This is quite extraordinary.
Today in the Scottish Parliament the First Minster announced
that he was
introducing legislation that was not in his manifesto and therefore,
to paraphrase the SNPs words when referring to Westminster, no one voted for,
to stop a properly constituted and statutory legal authority from going about its
lawful tasks.
Indeed, it is not just a lawful
task, it is their duty.
To what am I referring?
Well, there has been a bit of a stooshie now people have realised that
there are responsibilities that go with voting.
Paying your fair share of tax being one of them. No taxation without representation and all
that. It is a two way street. Don’t pay your lawful taxes and you really shouldn’t
be having a say on how taxpayers money is used.
It seems that many people applied to vote in the recent Referendum
who haven’t been contributing their fair share over the years. May be some couldn’t afford to. That’s a different debate. Let’s take a car. You need to be insured to drive it. So if you get caught without insurance you
pay the penalty. And there is good
reason for that. Uninsured people cause you
to pay £33 more every year on your insurance. However, it’s more than just the financial
cost that counts. As James Dalton from
the Association of British Insurers says, “the cost of crashes caused by
uninsured drivers pushes up the insurance premiums of honest motorists, as well
as being a danger on the roads.” Uninsured
drivers have been shown to be more likely to have an accident and are more
likely to be driving an un-roadworthy car. These drivers kill 160 people every year and
cause 23,000 injuries, all without any means of compensating their victims or
paying for the cost of living with their injuries.
And my point is? It’s
not the wrongdoer who pays. It’s you and
I. And so it is with money to local authorities. Those that don’t pay are making those who do
pay pay more. £420m unpaid at the last count.
I can understand for political reasons the bogey man of the
Community Charge (aka the poll tax) being wielded out to try and stop local authorities
rightfully reclaiming money from that period.
"However, the relevance of information from the current
electoral register to the position of debts from 25 years ago is difficult to
fathom, except through some misguided political intention." So said the first Minster.
I'm really not sure what planet he is on. The law is the law. If people broke it they will eventually have
to pay up. Now is that time. It’s a slippery slope he is going down. What else can we look back 25 years and say
we are not going to follow up and pursue some other wrong doing?
Revisionism is creeping in. People will say, the Community Charge was
different. It wasn’t. It was a piece of legislation approved by
Parliament. Like it or not (and I don’t),
the UK was and remains the parliament for the whole UK. Until the day Scotland is a nation again, I’m
afraid we have to bow to the legislative chamber of the UK.
I suspect I will not be alone in asking the Scottish Government for moneys that I had to
pay to subsidise those who refused to pay repaid to me. Sounds fair.
Or are we seriously going to allow the Scottish Government to pass a bill
that effectively endorses wrongdoing?
