Quote of the Day

” The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing .”

Jean Baptiste Colbert

” Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces .”

Terry Pratchett

UK Local Tax Hiked above inflation yet again

Council Tax bills have been on the rise, consistently and generally above inflation for years.

This year they are expected to rise by around 4% with some nearly as high as 5%.

There is always much acrimony between local politicians claiming that central government are; reducing the contribution they make to local funds fro taxpayer’s money and in many cases drafting, or rubberstamping, EU legislation that increases their costs.

The State meanwhile always mutters darkly of capping local expenditure and complains there is no excuse for ‘excessive’ Council tax Hikes.

Personally I have noticed absolutely zero improvement in the services I receive. In fact it is arguable they have actually deteriorated, especially rubbish collection.

Whatever – They are all politicians. I noticed when the poll tax was introduced quite a few local authorities took the opportunity to hit local residents in the pocket with a big hike they would have taken stick in local elections for otherwise and blamed Central Government and Margaret Thatcher.

Well they can’t conveniently blame Maggie now.

The fact is that we are paying more and more tax and it is rising by well above inflation. It may be that Central Government’s the inflation figures are effectively lies, the ‘basket’ being carefully tweaked by New Labour.

Never the less - someone is responsible… Where is the money going?

Schedule introducing UK ID cards delayed

It is interesting to note that New Labour are planning to introduce the National ID card incrementally.

This seems to be one of their favourite ‘stealth’ methods. Apparently they are putting back the date where larger numbers of us will be forced to get them from 2010, until 2012 now.

They know it is un popular, and there is some resistance, so they are buying themselves an extra two years, in the hope attention fatigue will set in.

The technique, one they are fond of, is to introduce unpopular measures in small relatively imperceptible doses. First they Identify a relatively small group to apply whatever they are planning to. A group that does not include the majority of citizens and who preferably will not have the majority of the public’s particular sympathy.

In the case of HIPs it was houses with four bedrooms or over. “The Wealthy”, “Rich Toffs” – a classic hate group and target.

They are careful to avoid stirring people up by ensuring that even of the groups targeted only relatively small percentage are actually directly affected at any time. In this case those actually considering selling their homes.

Then they wait a while and take in another chunk of the population (say owners of three bedroom properties), repeating as necessary until they have everyone.

They are always careful to avoid stirring too much of the population up at once, in case it allows resistance to build to the point where the lethargic UK population will actually protest in significant numbers.

In the case of ID cards it will apparently be “Foreigners”, “Bogus Asylum Seekers”, “Economic Migrants”. They have chosen to target first. Currently they are to be targeted this year.

See if you can spot this technique being used elsewhere....

EU Constitution/’Lisbon Treaty’ passes first UK Parliamentary hurdle

It seems that some 362 MPs are willing to betray both Parliament and the British Public.

It is now beyond any doubt and widely acknowledged, that the so called ‘Lisbon Treaty’ is effectively identical to the rejected European Constitution, there being ”no material difference” between the two..

In fact if the similarity of the ‘treaty’, to the constitution, were the climate debate then Gordon Brown and David Milliband would be the only ‘deniers’ left in a sea of consensus. Of course no one actually imagines they seriously imagine that it is not identical, that they are really deniers – but it does rhyme with deniers.

European Union (Amendment) Bill, New Labour’s cynical rubber stamping of the Constitution Lisbon Treaty has cleared it’s first hurdle and 362 MPs supported Mr Brown’s disingenuous line necessary to provide him and New Labour with the pathetic fig leaf to cover their reneging on the promise of a referendum that new labour were elected on.

A few New labour MPs have the decency, even honour, to resist, but one fears - far too few.

Sharia Law comes to the UK

Delhi born Dr/Shaikh Suhaib Hasan has set himself up in his own little Sharia court in a converted corner shop in Leyton, North East London.

At the moment this has all the legality of a TV show ‘court’ where participants are technically only bound in as far as they agree to be bound. Though it is perhaps much more than just that to a Moslem, embedded in largely exclusively Moslem community, who has no English.

Dr Hassan is the General Secretary of the Islamic Sharia Council and bills himself as a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.

He is keen to share the benefits of Sharia Law, on an official and legal basis, with the rest of us. He is convinced it can turn the HK into a “haven of peace”.

