Fancy That - Tax Has Gone Up

[Marina]

In previous threads I have posted links to a site which categorically lists hundreds of examples of government waste. Despite being researched and reported on by such things of House of Commons Select Committees and many eminent economists, Blue Lady and a few others comtemptuously dismissed them all as fantasy and even went so far as to suggest that tax had not gone up.

Well, it appears it has. By £1.5 bn a WEEK under Labour. Those of us who pay tax are paying, collectively, £1.5 billion a week more than in 1997

Last year the total tax take was £172 billion, up 11% from the previous figure of £155.5 billion.

Now I know the correct reaction would be to de-bunk these figures but, oddly enough, they have been published by HM Revenue and Customs.

The figures do not include the increases in NI contributions and the revenues from VAT or the raid on the nation's pensions.

[BuyingBear]

In previous threads I have posted links to a site which categorically lists hundreds of examples of government waste. Despite being researched and reported on by such things of House of Commons Select Committees and many eminent economists, Blue Lady and a few others comtemptuously dismissed them all as fantasy and even went so far as to suggest that tax had not gone up.

Well, it appears it has. By £1.5 bn a WEEK under Labour. Those of us who pay tax are paying, collectively, £1.5 billion a week more than in 1997

Last year the total tax take was £172 billion, up 11% from the previous figure of £155.5 billion.

Now I know the correct reaction would be to de-bunk these figures but, oddly enough, they have been published by HM Revenue and Customs.

The figures do not include the increases in NI contributions and the revenues from VAT or the raid on the nation's pensions.

They include corporation tax and those levies applied to North Sea oil and such like, corporation tax always comes flooding in this time of year.

[Dicky]

They include corporation tax and those levies applied to North Sea oil and such like, corporation tax always comes flooding in this time of year.

Lets not mention the £30 Billion the robbing ba$tards made from the 3G licence auction that bankrupt alot of telecoms in 2000.

[Realistbear]

Council Tax up 100% in 10 years:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4299632.stm

The most heinous tax of them all is the council tax the non-payment of which is being used to send people to prison. Property taxes are a civil debt (arguably a breach of contract between the homeowner/renter and the local authority who provide services). We supposedly abandoned "Debtor's Prison" centuries ago along with deportation. Debtors prison seems to be alive and well under this government and I am surprised no one has challenged the matter in the courts or applied to the Court of Human Rights. In the US where I recently lived, many people default on the payment of their property taxes. They do not go to prison for non-payment, the local government apply to the court for a lien against the title of the property and a forced sale can follow. Criminal sanctions for debt or breach of contract do not exist. Fraud in connection with non-payment of taxes is another matter.

With the HPC taxes may have to rise further to keep Gordon's miracle alive for a few more months.

Time for new leadership.

[AgeingBabyBoomer]

Lets not mention the £30 Billion the robbing ba$tards made from the 3G licence auction that bankrupt alot of telecoms in 2000.

The telcos went into a buying frenzy, based on the expectaion of

fat profits, then they went bankrupt.

Hmmm, I think I see a repeating motif beginning to emerge...

ABB

[frugalista]

Lets not mention the £30 Billion the robbing ba$tards made from the 3G licence auction that bankrupt alot of telecoms in 2000.

I don't remember anyone forcing the telcos to buy those licenses.

frugalista

[dog]

Not only is the tax up but the services are dissapearing

Try getting an NHS dentist.

See what happens to rubbish collection if your wheelie bin lit is 1 mm above the rim

Many NHS prescriptions are more expensive than the drugs bought privately

Try parking your car in an NHS hospital

If your estate needs a policeman, you have pay for a private security guard

Swathes of countryside are now carpeted in pay and display parks.

If you have a sports event you have to pay the police.

Parents have to buy text books and make their own arrangements for sports.

Rail travel subsidies are shrinking

You have to pay to drive on the roads in London

Councils have become skilled ducking their responsibilities for the very old.

Libraries are getting rarer by the year.

