” sparked off the American Revolution and is generally accepted as a mode of behavious between the gouvernors and the gouverned.
Surely, therefore, the opposite – no representation without taxation – must also hold good?
Why should it be alright for individuals ‘not to exist’ when it is a question of them paying the taxes under law, but for them to ‘exist’ when it is a question of them wishing to vote in the Scottish referendum?
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“The Poll Tax is universally acknowledged as unjustifiably inequitable and punitive on the poor – that is why it was abolished.”
For the purposes of what I’ve written above, this – even if true – is irrelevant. If the law provides for a tax to be paid, it has to be paid; there are no doubt enough people around who feel that their income tax – or VAT – are excessive, but that cannot be the criterion for deciding whether to pay it or not. Furthermore, taxation rates can be altered or taxes introduced or rescinded through the democratic process – as was the case with the PollTax, which was abolished after a while.
“between the governors and the governed” before someone evades the argument by pointing to the spelling.
People are permitted to protest against taxes.They can also refuse to pay tax.A Government cannot burden the populace with unfair taxes and expect total compliance.
Corporations don’t pay the tax they should,but have financial teams that find loopholes in the Laws.Tax avoidance is not uncommon.Refusal to pay unfair taxes is a right in my books and if you are paying income tax, which every working man does, then they are already tax payers.If they smoke and drink,they are super tax payers and are less of a burden on the state dying 10 years earlier than the norm.Taxed to the hilt and deserving of their representation.
“Non-taxpayers” must be included as voters, or unscrupulous governments will attempt to deprive people of their votes by depriving them of money.
People in prison must be able to vote for a similar reason.
But it’s a non-question anyway, as you’d have great difficulty finding anyone in Britain who doesn’t pay any tax. Even the people begging for change end up paying out some VAT.
IN any event, there already exists a “regressive” tax, known as VAT; various flat-rate imposts are also “regressive”. Left-wingers tend to disapprove of regressive taxes.
Why should local taxation also be a “regressive” tax which varies only by house band, rather than a progressive (and redistributive) tax like ordinary income tax?
A Guardian investigation has found that 11 councils, including Edinburgh, are planning to pursue unpaid poll tax dating back more than 20 years after 160,000 more people signed up to vote for last month’s independence referendum, pushing Scotland’s electoral roll to a record high of 4.3m.
LOL. The Scotch Nats are a bunch of Scofflaws.
@Pete:
The Poll Tax was repressive, iniquitous and unfair, it is utterly wrong that the Labour Party should have any part in trying to resurrect the collection of these outstanding debts.
In that case, shouldn’t councils pay back the poll tax they collected from law-abiding citizens. Or are you concerned only with fairness and non-iniquity to Scotch Nat Scofflaws?
Tax is in itself not a bad thing.Most of us part with quite a chunk of money gladly every month because we are informed it will be dispensed of on our children education,health,roads our society in general including our defence.Unfortunately just as in ancient Rome the bulk of the collected tax bypasses the citizens and ends up being spent on foreign adventures.It would be so much more pleasant if our politicians could learn something when they are at these posh schools along with sniffing cocaine and drinking too much.They don’t and therefore unfair tax and over taxation must occur to support their excesses and their lack of ability.When you begin to add up all the indirect taxes that we pay to satisfy the greed and stupidity of goverment it is quite frightening.There is always a point at which it goes pop,or bang.
“The Poll Tax is universally acknowledged as unjustifiably inequitable and punitive on the poor – that is why it was abolished. ” Well, perhaps, so why don’t they abolish V.A.T. then?
“Alex Salmond is not perfect, but again and again he shows himself the most senior politician in Britain who has some genuine beliefs founded in humanity, and acts upon them.” I was very impressed with Salmond years ago when he gave a speech on the eve of the bombing of the Balkans when the bright sparks in Washington, London and Paris decided to lend the K.L.A. (not long earlier a ‘terrorist’ organisation) N.A.T.O.’s air force. He didn’t just say what needed saying, he said it well – very well, actually. I wondered then what he was wasting his time with all this separatist tripe for. He could have been a major asset to this country if his concern for its people didn’t seem to stop at Gretna. However of late we have had the ‘currency union’ caper. This isn’t just a quibble! Surely he must have known how utterly absurd that policy was and how stupid it looked combined with and coming after his earlier policy of wanting to join the Euro. So why did he cleave to it? Why did he propose it in the first place? One can only assume that while he understood that it was nonsense, he was fairly secure in the belief that many of his voters didn’t and that he could finesse it past them. Thus he seems capable of playing exactly the same games with a gullible electorate that most other politicians play; so terribly, terribly sad!
