The Stealthiest Scam

Here I am wondering why my council tax is shooting up faster than inflation , from recent reports it’s  4.5% this year which is a staggering twice that of inflation. Of course there’s  a plethora of information in the public domain and many people point to whole suites of reasons as to why this is the case. In fact I tried to look at it and the truth is that there is so much information out there that trying to tie down a single reason or trend at first seemed impossible. However ,  the more I looked, the more it became obvious that  actually although there may well be tons of little reasons, all seemingly very important in their own right, there is a bigger idea underpinning them all , and on consideration it’s quite a testimony to political slight-of-hand.

 Not long after the general election I was left reeling at the fact that a Government that had invaded a sovereign state based on badly spelled plagiarised student hypothesis which turned out to be wrong, had managed to be re-elected. The truly amazing thing was that no matter who I asked, including long time Labour supporters, non would openly admit to voting for them, if they had then their excuses were highly reminiscent of those of  a smoker  (paper does more damage than the tobacco type of thing).  Anyway of course I couldn’t understand how this could all have happened.

 Until I started thinking.

 Philosophically speaking one potential truth seems a little frightening. I think it’s fair to say that given the number of cameras, number plate recognition systems, databases, automatic billing, DNA collection schemes, ID cards, health warnings, and all the other bollocks being brought in, all provided by legislation from the government, our lives our not our own any more. Now this in some cases may be seen as a bonus as it makes us feel safer (some would say) however, to me it seems that  the truth is that the more safe a person feels, the less free they are. This is best conceptualised by adopting a bubble wrap life, in this case a person wraps themselves wholly in bubble wrap, puts tubes in places to provide inputs and outputs and then remains stationary for the remainder of their lives, absolving the risk of failed or incorrect input and output to a third party that states it knows what should go in and what should come out. The 'well wrapped' person is as safe as the intelligence of those they absolved ultimate responsibility to but are entirely beholden to them for their existence and can never be free. This seems to be the case within the country at the moment. Every day hysterical reporting demands that the government does something about all the things that are bad in our lives, and yet is equally derisory about how much the government legislates our lives. Thus creating a no win scenario for the masses as Government (certainly the current one) will legislate by default.

  How does this all affect Council tax?  Well, interestingly enough I heard about something called a smoking Cessation co-ordinator, interested to know about such things I did a search for it on the internet which returned this report. In this a Welsh Government body states that they wanted to bring on board 8 of these co-ordinators to provide training to their dental staff so that they could be trained to actively deliver a "quit message" whenever possible (feel that bubble wrap coming out?). Further research returned that a co-ordinator earns up to £41000 a year and they manage smoking cessation specialists at  £25000 a year, whose job is essentially to tell people who want to stop smoking that they are doing a good thing and organising meetings full of people who are stopping so that they can all tell themselves that they are doing a good thing. Just in case any of them was felt at any time  that their decision to stop smoking was a bad thing.

 This looking scary yet?

 Well, lets look at this from another perspective, we will  be brave and call it reality. I ask the question, is it in the interests of the team of smoking cessation specialists and smoking cessation co-ordinators to be successful in their jobs, well, if they were effective then eventually everyone will give up, of course that would make them obsolete. Ahh now there’s another dilemma here because it’s not just these people is it, there’s the additional support staff and all the services required to keep them in warm offices, petrol, and healthcare (including smoking cessation if they want), pensions, etc,  so it’s not really in their interests for the people they are employed to help to give up either. So ultimately it is fair to say that this position cannot possibly be good at the job it’s there for, thus it is meaningless and pointless, and expensive. If I were to make an assessment then a finger-in-the-wind guess for wages, admin, resources, etc reasonably could run into figures like £181000 a year for a smoking cessation team with only one co-ordinator.  Now, because all this costs money it is subject to scrutiny from a range of statisticians and performance monitors (to make sure the tax payer is getting in their moneys worth) . Is it in their interests to report that these services are ultimately pointless, meaningless, and expensive? Well if they do then the taxpayer will demand action and the service will go, rendering the suite of performance managers and statisticians (paid for by the taxpayer) obsolete. So it isn’t in their interests to report that there is NO POINT to these people or their jobs or their support or their administration etc etc.  So, all this money that can only come from one place, your hard work, and its all for nothing. Or is it?

 The final truth about council tax.

 Well, not only does all this has to be paid for, it  can only exist because it is legislated for by government, smoking is bad and people are stupid so lets have smoking cessation officers and specialists, lets monitor them using performance measurement , and of course additional administrative requirements to make sure these new departments are working. Now if I were a smoking cessation whatever, or an administrator, or a statistician and I turned on the news to hear that the next proposed Government was advocating a massive reduction in all this useless bollocks, would I vote for them. 

No. 

Would  I vote for the only people guaranteed to make sure my job and the money kept coming in rather than forcing me to go out and get a real job doing something productive. 

Yes. 

So, the reason your council tax is so high is because you are actually bribing a bunch of useless nobodies who by definition cannot do their jobs, for doing the only thing that they can do, vote Labour.  So if you didn't  vote for a government that brought civil war to a sovereign nation for no reason, don't worry you are paying at least 10 other people to.