[Guest Riser]

Heres a link to one of my favourits sites showing what old Brown has been up to:

Browns - Stealth Taxes

1997/1998 2004/2005

Income Tax £77 billion £123 billion

National Insurance £45 billion £78 billion

Stamp Duty £3.5 billion £9 billion

Inheritance Tax £1.7 billion £2.9 billion

Capital Gains Tax £1.4 billion £2.3 billion

Stealth Taxes – some general examples

New Labour promised not to put up income tax to get elected. So instead of in-your-face direct taxes, Chancellor Gordon Brown gave us new, indirect, Stealth Taxes and he abolished tax concessions. His attempts to fund New Labour's Fat Government Policy have savaged the pensions and savings industries and cost the nation the equivalent of 16.5 p in the pound on the basic rate of income tax

Edited October 4, 2005 by Riser

[BuyingBear]

Lets not mention the £30 Billion the robbing ba$tards made from the 3G licence auction that bankrupt alot of telecoms in 2000.

He as bought forward North Sea windfall so they now pay in advance, so he's got a double whamy this year, obviously you can only do that once though. Just shows you what a brazen lair Brown is when the blames OPEC for the slowdown, he's not thinking that when it comes to cashing the oil companies cheques.

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

I don't remember anyone forcing the telcos to buy those licenses.

frugalista

No-one forced anyone to buy property either.

[apom]

and no one forget..

that to more accuratly measure inflation Labour saw it prudent to remove house prices and taxes from the inflation equation..

yes... greater accuracy....

weird as every single decision made from that point was geared to ramp those two up as much as possible as fast as possible..

And Gordon

We have had lower inflation.. because with the above getting so damn expensive there isn't enough money left for anything else to get any more expensive..

There isn't enough left for us now to buy anything else..

which is why we now have a recession..

Gordon.. rhymes with tw*t..

well it doesent.. but it does in my head..

You lied about inflation which allowed you to completly bugger the economy in record time...

every decision moving toward the current financial mess as if it was his only possible goal..

what else did he think would happen..?

What else could he have dreamt might happen...?

Edited October 4, 2005 by apom

[Elizabeth]

Lets not mention the £30 Billion the robbing ba$tards made from the 3G licence auction that bankrupt alot of telecoms in 2000.

Sorry but that one, the telcos took a punt and lost. Anyone who had shares also took a punt and lost. That is capitalism, that is the free market and that is what used to make us different from the ruskies

[oracle]

I think the first notion the general public will get of the downturn is post christmas. After what I'm sure will be one of the worst christmas retail seasons on record there will be carnage on the high street. This will coincide with house prices going decisively negative YOY.

....don't forget the really sneaky ones like speed cameras!!!

....a speeding ticket might cost you £60,but how much extra does joe public pay in tax to:

a)pay for the cameras/film

b)pay for the bloke to empty the camera and send it to the police

c)pay for the ploiceman to process the film and confirm the breach of law

d)pay for the admin to tell you you have been caught

e)pay for the judiciary to administer the original fine.

.......I bet that's a lot more than £60!!!!!!!

revenue generating...I think not!.

joe public is paying through the nose for it!

....speeding may be dangerous in some instances but this is just downright robbery!

[RichM]

Well I'm sorry but you're all FASCISTS and RACISTS.

Without our taxes Chancellor Brown would not be able to revolutionise the welfare state, compensate the poor single-parent families who have had their lives blighted by capitalism, make our lives healthier with all the five-a-day coordinators and smoking cessation coordinators, subsidise the brave Islamic clerics who speaking out against Bliar's evil war, dismantle the nefarious family system, sustain the noble ways of life of the Welsh and Scottish, or pay the millions of other dedicated civil servants.

As I've said before, I regularly send off some extra chunks of my pay packet to help Gordon in his mission to eradicate child poverty. What a hero.

[AgeingBabyBoomer]

....don't forget the really sneaky ones like speed cameras!!!

....a speeding ticket might cost you £60,but how much extra does joe public pay in tax to:

a)pay for the cameras/film

b)pay for the bloke to empty the camera and send it to the police

c)pay for the ploiceman to process the film and confirm the breach of law

d)pay for the admin to tell you you have been caught

e)pay for the judiciary to administer the original fine.

.......I bet that's a lot more than £60!!!!!!!

revenue generating...I think not!.

joe public is paying through the nose for it!

