kaygreen10 posted: " And yet being unable to pay I remember hearing about Margaret Thatcher's original Poll Tax plan. It was based on her stated premise that people were inherently irresponsible and, unless they were made to pay more for public services, they would waste " Kay Green
I remember hearing about Margaret Thatcher's original Poll Tax plan. It was based on her stated premise that people were inherently irresponsible and, unless they were made to pay more for public services, they would waste them. Her remedy was to set up a system that blatantly put the price of public services beyond what most people could afford, and then forcing them to pay anyway.
Domestic rates
I remember staring at my husband in utter disbelief. The system we had at the time, called 'domestic rates', charged you an annual amount for all public services – all the things councils do, basically. The amount you paid was calculated on the size and type of your property so, if you owned a mansion in acres of ground, you paid a lot more than a person with a typical 3-bedroom townhouse, and that person paid more than someone with a flatlet in a multi-occupancy house. The reason for my disbelief was that it was clearly going to break the national system immediately. If you let off the rich people with the multi-room mansions, and charge penniless bed-sit dwellers more, most people simply would not be able to pay, so councils would not get their money.
Water rates
Water, too, was paid for on an annual rate. Again, it depended on the size and value of your property which seemed logical, because if you had the kind of house with six bathrooms and a huge jacuzzi, big enough to have house-parties with dozens of guests, you would be making a lot more use of water and sewage services.
There is also a huge philosophical, natural justice issue around water rates. Under the old system, we were not paying for water. We were paying for all the services that enable clean water to come out of a tap when you turn it on, and for waste water and sewage to be safely carried away and treated when you pulled the plug, or flushed the loo. This is logical, and it is where the costs really are. Water does not cost anything, nor does it belong to anyone who can sell it to you. There is a reason why earth, air, fire and water used to be thought of as the 'base elements'. They are there. Our mother planet makes them happen. They don't belong to anyone. Now, water rates have gone, and Smart Meters have arrived. We pay for water by the litre, and water companies can let themselves off responsibility for functioning cleanly and safely, because they pretend water is their 'product' which they are 'selling'.
Poll tax
We call it Council Tax nowadays – the term 'Poll Tax' was coined to flag up some of the issues around Thatcher's system. Instead of rates based on your property – or your home, if you were renting, the new tax was collected according to residents' names on the local election register so, if you want to vote, you have to register and pay the tax. The first and most obvious problem to many was that those who were short of cash were liable to think oh well, I don't need to vote, I'll avoid registering and see if I can dodge the tax. It also created a problem for fugitives. They didn't want to register where they were living for their own safety. Thatcher of course was a Tory, so assumed 'fugitive' equalled criminal, and therefore we wouldn't care about them but it also includes anyone who is being victimised. There were, for example, many women trying to duck the attention of violent ex-partners, who never had their names on electoral roles.
Poll tax riots
It is a well known historical fact that when a government ups prices and/or reduces availability of the basic necessities of life to a point where most people are struggling to cope, civil disobedience happens quite naturally. The two main effects of Thatcher's Poll Tax were people refusing to pay, and crowds of angry people developing into riots. For obvious reasons, governments are very keen on giving the impression violent or illegal responses to government action don't work. They depend on you believing they don't work, because otherwise we would be out on the streets causing mayhem whenever politicians did things people didn't like. Personally, I think that the more our democratic system breaks down, the more we need to use this strategy but, throughout the whole of our history, when people are pushed into a situation they simply can't afford, it happens naturally. Thatcher was quite quickly forced to change her plan, and 'Poll Tax' became the banded 'Council Tax' we have now, which does to some extent grade the size of the bills according to the value of property. Not as much as the rates did – the richest got off with a very good deal – but it was far, far fairer than her first, impossible, plan.
We won then, we will win now
I don't think it went far enough. The rich are paying less, and the poor are charged more (of course, they can't pay it – it just makes the benefits system larger and more complicated and more painful than it need be). I also don't think we should forget that we are unfairly being charged for water as though it were a product, instead of being charged according to property size, for water services but nevertheless, we won a vast improvement on the original Poll Tax plan and we will, for the same reason, win a vast improvement on the current impossibly large bills the government is allowing 'utility companies' to inflict on us.
Please join the 'don't pay' campaign. At least put your name on, to help them get to a million – that's no scarier than signing a petition for now, because there's a very good chance that if enough people join it, MPs will get scared, and do something about it before we get to the October 'Won't pay' point. If they do hold out, demanding prices we simply can't pay, at least by then there'll be a million of us, so not much chance of them coming after everyone. If you can, please also sign up to help the campaign along, get some stickers and leaflets, join in the noise-making – make sure there are a million of us. We have to do this, because bills are set to double *again*. we can't pay, and if we don't act together now, each and every one of us is going to face a financial crisis alone, whenever each and every one of us reaches their personal financial disaster point.
Refusing to do the impossible is not hard - we have no choice - but if we agree to refuse it together, we will be much safer.
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