Simon Jenkins raises a question that has been nagging at me for some time. Why is there no British Tea Party? Where are the crowds of revenue slaves flocking to London to demand redress for the squandering of their money? Marginal tax is rising to 50%, VAT to 17.5% and state spending towards half the national product. The Treasury has lost control of public finance. So why no furious blue-rinses, bail-out haters, bonus-bleaters and embittered VAT victims storming Parliament?
Yeah: why? Some of my US readers believe that anti-tax rebellions are an American speciality, but we’ve had plenty of them in this country, from the Poll Tax Riots of 1381 (the Peasants’ Revolt) to the Poll Tax Riots of 1990. The doctrines that inspired the Boston mutineers – above all, the idea that taxes should not be levied without parliamentary process – were borrowed from English political theory.
Indeed, as Hugh Brogan drily observed in his History of the United States, the taxpayers’ revolt which sparked the American Revolution began on this side of the Atlantic: the Seven Years War had pushed taxes up to 25 shillings a year for the average Englishman as against sixpence for the average colonist, and MPs were determined to export part of that cost to North America.
Of course, there was an extra dimension to the Boston Tea Party: “No Taxation without Representation!” Taxes in the UK may be excessive but they have, so far, been set by our own government. This, though, is changing. If there was one theme that came out of the hearings for the new European Commissioners, it was their determination to create a direct revenue stream for the EU. Herman Van Rompuy, a declared enthusiast for the global managament of our planet, maintains that “recent developments in the euro area highlight the urgent need to strengthen our economic governance,” (hat-tip, Stephen Castle). “Whether it is called coordination of policies or economic government, only the European Council is capable of delivering and sustaining a common European strategy for more growth and more jobs.”
Britain, in other words, has all the conditions necessary for a popular anti-tax movement. Not only are levies high and rising; they are being imposed by rulers over whom we have no control. We need our own Tea Party Movement. Who will help me run one?
Ya you would think the serfs? would have had a tax revolt awhile ago. ...
( gota pay for that free stuff? )
And ppl like O bamama & his friends would like US to be more like europe, have addtional fuel taxes & VAT taxes etc on all good etc.
Quote:
United Kingdom
Main article: Hydrocarbon oil duty
From 2007-10-01 the main road fuel (petrol and diesel) duty rate in the UK was GB£0.5035 per litre (GB£2.2890/imperial gal or GB£1.9059/US gal). The rate for biodiesel and bioethanol was £0.3035/L (GB£1.3797/imperial gal or GB£1.1489/US gal).[3]Value Added Tax (VAT), 15% from 2008-12-01 to 2009-12-31, is also charged on the price of the fuel and on the duty. At a pump price of 90.0p/litre (typical for petrol in mid December 2008), this would put the combined tax at 62.09p/litre, or approximately USD$3.49 per US gallon. Thus without tax, the retail price would be 27.91p per litre, making a combined tax rate of 222%.
The latest increase – to GB£0.5619 per litre on unleaded petrol – came into force on 2009-09-01 and is planned to increase "on 1 April from 2010 to 2013 by 1 ppl above indexation in each year."[4]
Says there fuel tax was equal to 222%
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Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago.
There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. R.Reagan-1960
Some people are struggling due to the finacial climate, far too many people were spending on credit and it had to end.
The pound is weak but this is helping export and tourism.
The borrowing had to stop, property prices are levelling out.
The big cities have problems with imigration, drugs etc, but tell me a city in the world that doesn't.
I'm in Scotland and we I think are doing ok, public spending is down but I think too much was being wasted in the 1st place.
Some people are struggling due to the finacial climate, far too many people were spending on credit and it had to end.
The pound is weak but this is helping export and tourism.
The borrowing had to stop, property prices are levelling out.
The big cities have problems with imigration, drugs etc, but tell me a city in the world that doesn't.
I'm in Scotland and we I think are doing ok, public spending is down but I think too much was being wasted in the 1st place.
Sounds just like us, except we haven't learned anything about spending yet.
Tea time in Britian. Interesting.
would have had a tax revolt awhile ago. ...