....speeding may be dangerous in some instances but this is just downright robbery!

Not to mention the insurance companies, who will crank up your premium more

than the fine for having the points...

ABB

[Dicky]

Sorry but that one, the telcos took a punt and lost. Anyone who had shares also took a punt and lost. That is capitalism, that is the free market and that is what used to make us different from the ruskies

Quite a few capitalist counties gave it away free, how bazaar in a capitalist society, reason being to generating jobs and income revenue rather than killing the ****ing goose that lays the golden egg like GB and Co did.

Edited October 4, 2005 by Dicky

[BuyingBear]

....don't forget the really sneaky ones like speed cameras!!!

....a speeding ticket might cost you £60,but how much extra does joe public pay in tax to:

a)pay for the cameras/film

b)pay for the bloke to empty the camera and send it to the police

c)pay for the ploiceman to process the film and confirm the breach of law

d)pay for the admin to tell you you have been caught

e)pay for the judiciary to administer the original fine.

.......I bet that's a lot more than £60!!!!!!!

revenue generating...I think not!.

There isn't a single 'camera partnership' (local quango's) that loses money, after all their expenses have been paid the remainder goes to HM Treasury and to the installation of new cameras, that's why their growth is exponential, more fines = more cameras = more fines = even more cameras. This is money for nothing, they'd have to be really incompetent to lose money. Your point may have been true in the early 90's when cameras were about saving lives in blackspots but it isn't the job of the police anymore, hence the 'partnerships'.

The real cash cows are the SPEC's cameras, no film and minimal administration once they've been installed, these cameras are live linked and speeders are automatically fined thanks to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and a fine is printed and dropped in the post, depending how you pay the fine there is basically no or minimal human interaction. There is no slowing down to avoid these, they measure your average speed between two set points, you can go through the final camera below the speed limit and still get fined. The operators are meant to double check that the number plate has been correctly identified but the computer is pretty good so they tend not to bother, even if they're indentified incorrectly there is an implicit guilt so the motorists tend to pay anyway as they have no idea at which site they've been captured. Some people request the photographic proof only to find that they've identified the wrong car, often the wrong make and colour to boot, but these requests are now checked as to save the partnership from any embarrassment, they just make out the evidence has been lost due to a 'computer error' and drop the fine, that saves any trouble from the press.

SPEC's cameras have traditionally only been put on road works zones on the motorway but they're such cash cows they've managed to get some permanent placements on the M6, ask any partnership and they all want a piece of the motorway, not just because of the volumes but because they get a better class of customer, they tend to pay their bills and don't ask too many questions. They've made a big PR f*ck up on the M4 though with their old school Gatso's. SPEC's are particularly effective on motorway works, so much so that they've dropped speed limits from 50mph to 40mph, the penalty rate has soared since cars just speed through like lemmings, each getting fined, each just thinking they're just following the car in front and no harm done!

An alarming amount of tickets, especially so in chavy urban areas, are written off because the keeper cannot be identified or the car has been officially crushed, cloned plates are also a growing problem but fortunately they rarely match both the make and colour to the original, the operator should catch this since these details are held at the DVLA, but it takes a lot of effort (i.e. some effort .v doing nothing). A lot of cameras in chavy areas are just empty cases left for deterrent effect, the fines are more trouble than they're worth.

The DVLA database is full of errors, even their new 'cleansed' database resulting from the tax disc changes and the new style V5 is riddled with errors, this was introduced as to comply with new European regulations but it was largely a ruse to ensure details are up to date, when they introduced the fines for Vehicle Excise Duty about 2 million cars came from no where, it was a good 'purge', but tax disc evasion is still north of 10% and the speeding pikies form a disproportionate number of those so up to 1/3 of speeding fines are written off in some areas.

Officially because the partnerships are private bodies their access to intimate DVLA data is in breach of the data protection act so they don't quesiton this too much, if too many questions are asked as their statutory powers (or lack there of) to issue fines then they drop the penalty. There have been cases where confidential data has been leaked by insiders sympathetic to animal rights protestors, they gave them number plates and they found the address out for them, you can guess the rest.

