There is one very obvious penalty for not publishing news of a major political protest movement – it remains unknown to the bulk of people, and especially to the political classes who have a tenuous grip on reality at the best of times.
But, as I remarked recently, when you have four million summonses sent out each year in an attempt to gather a tax, and three million people refuse to pay until they receive a court order (and a goodly number then don't pay at all), there is a significant political event going on.
This is, in fact, where the media and the political classes demonstrate their fatal weakness. They will chase after union loud mouths and selected street demonstrations, as if they represent the reality of what is happening in this country, yet ignore the silent protest made by millions of us each year.
Nor even is the scale of that protest being properly recorded – as you might expect … which is why we have launched this probing exercise using FOI. As a reminder, the question we need asked is this, (slightly amended):
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 fees charged for each year (specifically for the two documents), again itemised separately by year and document type.All you need to do is google your own council name, with the addition of "freedom of information" in the search string, and it will bring up a site which will tell you how to contact your council.
Meanwhile, completely detached from a political revolt which is happening under their very noses, the politicians at the centre believe they can milk property taxes even more, blissfully unaware of what is going on, and failing to understand its significance. They seem to think that, because people are not actually out on the streets rioting, their proposals are tenable.
The point we made yesterday though, was that with each hike in the tax, resistance stiffens, more people refuse to pay and it gets harder and more expensive to collect the tax.
If the Lib-Dims in particular thus think that they can ramp up the tax still further, they are mistaken. We are already beginning to get to grips with the latest "weapon" they are deploying against us – the high-intensity bailiff campaign – and short of jailing us by the thousands, they have nowhere else to go. And even that, we aim to circumvent. There are procedural means which can ensure that no person ever goes to jail for withholding tax .
For the moment, therefore, on day four of the Great Siege of Bradford, we are getting the measure of the beast. With nothing on the horizon, the bellicose posturing of the Council has not been translated into any action. Nor, at this stage, do we any longer expect it to. Bullies, as so often, are also cowards.
Thus, the paper tiger folds when it is challenged, and if the politicians really think they can screw more money out of an increasingly resentful and determined population, they are writing their own suicide notes.
So, incidentally, are the media writing theirs. With the momentum building, unreported, under their very noses, they are proving increasingly irrelevant. If they are not actually reporting major events, people ask, what is the point of having them?
In a settlement called Manchester, on the outer reaches of the Universe, man-child Osborne is pontificating on things about which he knows very little.
Specifically, the man-child is telling an indifferent world that "A successful euro is in Britain's interest", oblivious to the fact that it is crumbling as he squeaks. Greece is at the epicentre, and commentators are declaring that we are living through a crisis, the nature of which has not been experienced in our lifetimes.
Quite what the exact nature of that crisis is, however, no one really knows. This is one for the historians to work out. Anyone at this stage who professes to claim they know what is going on, and is thereby not confused by events, simply has not been listening.
Meanwhile, Simons Jenkins - no mean historian – smells an end that is nigh. Greece's bluffing of the high priests of the eurozone may, after all, be called, he writes. The unthinkable may be unavoidable. The priests are suddenly talking of "when, not if," Greece defaults.
Now it is that the commentariat are beginning to catch up. The "unthinkable" was presaged in a book called The Great Deception, first published in 2003. "Will the European Union survive?", we asked rhetorically, knowing full well that it couldn't. Of course - and as so often - we were ahead of the field, even if we were only recording that which was obvious. Nevertheless, at a time when the "project" looked invincible, we were forecasting its collapse. Unknown to us, it was not even to last ten years.
Needless to say, with the mindwash media in full spate, no room has been given to the two authors of this book to revisit their prediction. In a world where everybody now is a eurosceptic, and everyone saw the fall coming, there is no need for us.
Jenkins, though - for all his great skills and perception - hasn't quite got it. The current situation, he says, "may lead on to Cameron's ambition for a genuinely reformed Lisbon treaty, one that, unlike its predecessor, could pass the test of a referendum". But it won't - it can't.
This is fantasy. The maggot-ridden carcase of the EU, dying but not yet dead, is hard-wired to resist "reform". It will rot away in its present form yet, like Hitler in his bunker issuing orders to the last, it will be spewing out directives in its death throes.
"Europe" is clearly at a turning point, adds Jenkins, turning against the single-statism of the European movement, with its straitjacketed currency, its flows of economic migrants and counterflows of subsidies, its everlasting crises and its humiliation of democratic governments. It is turning back to national identity, and there is nothing the EU can do to stop it.
That much he has got right, but what happens next is anyone's guess. What is terrifying is that, with British policy development and much of our administration having been outsourced to Brussels, we have lost much of the capability to rule ourselves. Whether we can re-acquire it in time is moot, but with the sorry lot we have on that even more distant planet called Westminster, I rather doubt it.
For their own short-term interests, the energy industry bought in to the climate change bubble. With that and the increase in energy costs – not all of which are explained by the shift in global prices, they have become about as popular as banks.
This, though, is only the start. While we must look to the administration for the failures of policy which could lead to our lights going out, the industry has not been sufficiently voluble or firm in setting out the consequences. Thus, when the lights do go out, energy firms are going to get a lot of the blame.
