Taxation Issues

Balancing tax levels
The Laffer curve shows the points beyond which increased taxation reduces the revenues obtained (i.e. people start finding ways to avoid payment).

Edward de Bono: I Am Right, You Are Wrong. Penguin, 2009

UK Tax system
The way our political system and national conversation are constructed make it close to impossible for a leader to say anything sane about tax.

The right claims that tax in principle is immoral, coercive, anti-enterprise, anti-aspiration and always economically destructive: this now sets the terms of discussion, policed by our rightwing media. The consequence is that our tax system is now so badly distorted that it threatens the social fabric.

The British residential property system creates unreal house prices and huge social unfairness with huge mortgages for the young, the lottery of property inheritance and high rents. Property is effectively only taxed when bought and sold. Residential property prices (on which council tax is based) was last reviewed in 1991. Generous inheritance tax thresholds, tax exemption of capital gains on homes and trivial council tax receipts, mean the property market is the world’s biggest onshore tax haven creating the world’s highest real house prices. No proposal for change seems possible.

Public services, after seven years of drastic cuts, have reached a point where severe deterioration is certain if planned reductions go ahead. The condition of Britain’s prisons is already intolerable: the stress in the NHS is apparent to all; improvements in educational standards are being reversed. All, starved of resources, can only get worse.

The “triple lock” – outlawing rises in income tax, national insurance and VAT (the major revenue streams in any tax system) constrained the ability of the government to manage the economy flexibly, and as virtually every observer notes, the triple lock is economically absurd.

Yet health and education spending – from which everyone should benefit and thus paid for by taxation – have been rising consistently for over 60 years, as they should and will. To try to turn back this growth or, alternatively, the social security system to find the necessary resources, is to ignore reality. Other cancelled proposed increases (insurance and airline taxes, national insurance for the self-employed, and probate fees) were means to raise revenue but would only have created further distortions.
 
"Britain must create a tax system that raises revenue across a broad base as fairly and with as little economic distortion as possible and it must accept that if it wants health and education to remain public goods financed by general taxation, along with a reasonable social security system, then taxation will have at the very least to remain around 35% of GDP and may even have to rise a little."

The tax take must increase, but it will need to be drawn from a much wider base than just on the “rich” – the top 5% – earning over £70,000 or from big corporations; there just is not enough potential revenue from those sources.

A smarter strategy would be to acknowledge that tax is the price for living in a civilised society and making the major tax revenue streams off-limits is crazy. We also have to go much further within a fair framework if we want decent public services and be able to manage the economy flexibly.

• The broader the tax base, the lower tax rates need to be.
• Revalue domestic residential property and overhaul council tax as part of a wider review of how local government is financed.
• A fair tax on inherited wealth.
• A broadening of the VAT base, with an extension to financial services.
• Heavier taxes on environmentally damaging activity.

Nicholas Stern has argued that these could raise some 2% of GDP, so that only marginal or very small increases in VAT, income tax and national insurance would be needed, if at all.

"Britain could have high quality public services, a great environment and a functioning housing market – and very few would notice the difference in their taxes. A country on the rise would do this in an instant. It is a declining country in thrall to rightwing ideologues that finds it impossible – that will be Britain in spring 2017."

Will Hutton: Overhaul Britain's rotten tax system or we won't be able to sustain a healthy state.  The Guardian, 22 April 2017

Clogged Drains and Steamed Up Mirrors

Hair and soap can clog up the bath or basin drains. To clear the blockage:

• Pour a cup of boiling water down the drain, followed by 1/2 cup of bicarbonate of soda.
• Leave for a few minutes, then pour in a cup of vinegar and another of boiling water.
•  Put the plug in for half an hour, then flush through with more boiling water.

To prevent your bathroom mirror steaming up, buff a blob of shaving foam onto the mirror.

Source: Good Housekeeping, May 2017

Last Days of Jesus

On Good Friday 2017, Channel 5 broadcast a documentary called the Last Days of Jesus. Based on the political conspiracy theory of historians Simcha Jacobivici and Barrie Wilson, it focused on the period from Jesus's entry into Jerusalem with the waving of palms through to his trial and execution. While three of the gospels accounts suggest a brief period between the two events (though the fourth gospel indicates a longer period), Jacobivici and Wilson are trying to correlate these accounts with other sources from the period. The main points of their theory are that around 6 months separates the Palm  Sunday and Good Friday, and that political issues in Rome and Israel had a significant effect.

Jacobovici and Wilson raised the following questions:

• Why was Jesus not immediately arrested when cleansing the Temple?
• Why did the crowd turn from enthusiastic supporters to calling for his death in just a week?
• Why was Pontius Pilate so eager to release Jesus?

The theory

In AD.31, Tiberius was Roman Emperor, at this time living on the island of Capri. The head of the Praetorian Guard was Sejanus, who effectively reigned in place of Tiberius. S&W suggest that Sejanus had ambitions to become the next Roman Emperor.