In London you can now get fined for jumping in a bus lane (some are part-time too), or going the wrong way up a one way street or sitting in a yellow box (yes, people are often fined despite being allowed to sit in them if turnng right) and there's also 20mph zones that fine people officially still in the 30mph zone, the error rate is awful but we stand for it! ANPR was originally introduced to enfore the 'ring of steel' aroun the City of London following the IRA bombings in the early 90's, look what it has lead on to (congestion charging to boot), thanks to the recent suplurge in terrorism we can only imagine what new technology will emerge from this swamp, ID cards are a cert.

They're insidious b*stards straight out of 1984 with wonderfully Orwellian names "The (x) Casualty Reduction Partnership", the justice is peculiarly Kafkesque. Enjoy your car while you can, if the oil doesn't get you these buggers will!

Edited October 5, 2005 by BuyingBear

[Mushroom]

BuyingBear, good post.

[Dicky]

There isn't a single 'camera partnership' (local quango's) that loses money, after all their expenses have been paid the remainder goes to HM Treasury and to the installation of new cameras, that's why their growth is exponential, more fines = more cameras = more fines = even more cameras. This is money for nothing, they'd have to be really incompetent to lose money. Your point may have been true in the early 90's when cameras were about saving lives in blackspots but it isn't the job of the police anymore, hence the 'partnerships'.

The real cash cows are the SPEC's cameras, no film and minimal administration once they've been installed, these cameras are live linked and speeders are automatically fined thanks to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and a fine is printed and dropped in the post, depending how you pay the fine there is basically no or minimal human interaction. There is no slowing down to avoid these, they measure your average speed between two set points, you can go through the final camera below the speed limit and still get fined. The operators are meant to double check that the number plate has been correctly identified but the computer is pretty good so they tend not to bother, even if they're indentified incorrectly there is an implicit guilt so the motorists tend to pay anyway as they have no idea at which site they've been captured. Some people request the photographic proof only to find that they've identified the wrong car, often the wrong make and colour to boot, but these requests are now checked as to save the partnership from any embarrassment, they just make out the evidence has been lost due to a 'computer error' and drop the fine, that saves any trouble from the press.

SPEC's cameras have traditionally only been put on road works zones on the motorway but they're such cash cows they've managed to get some permanent placements on the M6, ask any partnership and they all want a piece of the motorway, not just because of the volumes but because they get a better class of customer, they tend to pay their bills and don't ask too many questions. They've made a big PR f*ck up on the M4 though with their old school Gatso's. SPEC's are particularly effective on motorway works, so much so that they've dropped speed limits from 50mph to 40mph, the penalty rate has soared since cars just speed through like lemmings, each getting fined, each just thinking they're just following the car in front and no harm done!

An alarming amount of tickets, especially so in chavy urban areas, are written off because the keeper cannot be identified or the car has been officially crushed, cloned plates are also a growing problem but fortunately they rarely match both the make and colour to the original, the operator should catch this since these details are held at the DVLA, but it takes a lot of effort (i.e. some effort .v doing nothing). A lot of cameras in chavy areas are just empty cases left for deterrent effect, the fines are more trouble than they're worth.

The DVLA database is full of errors, even their new 'cleansed' database resulting from the tax disc changes and the new style V5 is riddled with errors, this was introduced as to comply with new European regulations but it was largely a ruse to ensure details are up to date, when they introduced the fines for Vehicle Excise Duty about 2 million cars came from no where, it was a good 'purge', but tax disc evasion is still north of 10% and the speeding pikies form a disproportionate number of those so up to 1/3 of speeding fines are written off in some areas.

Officially because the partnerships are private bodies their access to intimate DVLA data is in breach of the data protection act so they don't quesiton this too much, if too many questions are asked as their statutory powers (or lack there of) to issue fines then they drop the penalty. There have been cases where confidential data has been leaked by insiders sympathetic to animal rights protestors, they gave them number plates and they found the address out for them, you can guess the rest.