But, with EDF becoming the latest to raise its UK retail prices – putting up gas bills by over 15 percent and electricity by 4.5 percent - there are short-term consequences as well. Energy, more than any other sector, is driving up inflation, increasing levels of fuel poverty. About seven million households come into the poverty band.
When we see soaring bills, official indifference and union intransigence, plus the euro about to go belly-up and the Polish finance minister admitting that the EU might not survive the collapse, those "interesting times" that the Chinese cursed us with look ever closer.
Taking a quick sideways look at this, one recalls the consistent mantra from the eurosceptic community that we should stop paying our "subscriptions" to the EU. Yet, interestingly, some of those same people look down their noses at people who do not pay their Council Tax.
Yet, in terms, there is no difference, when the money is withheld on principled grounds. No one sensible will dispute that the democratic process in local government has largely broken down. We have very little control of what our Councils do, how much money they spend, and where they spend it.
Thus, our only democratic option is to refuse to pay the money. This is perfectly legitimate – it is called civil disobedience. That is exactly the same option being suggested by public sector unions.
Yet, from missives reaching me from within the local Town Hall, high officials regard protesters who withhold their money virtually spawn of the devil. Such is their sense of entitlement that they then regard any tactic to extract the money as legitimate.
Part of their weaponry is to invoke a sense of shame. By using bailiffs, they rely on peer pressure, and a community sense that it is wrong not to "pay your due". Thus – as one sees on newspaper forums, the comment, "well, if you'd paid up, this wouldn't have happened".
These are the conformists in our society, but they also lack the ability to think. Talk to any sensible councillor and they will tell you of their worries about increasing Council Tax. They know that each time the bill increases, resistance stiffens, more people refuse to pay and it gets harder and more expensive to collect the tax.
The corollary also applies. If a tax is easy to collect, and there are no complaints, then there is no check on the politicians continually increasing the tariff. Therefore, it is thanks to refusniks like me that Council Tax is not considerably higher.
Framed thus, civil disobedience does not permit the authorities to respond with illegal action. Because I choose to make an annual protest about the level of tax, and the way it is spent, does not give license to council officials and their agents to break the law in their attempt to force me to pay. They may - and should - use all legitimate means, but they must not break the law.
And that is what this is all about – something that our over-paid crop of officials seem to have difficulty in understanding. They are breaking the law. They, the upholders of the law – the arbiters and our judges – are breaking the very law which they supposedly enforce and require the rest of us to obey.
Yet, too often, people dive for cover. You can feel the embarrassment in some people when you tell them what you are doing, and the stand you are taking. But there is a cascade effect here. Let these people trample on your rights, and resort to illegality and there is no end to it.
Government as our servant is just about tolerable. Government as our master, running roughshod through our laws, is our enemy. The battle lines are drawn and we are not playing games here. All politics, they say, are local. This is a local battle – but at its heart is the same battle we fight nationally and on an international level. It is one we cannot afford to lose. Print ready
This would at least have the merits of allowing her to fry chip butties while wewait for the bailiffs. These could also provide an alternative source of ammunition, should the need arise. And then, of course, it vastly improves the carbon signature.
Spies in the enemy camp, meanwhile, report of some disarray. Martin Stubbs - none other than Assistant Director, Revenues & Benefits – is said to be struggling to understand what has been happening. This is the Hard Man of Bradford, routinely jailing the good (and bad) citizens of the City in order to keep the money flowing to the staff pension fund.
Hilariously, this is also the same Martin Stubbs who, two years ago, came over all precious when a group of scammers started contacting people pretending to be from the council. The bogus officials were telling householders that they had not paid enough Council Tax and unless they made an immediate payment they would be taken to court.
Stubbs the Terrible expressed his "concern", but then left it to sidekick Tim Eden to say: "This is outrageous and targets vulnerable people … People must not pay any attention to these crooks and should report such calls to the police. Some of the callers are very aggressive and intimidating to make people pay up, but people should not be fooled into thinking these calls are legitimate". But how would they know the difference?, I muse.
Nevertheless, cranking into action, we also had Andrew Bibby from West Yorkshire Trading Standards Office. Girding his loins, he sternly declared that: "Trading Standards can and will take action against doorstep callers who make false or misleading claims about their services offer or the organisations they represent".
Now the boot is on the other foot and The Stubbs seems to have enormous difficulty understanding that it is now his own people who are the crooks, "targeting vulnerable people", some of whom are “very aggressive and intimidating".
Needless to say, confronted with official thuggery and theft, neither the police nor Trading Standards are anywhere to be seen. Thus, if you want to be a con artist and rip-off people on the doorsteps, the trick is to call yourself a bailiff and work for the council. Then the officials will back you to the hilt.
And therein lies the fate of Stubbs the Terrible, taker of houses and slayer of all who go before him. His dim little brain simply cannot grasp that it is he who is the crook, the thief, the con artist.
But then, when you have a chief executive on £182,571, you have to screw down hard to get the money in. "It is really important that people don't bury their heads in the sand about their Council Tax bills", he says. The poor wee man has mouths to feed and pockets to fill.
Anyhow, the chip butties are bubbling away nicely just now, so I must depart to stack the ammunition.
Posts
