The Boiling Frog is keeping an eye on the euro-shop, which seems to be doing impressions of theTitanic - after it hit the iceberg. In a sense, the euro has indeed had such a collision – with an iceberg called reality.
Stock up on the tinned goods and strap in tight. We're in for a rough ride.
Stock up on the tinned goods and strap in tight. We're in for a rough ride.
While the unions move to protect their own interests, which amounts to screwing more money out of us the taxpayers, we find that substantial sums are being extracted – almost certainly illegally – from Council Tax payers to fund local council fat cat salaries and pensions.
This is the story the mindwash media does not want to tell. They like to dictate the agenda and to keep people entertained and diverted with stories they decide are important. But it is not their agenda to dictate any more – the monopoly is broken.
Out there, about four million people a year are refusing to pay their Council Tax until they get a summons, and then councils have to go to court to get the money from about three million of these. That is a story.
As a rebellion, by way of a tax strike, this is in fact a very substantial event – but you see nothing of it in the media. Apart from the few self-help groups, each refusenik feels themselves to be making an individual protest. The councils and the media work to foster that impression. Yet this is a mass movement, with millions involved – some from principle, some because they have no option.
Rather than respond, however, councils have turned this into a vast criminal enterprise of their own, also feeding the jackals and hyenas of the debt-collection industry who are illegally milking the protest to the tune of at least £1 billion a year.
Now, you can roll over and whinge ... or go and write a really tough comment on the Failygraphwebsite. Or you can fight back and win. The councils and their debt collector cronies rely on a divided, fragmented population, picking off individuals one-by-one, focusing the power of the state to intimidate and subdue. Our response is to force the councils, their employees and their agents, to obey the law – the law of the land ... not the laws they make up to suit themselves.
That starts by asking this question of your own council, through the FOI website which every council has. All it takes is one e-mail:
Please supply information on the number of Summonses and Liability Orders issued by the Council in respect of Council Tax, for each of the financial years since April 1992 to the present, itemised separately by year and document type, and the total sums charged for each year, again itemised separately by year and document type.Do it, and let me know the answers ... this wholesale looting must be brought to a halt - and it will only happen if we, the people, make it so. Shake the money tree and see what falls from it.
Meanwhile a counter-offensive has been under way, in the form of Freedom of Information requests addressed to the enemy citadel, demanding information on the number of Council Tax summonses and liability orders sent out each year.
As a rough estimate, we believe that about 80,000 such documents are issued each year, for which in the order of £3 million is being charged. This is for what amounts to single sheets of paper, sent second class to addresses on the Council database.
The law as it stands allows council to recover "reasonable costs" for these documents and it is those costs which we are seeking to establish. But, on the face of it, the Council would appear to be overcharging for these documents to the tune of at least £2.5 million a year (being extremely generous to them).
This is money extracted from those already in debt and least able to afford the fees. Further, it could be that the unlawful demands contravene the Fraud Act 2006, in which case criminal charges could be in order. Bradford MDC is living off the proceeds of crime.
In between stoking up the fire to keep the oil hot, therefore, we will be seeking to establish the degree of overcharging and, as a first step, insisting on a refund to all those who have been over-charged. Over the 20 years since the current regulations came into force, that could set Bradford back by about £50 million.
However, Bradford is by no means alone in its peculation, an article in The Independent a few years ago (2008) indicating that nationally, Councils took about £230 million annually through such fees.
Over the 20 years or so of the current regulations, we are probably looking at an overcharge of £200 million a year (adjusted for inflation). By next year, therefore, we could be looking for refunds in the order of £4 billion. That is the extent of the rip-off.
If there is anyone who would like to join in the endeavour to make this happen, the first stage is to contact your local council with an FOI request, asking for details of the number of Council Tax summonses and liability orders they issued each year since April 1992 – or as far back as their records go – and the sums charged for each document in each year.
Send me the details and I will collate and publish them on the blog. From that, we will build the picture and start shaking the money tree.
Some police officers are "barely literate" because the educational standards required to join the service are so low, claims Tom Winsor, the lawyer reviewing police conditions. He says reading, writing and mathematical skills have fallen "significantly" since the 1930s.
From personal experience, one can attest that this is all too true (not that I was around in the 30s, but I get the drift). And when they give them guns, it gets really scary
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