In fact he, in a documentary, currently scheduled to be screened on Channel 4 next month, entitled ‘Divorce: Sharia Style’, Dr Hasan reveals ‘just where he is coming from’, as they say. He revealingly comments:

"Once, just only once, if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all.”

"We want to offer it [Sharia Law] to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don't accept it they'll need more and more prisons."

I think the good Dr’s Freudian slip is showing here - As far as I am aware adultery is not a crime in the UK, there is certainly no penalty, apart from the possibility of divorce, for it.

I am sure he is correct in that the realistic prospect of being stoned to death would discourage it, against the law or not, that’ll do it for you most every time.

One wonders what else that the good Dr disproves of, that is not against the law we can consider stoning people to death for?

How the man can seriously suggest such a thing without realising it brands him as a fascist is beyond me.

The Muslim Council of Britain is usually held up by the ‘great and the good’, as an exemplar of ‘moderate’ Islamic opinion. This man is their Sharia spokesman.

If this is moderate it can only be so by comparison to something incomparably worse. If this is moderate maybe we need to redefine the meaning of ‘moderate’.

Oh! - Looks like we did already…

Quote of the day

" Politics must be the battle of the principles... the principle of liberty against the principle of force.”

Auberon Herbert

New Labour want to impose random breath tests

It seems New Labour now want to give the police powers to be able to breath test drivers on a whim and institute mass roadside checkpoints.

They appear to base this on their normal inability to understand the implications of their own skewed statistics combined with their tendency towards an authoritarian solution to anything they perceive as a ‘problem’.

It seems they are attempting to justify this with their Christmas Drink driving states. They show that the number of drink drivers stopped dropped despite a recorded increase in the number of tests (that police are measured on).

During the 1980s the number of people killed and seriously injured in drink-drive collisions in Great Britain fell from over 9000 (1,450 deaths, 7,970 serious injuries) to just less than 5,000 (760 deaths, 4,090 serious injuries).

Over the last decade or so, figures have fluctuated year on year, but overall there has been no particular trend up or down.

It is questionable if even massively increasing the number of breath tests will make a significant difference.

If the government actually wanted to reduce drink driving, as opposed to extending it's grip on the citizen, it might be better advised to reprise the hard hitting anti drink drive campaigns of the 80s and early 90s and helped make drink driving unacceptable. But this time include drugs in the message. From the figures it appears that actually worked quite effectively.

Our current system seems to have served us well over the decades, but New Labour never heard of leaving anything that works alone - and by their actions one could be forgiven for assuming they are embarked of a long term plan to undermine public trust in the police in an attempt to turn them into an occup

Quote of the day

" Law is often but the tyrant's will - and always so when it violates the right of an individual."

Thomas Jefferson

EU threat to Britons right to trial

I had always been under the impression that, in Britain, an accused person should have their day in court to defend themselves - That we don’t hold trials and convict people in their absence.

I know it is inconvenient and spoils government figures - rather like that old fashioned, un-dynamic, not new or forward looking, idea of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Rather than the reverse, so beloved of many other (no doubt dynamic and forward thinking) European nations, or the right to remain silent.

So it is a little disturbing to find that there is a meeting of EU Justice ministers planned for next week, where the Attorney General is apparently planning to do a ‘Gordon Brown’ and rubber stamp measures that could change all that boring old fashioned stuff about having your day in court.

Patricia Scotland QC (Baroness Scotland of Asthal, Attorney General) is planning to rubber stamp the extradition of British nationals, who have been convicted in absentia, for imprisonment in European jails.

Also included is a planned hand-over of "a wide range of personal data". Won’t that be so much more effective once the government imposes it’s ID card system on us and they have even more personal data to give away?

So imagine for a moment you have had a fortnights holiday in Spain. Unbeknown to you, you are somehow implicated in an offence. They can’t find you when they get round to wanting to speak to you and you are back in the UK. They can’t immediately trace you. You get convicted in your absence…

The first thing you know is when you are arrested for extradition to start your sentence in a Spanish jail.

Any sane citizen should be concerned that Government ministers are continuing with their bad habit of blithely signing away yet more British rights.

Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis said: "Now there is a real risk that British citizens will be abandoned to face European punishments without trial,"