The Grumpy Old Blog

Councils are very hard to understand. I heard on the radio this morning that 7 million actions have been taken this year by council bin-snoop police throughout the country, many resulting in income for said councils in the form of fines. One lady in the midlands was fined £50 for throwing a jam jar into her full paper-cardboard recycle bin. They should be glad she recycles anything, given the shameful way the residents of our apartment block carry on!  Yes, councils continually cry poverty, yet pay very senior staff  a fortune (not the humble coal-face workers dealing with an often very-miffed public; I mean they pay a fortune to the ones with strings of meaningless letters after their name and who use just an initial and surname so you don't know whether they are a Mr, Mrs, Miss or a combination of all three. I mean, if you get a letter from "A Jobsworth" would you know whether they are a Mr, Mrs, Miss or a combination of all three?).  They come up with wonderful ideas...

On the tax front, instead of arguing amongst themselves in political debate and trying to score against each other as to whose fault it is that google pay only 3% corporation tax, just cross-party cooperate. Both political parties are at fault. Bring the appalling Lin Homer (she quickly jumped ship after her ennoblement) types at HMRC to book to make the tax system sensible. Instead of all the guff that serial tax evasion consultants such as KPMG and Deliottes (I know it's le gal) can extract from the tax code's 11,520 pages, reduce it to just one sentence.  "You operate a corporation in the UK that takes money from UK taxpayers, then you pay 20% corporation tax." And stop engaging these consultants for public sector work until they stop helping companies evade tax. Simples

The up and coming budget, which I know has you all riveted with excitement (rumour has it rivets will be subject to a RAT [Riveting Added Tax] of 23% seeing as they are running out of things to tax), is actually the first Conservative budget for almost 19 years. Here are some other spoilers: ITVbe will be subject to a BTT (Bad Taste Tax) of 14%, or if the Kardashians are featured in any programmes, the tax will be increased to 19% A new rate of 0% corporation tax is being introduced for the first time for Amazon, Apple, ebay, Boots, PayPal, Uber, One Direction and er . . . . oh sorry, silly me . . . . they already don't pay any corporation tax in the UK Trees fall into the income tax net for the first time, along with daffodils and small yappy dogs such as Jack Russells To ease the strain on the NHS, Euthanasia, which is being made compulsory for the over 90's and all residents of Birkenhead, will be subject to a tax of 40% Inheritance Tax is being ab...

Great to know the country's premium automated stealth-tax collection site doesn't do what it says on the front page. Oh sorry, the recently new DVLA farce. If you have a vehicle to shell out for, don't make any changes on-line, as you are then locked out for 5 working days (yep, weekends not included) while the system automatically (yep, " automatically " - you can tell its a civil service 'service', as it apparently realises when it's the weekend and doesn't work then) updates. The DVLA themselves can't do anything for you, so you have to drag out to a Post Office (preferably one than hasn't been closed by this or the previous Government). Why the organ grinders have to send you to the moneys is beyond me! Oh, and the highwaymen at DVLA will also charge you £2.50 to use a credit card. And I love the message on the TOTALLY AUTOMATED PAYMENT phone system " all calls will be recorded for training and monitoring purposes " - I wo...

So, Treasury minister David Gauke infoms the great British public today that paying a plumber in cash to get a discount is morally wrong. It would appear that when you pay someone cash in hand to save on the paperwork or reduce the costs of fixing something, you are defrauding the state by taking money from the NHS and police force and reducing the money available for other public spending. Yes Mr Gauke, I suppose it is. But how about the billions of pounds that the wonderful Dave Hartnett from HMRC (Revenue and Customs) let Vodafone off the hook (pardon pun) with. Or the millions Goldman Sachs got away with. Then there's the small matter of the sale of the actual Revenue and Customs buildings to a bunch of parasitic, off-shore tax dodgers in Bermuda. Very sensible that one. Or the millions the government allow the private train companies to suck out of the economy in return for an appalling service - subsidies that allowed the Souter family to trouser £38mil...

Why should the motorist, who already pays more indirect taxation on driving for a smaller re-investment in transport than anyone else in Europe (not to forget the other indirect taxes such as council tax, water rates, TV licence, housing stamp duty, licences for functions, driving tests and licences, passports, licences for scaffolding, licences to operate a cherry-picker, licences to drive a taxi, business rates, planning permission, corporation tax, licences to sell alcohol/cigarettes, death duty [on already-taxed income], birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licences] etc etc etc), have to fork out further for the privilege of parking outside their own home ( reminder : a home they already pay council tax on)? It will come to the stage where shopkeepers and store managers will lose so many customers that they will either retreat to the relative safety of their local out-of- town shopping centre or retire to the relatively tax-free haven that is the car boot sale, and ...

The news seems to have broken regarding upwards of 2,000 public servants who are currently pretending they are limited companies in order to save on their tax and national insurance obligations. In fairness, they, like you or I, are keen to avoid paying a penny more than they have to into a system that seems to be awash with money when it comes to supporting infidel-hating middle-eastern clerics, with their benefits, mobility and legal aid payments, as well as illegal immigrants who continue to live in paid-for Chelsea properties having already defrauded the taxpayer of more than £30,000 to date. These public servants are ostensibly no more a limited company than you or I. And what is more galling is the fact that their salary is far more than yours or mine to begin with, any reference to this legalised con aside. I have never decried people making a fortune, provided it is worked for genuinely and honestly. However, there is only so much money you need for a very comfortable exi...