It should be noted that the council which started this was Aberdeenshire. The SNP actually hold 27 council seats, but are in opposition because Labour, the Lib Dems and Tories formed a coalition to keep them out of power, pioneering the “We’re all in this together” approach which has solidified recently. Richard, the currency union was not all a caper. The reason he persued it was because he relied on the findings of a highly qualified group to lay out the proposals, with two Nobel Laureates in the group (including Joseph Stiglitz, who as a former head of the World Bank is extremely qualified to assess the self-interest which motivates both the statements and often contradictory actions of governments.) One can reasonably argue that the insistence on a currency union was open to political games, and perhaps not in Scotland’s best interest, but it’s absolute nonsense that it would have been rejected. If anything he underestimated gullibility. The public in England & Wales were certainly convinced that it would be against their interest, but the idea that the public have any influence on monetary policy is absolutely laughable. Even if all the politicians were convinced there is the Remembrancer to account for,and he certainly wouldn’t have permitted a refusal, as the pound would have collapsed without the backing of the oil alone. It was a ridiculous bluff, but certainly had the fatal flaw that if No won, it would never be called on it.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
3 Oct, 2014 – 5:49 pm
“No taxation without representation” sparked off the American Revolution…”
“Surely, therefore, the opposite – no representation without taxation – must also hold good?”
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A textbook non-sequitur Habbabkuk, well done!
Mr Scorgie
““No taxation without representation” sparked off the American Revolution…”
“Surely, therefore, the opposite – no representation without taxation – must also hold good?”
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A textbook non-sequitur Habbabkuk, well done!”
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Not really, Doug, but look at it as two sides of the same coin if you prefer.
Of course, to say “No representation without taxation” does not mean that only those who actually pay tax (income tax, since everyone pays VAT to some extent or other)have the right to be represented; everyone has a potential tax liability, but some are in fact exempted from actually paying it – eg, those earning under £10.000 per annum.
Can I take your lack of comment on the rest of my post (and the following one) to mean you agree with what I wrote?
Actually, no. “No representation without taxation” would mean that it would be OK to have dictatorships in States which do not need to levy tax, but eg fund themselves from natural resources deemed to be the property of the ruler.
Tim
That’s a debating point and you’re being daft. You know very well that we’re talking about democratic states and not dictatorships (and even less dictatorships of the sort you mention). CM’s post was about Scotland (and the UK if you will).
Any comment on the rest of what I wrote?
Sorry – I thought that this was a debating forum.
As far as the rest is concerned, my example was intended to show that it cannot be quite as simple as you seemed to be making it out to be.
All but the most seriuos of offences have a statute of limitations, and most reasonable people think that prosecution for a minor offence, years after the fact, would be an abuse of process. Do Scottish Councils also go after 20 year old unpaid parking fines?
Tim: “Do Scottish Councils also go after 20 year old parking fines?”
If they had a proper record, why not? Do bills expire if they have been evaded sufficiently long? With tax, and fines or bills, we’re not talking about some statute of limitations on a punishment for a crime that might or might not have happened. Such crimes are considered not suitable for prosecution, because memories fade, testimonies waver over time.
But with clear bills – owed at the time but not paid – it is a cut and dried case. The justification for the charge in the first place is of course always open to question, but it does not expire because the defaultee has got away with it for a long enough period.
Tim
Well, I think Glenn dealt with your statute of limitations point rather well, don’t you?
If you wish to debate, tell me what you think about individuals who remain invisible when it comes to paying their taxes (and so are, essentially, living off the backs of others who do pay) but suddenly become visible when it’s a question of voting in a referendum?
“. . . but some are in fact exempted from actually paying it – eg, those earning under £10.000 per annum.
Can I take your lack of comment on the rest of my post (and the following one) to mean you agree with what I wrote?”
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Noddy! Noddy! How many times have I tried to instruct you that Craig makes the posts and you comment upon them? I know in Toytown they may do things differently but this blog is for adults, well, some others seem to be here too I agree. But you must learn Noddy Craig’s blog is not your post, though he is generally very tolerant of juveniles.
Tell me please if you can, is the £10.000 per annum ten or ten thousand? If it is ten Noddy, you need to remove a nought. You also need to distinguish between a comma and a full stop. It is not too difficult. A comma is the curly thing. A full stop (period in the US) is the dot.
As to the logic of who is exempted from tax, if you meant to insert a comma, as I suspect, and not remove a nought, then anybody who reads your essays would believe that people below £10,000 per annum do not pay tax. Is that what you intended to write? OK let’s move on to your arithmetic lesson. I know maths is boring Noddy but not the way I teach it.
When you become a big Noddy you will find that those who walk into Toytown general store pay extra on what they buy. Think of it like this. When Bumpy Dog gets arrested by Mr Plod for having a firework, even though he was not responsible for the brick that fell from Toytown Bank, he bought that firework in good faith and paid more than what the person in the shop required. This is an addition to the purchase price and is called a value added tax, yes, a kind of purchase tax. It does not add value to the firework. It adds value to a Dark Force.
On future reading lists, after you have finished, Big Ears goes to Toytown, and the allegorical Animal Farm (remember my reference to that?), another book by the same author will suggest who the Dark Force might be. Exciting, isn’t it?
The tax unfortunately was not for Toytown’s improvement but for some strange brick-demolishing power a long way from Bumpy Dog’s hometown. So the arithmetic as you can see does not quite work out. With the next lesson I will go into further details.