In London you can now get fined for jumping in a bus lane (some are part-time too), or going the wrong way up a one way street or sitting in a yellow box (yes, people are often fined despite being allowed to sit in them if turnng right) and there's also 20mph zones that fine people officially still in the 30mph zone, the error rate is awful but we stand for it! ANPR was originally introduced to enfore the 'ring of steel' aroun the City of London following the IRA bombings in the early 90's, look what it has lead on to (congestion charging to boot), thanks to the recent suplurge in terrorism we can only imagine what new technology will emerge from this swamp, ID cards are a cert.

They're insidious b*stards straight out of 1984 with wonderfully Orwellian names "The (x) Casualty Reduction Partnership", the justice is peculiarly Kafkesque. Enjoy your car while you can, if the oil doesn't get you these buggers will!

Don't know how true this is but I'be been told by a systems engineer whose worked on similar projects that by swapping lanes the camera can't track you, they look for the same car entering and exiting the same lane to average the speed, if you swap lanes mid point it get lost, could be horsesh**, has anyone else heard this. The other way not to get caught is not to speed.

[BuyingBear]

Don't know how true this is but I'be been told by a systems engineer whose worked on similar projects that by swapping lanes the camera can't track you, they look for the same car entering and exiting the same lane to average the speed, if you swap lanes mid point it get lost

That's not true, they monitor all traffic on all lanes regardless if you're speeding, as noted this technology was originally designed for the 'ring of steel' and the new sites can be used for monitoring by other agencies who aren't interested in speed.

"As vehicles pass between the entry and exit camera points their number plates are digitally recorded, whether speeding or not. Then, by ANPR recognition, the images on the video of matching number plates are paired up, and because each image carries a date and time stamp, the computer can then work out your average speed between the cameras. There is no film used for SPECS.

Quote from the manufactures of SPECS system. "The SPECS system is so efficient and user friendly that Manchester CTO processed 2,500 offences in 6 man-hours".

[dog]

BuyingBear

Your piece on speeding fines was first class.

[theChuz]

That's not true, they monitor all traffic on all lanes regardless if you're speeding, as noted this technology was originally designed for the 'ring of steel' and the new sites can be used for monitoring by other agencies who aren't interested in speed.

"As vehicles pass between the entry and exit camera points their number plates are digitally recorded, whether speeding or not. Then, by ANPR recognition, the images on the video of matching number plates are paired up, and because each image carries a date and time stamp, the computer can then work out your average speed between the cameras. There is no film used for SPECS.

Quote from the manufactures of SPECS system. "The SPECS system is so efficient and user friendly that Manchester CTO processed 2,500 offences in 6 man-hours".

Can i be had by a SPECS on my motorbike, i dont have a front number plate... not that its needed i got stopped last night for doing 80 on a dual carrige way.

[Casual Observer]

There isn't a single 'camera partnership' (local quango's) that loses money, after all their expenses have been paid the remainder goes to HM Treasury and to the installation of new cameras, that's why their growth is exponential, more fines = more cameras = more fines = even more cameras. This is money for nothing, they'd have to be really incompetent to lose money. Your point may have been true in the early 90's when cameras were about saving lives in blackspots but it isn't the job of the police anymore, hence the 'partnerships'.

The real cash cows are the SPEC's cameras, no film and minimal administration once they've been installed, these cameras are live linked and speeders are automatically fined thanks to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and a fine is printed and dropped in the post, depending how you pay the fine there is basically no or minimal human interaction. There is no slowing down to avoid these, they measure your average speed between two set points, you can go through the final camera below the speed limit and still get fined. The operators are meant to double check that the number plate has been correctly identified but the computer is pretty good so they tend not to bother, even if they're indentified incorrectly there is an implicit guilt so the motorists tend to pay anyway as they have no idea at which site they've been captured. Some people request the photographic proof only to find that they've identified the wrong car, often the wrong make and colour to boot, but these requests are now checked as to save the partnership from any embarrassment, they just make out the evidence has been lost due to a 'computer error' and drop the fine, that saves any trouble from the press.

SPEC's cameras have traditionally only been put on road works zones on the motorway but they're such cash cows they've managed to get some permanent placements on the M6, ask any partnership and they all want a piece of the motorway, not just because of the volumes but because they get a better class of customer, they tend to pay their bills and don't ask too many questions. They've made a big PR f*ck up on the M4 though with their old school Gatso's. SPEC's are particularly effective on motorway works, so much so that they've dropped speed limits from 50mph to 40mph, the penalty rate has soared since cars just speed through like lemmings, each getting fined, each just thinking they're just following the car in front and no harm done!