Under the will of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas was to succeed him as tetrach (ruler of a quarter) of Galilee and Perea as a client state of Rome, while his elder brother Archelaus became ethnarch of Judea, Idumea and Samaria. An earlier will had named Antipas as successor to all the above territories and Antipas petitioned to Rome to this effect, but Emperor Augustus decreed that the later will should stand. S&W suggest that (1) Antipas was still hoping to become King of the whole area, (2) in return for Antipas' support, on becoming Emperor, Sejanus was willing to reallocate territory to Antipas and (3) that there was tension between Antipas and the priests of the Temple over the power of the Temple priesthood and that Jesus (whose followers included people high up in Antipas' court) in his efforts to cleanse the temple was seen as a useful tool. The theory is that these interlocking events stayed the hands of Pilate and the priests.  

The Jewish feast of Tabernacles is held in the autumn, and the cutting and use of palm branches is still used today. S&W propose that the entry into Jerusalem took place then.

During the next months the political scene changed dramatically. Suddenly, at the end of AD 31, Sejanus was arrested and summarily executed. It is suggested that this news caused Pilate and Antipas to avoid being linked to Sejanus' plotting, and that over time, Jesus' followers dropped away as he did not fulfil the kingly Messiah prophecies by delivering them from the rule of Rome.

Good Friday is linked in the gospels with the Jewish feast of Passover, which follows around 6 months later than Tabernacles.

Sejanus is not referenced in the gospels. Under the practice of damnatio memoriae (where the senate or emperor could have an individual's property seized, his name erased and his statues reworked) Sejanus' name was erased from public records and carved inscriptions. While the gospels were written down some decades later (between 40 and 70 years later), it was still illegal to mention him.

Source: Channel 5 documentary 'Last Days of Jesus' broadcast 14th April 2017.

To Watch YouTube with Country Restriction

Sometimes YouTube videos are marked as unavailable due to a country restriction, but it is still possible to view them by using a simple URL trick, which will open the video in full screen and will hide adverts.

The video you want to watch has the URL:
youtube.com/watch?v=ab12C3dE4g (don't try and watch this as it is a made up example.

Remove the 'watch?' and replace the '=' with another / (highlighted in red above).

The URL now looks like this:

youtube.com/v/ab12C3dE4g

That's all there is to it.

Source: Phil Bradley Internet Q&A in CILIP Update, June 2017

Press Regulation UK

Recently (Jan. 2017) many UK newspapers have carried editorials and opinion columns about section 40, which they claim will end press freedom in this country.

This arises from the Leveson inquiry, which found that the same answer could be applied to two of the most important issues identified.

A: People with limited finances who are libelled or have their privacy illegally invaded by newspapers find it impossibly expensive to take civil actions against those papers. They are effectively deprived of access to justice. (A typical court fee is £10,000 up front, even before you add in lawyers’ fees.)

B: Over the past 60 years there have been several public inquiries and commissions into press misconduct. At each of these it was clear that the press had failed to enforce even its own codes of ethical practice, and recommendations were made for improvements, or for a new regulator independent both of press control and government influence.

But each time, the commercial press, owned by a handful of wealthy men, refused to comply. Making cosmetic changes, and falsely claiming the new arrangements were a big improvement, but carrying on as before. They have done the same with Leveson, rebranding the discredited PCC as “Ipso”, which is largely the same people working to the same model.

The Leveson inquiry stopped short of recommending that papers should be compelled by law to join a “good” new regulator but gave them a final chance to put their own house in order. Leveson proposed a fair, effective and independent new regulator, which could be set up by the press themselves, which would offer a cheap arbitration service to settle legal claims.

"This is the part that is seldom or never mentioned when newspapers talk about section 40. Through this arbitration service a person could have their case against a newspaper dealt with very quickly (in less than a day) and at very low cost (less than £200) without either side having to suffer the vast expense and stress of going to court."

"If a newspaper chose not to join this “good” new regulator, and so deprived claimants of this low-cost system of arbitration – forcing them instead into the expensive courts – then that newspaper should have to pay ALL the costs of the court case, even if they won the case. The idea was that recalcitrant newspapers would be incentivised to create a “good” regulator."

The carrot incentive (which papers are not reporting) was that was that by joining the new regulator, newspapers would have much greater freedom to publish important investigative journalism. "Hitherto, if a paper had an important story about a wealthy and powerful person, they might reluctantly decide not to publish because the threat of being dragged through expensive court actions was too great. A wealthy oligarch would only need to win once to bust the paper. With "the new system, a litigious oligarch would first be offered the new cheap arbitration system. If he took this option, the matter would be settled at a tiny fraction of the time and cost for the newspaper. But if he insisted on going to court (as is his right) he would have to pay his own costs even if he won.

This is why investigative journalists such as Nick Davies (who broke the phone hacking story in the Guardian in the first place) are so keen on the Leveson recommendations, in full.

"This solution was voted into law (as section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act) by big majorities in parliament in March 2013. But a law that has been enacted by parliament still requires the subsequent pressing of a green button by the secretary of state. This is known as “commencement” and is a formality in 99% of cases. This government, under intense lobbying from the corporate press, has so far not commenced the law."

A recent YouGov poll commissioned by Hacked Off found that 93% of Guardian readers with an opinion on the matter agree with the Leveson system or something stronger. In the face of all this, and in the face of an astonishing volume of disinformation and misinformation on this issue, it’s vital that people who care about the standards and practices of the national press make the case for full Leveson. For those people, here is something to click.

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Source: Hugh Grant 'Section 40 will curb media abuses and protect the press from litigious oligarchs' in The Guardian, 11 Jan. 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/11/section-40-media-abuses-press-regulation-justice