Albion Street 02/27/2011
 
Imagine this scenario: you have a steady job which pays well, but house prices are sky high and you are not able to leave the parental home. You share the house with your lazy, dishonest father whose name the (re)mortgage is in, who favours your grumpy half-siblings (they don't like you, but are quite happy to be kept housed and fed), and even strangers who your father has taken a shine to and invited in off the streets. Your feckless father has no intention of working for a living, but is fond of spending money – yours. Even though you are the main breadwinner, he insists as a condition of living under “his” roof, that you hand over all your wages, out of which he distributes to everyone in the household a small allowance to buy essentials. He keeps the majority of your wages for himself, and if he's spent too much in the pub or had a bad run of luck at the bookies, you will have your allowance cut even further – there's no way he's doing without his luxuries, even if you have to. Even though you are working, you are no better off than the siblings and “guests” who don't.

Does this sound like a fair situation, one that you'd personally be happy with? Well, if you're an English taxpayer, this is already happening to you. I'm sure once you realise that the “lazy father” in this parable represents the British Government, you won't have too much trouble identifying the other characters. Please, read on.

Eventually, a small house comes on the market locally which is affordable. You decide to buy it, and inform your family that you intend to move out, but their reaction is one of bitterness and anger,  with statements like: “after all we've done for you!” and “you won't manage on your own!”.

With some sadness, you pack your belongings and move into your new home. Your family disown you and you lose contact. Time passes and you decide to visit them to see if tempers have cooled,  but when you turn the corner back into Albion Street, you find that your old house is boarded up, with a “For Sale at Auction” sign. There is no sign of your dysfunctional family, or the lodgers.

All over England, local councils are being ordered by the British government to make cutbacks, even in essential services, because Whitehall is withholding their funding to “balance the books”. The English Radicals believe that the present system where central government keeps all taxation revenue and then rations funding to local authorities is wrong, and should be scrapped. Where does this taxation revenue come from in the first place? From taxpayers all over England! Why should taxes raised in Exeter, Birmingham or Newcastle automatically be sent to that corrupt middleman - the British government in Whitehall - who keep the bulk of that cash and decide what we in the “sticks” should be able to spend? And then they have the audacity to tell us, that we need to make cutbacks? That pile of money they are sat on was ours in the first place!

As outlined in a previous article on this website, the English Radicals believe the whole system of taxation in “broken Britain” is in serious need of overhaul. Instead of all taxation going straight to the British Treasury, it should first pass through the local area where the tax is generated. At least 50% of all revenue should be kept for local government funding, and only then should any remaining revenue be passed on to central government. This system is not new, similar ones exists already in places like Germany and Switzerland, who you may have noticed are weathering the recession much better than we are.

With this system, local government would have more funding than it does now, and central government would have to make do with less – it would have to live within its means, as we do.  And perhaps if the British had less money to play with, they might be less inclined to prop up the EU, go to war, or donate foreign aid to India – a country rich enough to fund a space programme!

If David Cameron is truly serious about creating a “Big Society” (which we doubt), then it will only happen when there is “Smaller Government”. But the Tory Unionists, by definition, are intent on keeping the British government as big as possible – the Home Nations are the last remnants of Empire, and will be kept prisoner at all costs. There will be no help from any of the main parties in securing a fairer deal for English taxpayers, and so our taxes will continue to be taken and misused.

The British government would do well to realise that you can only push people so far before they push back, as the student riots in this country demonstrated, and as recent events have shown in North Africa. And they would do well to remember what the American people told a previous British government in 1776 - that there should be “no taxation without representation” - they were being taxed by the British but had no voice in the British parliament - and we all know how that turned out. The English taxpayer of 2011 is in exactly the same boat as the American of 1776. We pay more tax than ever, but we see our public services diminish – because we have no say in how those taxes are spent. In effect the British government is one of occupation in England, as surely as it ever was in America or Ireland. Seriously - isn't it time England moved out of Albion Street?

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