An alarming amount of tickets, especially so in chavy urban areas, are written off because the keeper cannot be identified or the car has been officially crushed, cloned plates are also a growing problem but fortunately they rarely match both the make and colour to the original, the operator should catch this since these details are held at the DVLA, but it takes a lot of effort (i.e. some effort .v doing nothing). A lot of cameras in chavy areas are just empty cases left for deterrent effect, the fines are more trouble than they're worth.

The DVLA database is full of errors, even their new 'cleansed' database resulting from the tax disc changes and the new style V5 is riddled with errors, this was introduced as to comply with new European regulations but it was largely a ruse to ensure details are up to date, when they introduced the fines for Vehicle Excise Duty about 2 million cars came from no where, it was a good 'purge', but tax disc evasion is still north of 10% and the speeding pikies form a disproportionate number of those so up to 1/3 of speeding fines are written off in some areas.

Officially because the partnerships are private bodies their access to intimate DVLA data is in breach of the data protection act so they don't quesiton this too much, if too many questions are asked as their statutory powers (or lack there of) to issue fines then they drop the penalty. There have been cases where confidential data has been leaked by insiders sympathetic to animal rights protestors, they gave them number plates and they found the address out for them, you can guess the rest.

In London you can now get fined for jumping in a bus lane (some are part-time too), or going the wrong way up a one way street or sitting in a yellow box (yes, people are often fined despite being allowed to sit in them if turnng right) and there's also 20mph zones that fine people officially still in the 30mph zone, the error rate is awful but we stand for it! ANPR was originally introduced to enfore the 'ring of steel' aroun the City of London following the IRA bombings in the early 90's, look what it has lead on to (congestion charging to boot), thanks to the recent suplurge in terrorism we can only imagine what new technology will emerge from this swamp, ID cards are a cert.

They're insidious b*stards straight out of 1984 with wonderfully Orwellian names "The (x) Casualty Reduction Partnership", the justice is peculiarly Kafkesque. Enjoy your car while you can, if the oil doesn't get you these buggers will!

People who are against speed cameras, and other devices that detect incidents of breaking the law, should really direct their objections against the law itself. Why not complain that, e.g. 30 MPH in a residential area is daft, and, if you do, say what you think the speed limit should be. (I mean "you" in the general sense, not the personal sense, btw)

[Bluelady]

In previous threads I have posted links to a site which categorically lists hundreds of examples of government waste. Despite being researched and reported on by such things of House of Commons Select Committees and many eminent economists, Blue Lady and a few others comtemptuously dismissed them all as fantasy and even went so far as to suggest that tax had not gone up.

Well, it appears it has. By £1.5 bn a WEEK under Labour. Those of us who pay tax are paying, collectively, £1.5 billion a week more than in 1997

Last year the total tax take was £172 billion, up 11% from the previous figure of £155.5 billion.

Now I know the correct reaction would be to de-bunk these figures but, oddly enough, they have been published by HM Revenue and Customs.

The figures do not include the increases in NI contributions and the revenues from VAT or the raid on the nation's pensions.

Utter nonsense. Never have I suggested that tax has not gone up. Neither have I dismissed the idea, contemptuously or otherwise, that there is waste in the public sector. Check your facts before you start putting words in people's mouths, Marina.

Anything I've posted on public sector spending has been to point out that the public sector jobs frequently posted here as examples of tax rip offs are a. reasonable salaries for the level of responsibility they carry and b. necessary to provide the services we all expect.

[dog]

Anything I've posted on public sector spending has been to point out that the public sector jobs frequently posted here as examples of tax rip offs are a. reasonable salaries for the level of responsibility they carry and b. necessary to provide the services we all expect.

I cannot think of a salary small enough to pay a 'diversity coordinator'. Nor would I want to pay anything for a "Corporate Director For Continuous Improvement" in Aberdeen City Council. These are just nonsense jobs.