John: Although I like to read much of what you write, we are surely all aware that the dot or period ‘.’ is used in much of the rest of the world to denote each occurance of three orders of magnitude, when enscribing large numbers. I don’t like it much either, but it’s not really a major point of contention, surely? Personally, I find it much more irritating to hear “check” substituting the more appropriate “tick” as a point-by-point validation.
Habbubkuk: Actually, I could have said with far less waffle, that the the statute of limitations applies to prosecutions pending, not payments due.
Excellent post Mr. Murray. Having never paid a penny in poll-tax, I must be one of the miscreants, but as a mature student through the entire life of the poll-tax, was only due to pay 20% of it, and never did, but have always been on the voters roll. I took part in a few anti-poll tax demonstrations and meetings in and around Glasgow, and was in London for the big demo there, at which the over-whelming majority, including the party from Paisley I was with, had marched and demonstrated entirely peacefully and did not even learn of the ugly turn the protests took until back in Glasgow the next day. Spent the evening after the day’s marching in a pub/cafe run by a French couple, near the LSE and the coach park which was our pick-up point for the return journey, till nearly midnight, being scandalously over-served with free drinks, oblivious to events elsewhere in London.
Charles Graham Crawford: dob 1954; 81 Belgrade, 87 Cape Town, 93 Moscow, 96 Sarajevo, 01 Belgrade, 03 Warsaw. (* Warsaw, 05)
Charles, named after the spaniel, pretty much past it now as far as the old spying game goes, at 60, with early onset senility and with his cover long ago blown. He never was much kop at abseiling down cliff faces and stuff, nor was he up to the incessant shagging the image desired, even with pharmaceutical help from Dr Hardman. Took the idea of cloak and dagger far too literally, so much so that he often went around wearing just the cloak and a sequined and too small one at that, and nothing else. He was just a bit too eccentric even for that branch of the family; blew his cover all too frequently, with disastrous, and often embarassing results. After his umpteenth arrest and deportation for exposing his bits and ahem … other offences, few would work with him: there were so many unfortunate incidents – that well-known one in Hungary, just the tip of it – the poor woman at the bus-stop couldn’t ever be traced to return her handbag and umbrella, and the one-legged baker who’d been in the great war could never look at a pastie again without becoming agitated, poor chap had to retire early. Just as no-one loves a fairy when she’s forty, no-one can stand the sight of an incompetent spook when he’s sixty.
“John: Although I like to read much of what you write, we are surely all aware that the dot or period ‘.’ . . .”
Sorry Glenn_UK it was an attempt at irony since H is forever pulling up commenters on trivial typos (which none of us can correct). He did once accept that we are the ones who comment and Craig is the one who posts, but he’s forgotten and still thinks this is his blog. 🙂
Yes I studied Russian and know what you say is true about other countries using a dot where we use a comma so being facetious has backfired on me with you having taken my comment seriously. 🙂
Come back Sofia. You do this stuff so well.
On limitations over the exercise of judgements, Les Misérables takes the extreme case. But again I would argue that things are not that simple.
I accept that a traffic ticket is not a judgement, but I still doubt many Councils would try to collect after twenty years. I might have misunderstood, but as I understand it we are not here talking about twenty year old court judgements but people suddenly “appearing” on the registers and the Council seeking to establish retrospectively where they have been living and thus their liability. And in the case of undefended judgements there might in any case have been circumstances not taken into account (as Tony M says). If we are indeed talking about actual judgements rather than claims, then I accept that there is a legal difference.
However, we are not talking about private debts of individuals but the actions of the State. The State should always bear in mind the consequences of its acts for wider public policy. One of the reasons given for the broad liberalisation of postal voting was that low voter participation was a threat to democracy. Action which has the effect of deterring people from voting pushes them towards civil disobedience instead (cue Ben to talk about voter suppression and the poll tax in the Southern US).
VAT and excise duty make every participant in the economy a tax payer (except perhaps Leprechauns who still fit into child size clothing).
I was prepared to accept the Scottish referendum vote but this link (which was posted by A Node and Oddie) has made me rethink, especially that the postal ballots were sent to England first. What was the purpose of that?
http://www.sott.net/article/286355-Special-Report-Scottish-Referendum-Rigged-The-How-and-the-Why
This short video however might show electoral fraud. Why the person who anonymously phoned John son of David is the questionable part not the bag of Yes ballot papers. Has somebody suddenly got a conscience? Or are they staying anonymous because these are forgeries? Answers on the back of a ballot-paper. Ooops!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ewcSKlWFcs
Amazingly I have seen no accusations against there being lots of lost No papers in the count. But then Better Together “won” if they did win.
Craig
Unhinged as ever. Wrong as ever. Your contempt for people by describing them as the ‘poor’ is breath taking. People made choices – though not in your world. In your world they do not – they are merely the ‘poor’ who react. Some people chose to pay, some chose not to pay.
Elevating that unfortunate little man – Alex Salmond – is misplaced. The word ‘bitter’ comes to mind. Also the word ‘comic’. The idea that someone might see the newly grown electoral register as a means to make a few bob for the council is unexpected and amusing. Salmond’s stance is not one that those who make laws should adopt. Salmond’s stance cheapens the Yes Campaign.