A rant on all your taxes

Universal benefits, what are they good for? I’d have said “absolutely nothing” but such benefits have become a mutated refund from a labyrinthine tax system, one that leaves us unable to calculate our actual tax burden or even an estimated average that you can trust. I like Paul Waugh’s description of child benefit as a token rebate for those where the benefit is their only ‘take’ from the state.

Judging any tax in isolation is completely pointless but it won’t stop childless people complaining that they subsidise the rest, or George Osborne on a similar tack telling us that it’s ‘unfair’ for the poor to subsidise the rich; I admire his chutzpah but he's talking complete bollocks. The chancellor is doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons and his real reason of course is to make any subsequent cuts more palatable. Such nonsense reminds me of the good old days of another kind of cut, a tax cut, and the obligatory interview with your average family who would lament “it’s not fair for others that we’re being given this money”. You’re not being given anything you idiots, they’re taking less away!

You can’t judge a tax by its name. No one believes that vehicle tax and petrol tax is spent on road maintenance or that it discourages us from driving. Despite this we’ve had numerous attempts at introducing another ‘green’ tax, a road tax; that would be three taxes that I’d have to pay to be able to do one thing - drive to work – all so I can pay more tax.

Contributing according to my means is a duty I gladly accept but I object to a deliberate obfuscation of how much I’m paying, whether it's through the creation of new taxes or additional taxes on something that is already taxed, and then throwing in populist ad-hoc universal rebates such as child benefit or even the winter fuel allowance. Removing the universality of child benefit is one tiny step in the right direction and a simplified universal credit system may prove to be another. Let me at least understand my liability rather than hide me from the truth.

Something something something dark side

Inspired by Mark Pack who generated a Wordle for Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour party conference, I decided to generate one for my blog. The new leader’s predominant word was “generation”, mine was… “something”. Surely something’s amiss?

Bull’s-eye

In the end I have to confess to getting a little confused distinguishing between David and Edward Miliband but then I was hardly a stakeholder in what happened. Is it a good result for the Conservatives? At first I wasn’t as sure, David Miliband was a known quantity and whenever I thought of him I thought of Tony Blair and not in a positive way. Ed on the other hand is less well known and unknown equates to dangerous.

But I can see why the Conservatives prefer Ed to David, for all David’s association with the past this was hardly something that the Conservatives could use effectively against him, this was something that worked against him for those in his own party. Ed Miliband on the other hand had the support of the unions, even better he was elected thanks to the votes of union members, members who don’t even have to belong to the Labour party yet can have a say in who leads it. This is something that works against him for those outside the party; you might as well paint a bull’s-eye.

I browsed a few left-leaning forums today to gauge the mood and rather typically those daring to suggest a weakness were being slapped down rather than engaged in debate. I have no problem with Unions donating to the Labour party but the incongruity of an organisation being able to use funding to buy votes for its membership - which is how it will be portrayed - isn’t something that can be easily explained away. This ought to please me as it makes them less electable, yet strangely it doesn’t because whilst they continue to live in their bubble world I continue to be denied a credible choice.

Sent from my Nokia

My sister-in-law came to visit not so long ago and to keep her children occupied I switched on the PC. The eldest daughter (who was only nine) asks “What operating system is it?”

“Windows”, I replied.

To which she shuddered and went “EUW!”

You see, their parents are Apple… enthusiasts, and the brainwashing starts so early these days. I repeat: I would possibly (probably?) buy an iMac if I could afford one; because when I mentioned this episode the other day I got the impression I’d inadvertently come out as anything-but-Apple - a heretic if you like. This is grossly unfair, I would never disrespect anyone’s software/hardware proclivities, though I’d like to know the difference between the new Shuffle, at £39, and the new Nano at £129, beyond the ability to see what it is you’re playing.

Troika

I wanted Wave to succeed because, of the big three, I like Google the most – or should that be I dislike them the least? There’s something sad about Microsoft compared to how it once was. I can’t afford a new PC so I’ll not see Windows 7 for a while yet I’ve heard good things. In other areas though they remind me of IBM in the 1970’s; using FUD and the threat of legal action to coerce companies into paying for a licence to protect them from patents that they may (or may not) have infringed. It’s cheaper to pay up than defend yourself – which makes Microsoft sound less like IBM and more like the mafia.

Of course if I had the money I’d skip the PC altogether, buy an Apple Mac and sync my iPhone to it over and over again, if I could afford an iPhone. They're so lovely, but there’s something not quite right and it’s not the control freakery or the fanboys… no, that’s not true, it is those things. Years from now someone will find a decaying Apple II in the attic of Steve Jobs’ mansion and then we’ll discover the awful truth. It’s rather like the sinister and incredibly popular series Friends, everyone looks perfect and you’d like to copy the look but you know things will turn ugly if you dare to sit on that sofa. God help you if you bring your own chair.

Say hello, wave goodbye

I’ve hardly been idle but I need a break from thinking about work whenever I look at the screen, hence I found myself playing around with the ‘share’ options on the blog, again. After adding in the Facebook button I’ve been contemplating Google Buzz; who uses it? I never post to it and rarely read from it, I’m not sure what to do with it; apart from a few short conversations all it does for me is aggregate feeds which makes me think I’m missing something, or maybe it’s missing something. How many ‘buzz’ but don’t ‘tweet’ anyway?

I know Google are serious about social networking since Google Me is in the pipelines and every now and then they buy up some media-related company - they’re up to something, massing their forces, and I'm thinking that the conversation of which I had so few may be the differentiator. So it’s hello to Buzz and goodbye to Google Wave, for which I also had an account and similarly never used; at least in this respect my apathy was shared. I had this suspicion it was less a product and more a framework, a new paradigm for sharing, or something, and I wanted it to succeed - despite not really knowing what it was.

They’re moving in herds

When I was in school and involved in one of those teacher-inspired debates about nuclear disarmament and disarmament in general, and generally upsetting our teachers by saying it was a bad thing, one of the questions raised asked what would happen to the thousands employed in the defence industry. I always regarded this as a duff question but the answer given was every bit as naff. The honest answer would have been “they’ll have to find jobs elsewhere”, the answer proffered, by a teacher, was that they could make something like tractors instead. This is why upsetting teachers can be a good thing.

Fast forward to the present day and the TUC conference, where various delegates show every sign of inhabiting the same land of make believe. Apparently what we need to do is invest, though it’s a little unclear as to what with (since we don’t have any money) and what we’re supposed to invest in. People probably, that’s suitably vague.

One could argue that a strong and vibrant economy does far more to protect employee rights, as it requires employers to compete for their services, but in less certain times a Union can play a vital role against employer excess; those, for example, who might be tempted to sack their workforce on a Friday and re-employ them on a Monday at less favourable terms. However, I have no time for Unions promoting a fantasy world that makes product for the sake of making it, regardless of whether anyone wants or needs it. The private sector can’t afford such nonsense, you either make money or you don’t and you go out of business. But how does one objectively measure value in the public sector? The answer is you can’t, hence it becomes easier to indulge.

We have school classroom sizes of around 30 not because this is ideal, we’d like them smaller, but because that is what we can afford. I’d suggest we pay for all public services this way. Since what we can afford fluctuates, our spending might sometimes adjust accordingly. I have the greatest respect for many working in the public sector, some do a job the difficulty of which I can barely comprehend, but contrary to what we hear the cuts won’t bring an unfair burden; this is a burden that those in the private sector have had to bear alone for the past twelve months. Pay cuts, redundancies, employer pension contributions stopped. Welcome to the real world.