The sex lives of council-tax payers are being secretly monitored by local authority inspectors to establish whether residents claiming single person’s discounts are really living alone.
Undercover snoopers are being used to find out how often lovers visit and whether supposedly single residents are sharing a bed every night with the same person.
Pardon?
Local authorities have adopted the techniques after the government urged them to carry out “spot checks” on properties where a single-person council-tax discount is claimed. Councils are also demanding that householders give access to their bedrooms in return for the single-person discount. Inspectors can use the searches to check bedrooms for evidence of live-in lovers not disclosed to the authorities.
I can barely breathe, I'm so angry. Who the cunting fuck do these fucking cunts think they are? Which fucking moron believes that this is a sane thing to be happening outside of a Soviet dictatorship? How did this happen in England, the home of freedom and tolerance?
Labour, take your moral bankruptcy, your totalitarianism and your corrupt incompetence and leave now. Now. Before people start taking direct action. Because you won't like the results.
(Sorry, hat tip due to leg-iron. I got so angry I forgot.)
12 comments:
This precedent was set by Margaret Thatcher at the inception of the Poll Tax in 1988, changing from the rent-value system of the rates. The rates system made rate-payers visible, but tended to let rent payers vote as if they never paid the tax, even when or if it was consolidated in to their rent.
It was carefully explained to her that if you instituted a personal charge base rather than on rates, then it meant you had to give local authorities the power to check if there was really only one person living at an address, and that children, lovers or lodgers had not crept in. You couldn't use the rent value of the property as a proxy for how many people might be living there.
It's not just the romantically entwined who are affected; suddenly those old ladies letting out the back bedroom during the week would find they had an obligation to disclose that (I suppose they should have for the purposes of income tax anyway) and they'd have to collect the poll tax...etc. Then there's the son who comes home after his marriage busts up, or the gentleman friend who is staying for a while...
It allowed local authorities to advance their power - especially combined with the sloppy drafting of the 1989 Children Act - to levels not seen since the height of WWII. I had some nasty arguments in 1988 where certain people could not understand that this rule would apply to them; they seemed to think it only applied to other people. These were Conservatives, determined to slit their own throats. By Autumn 1988 I was getting impertinent questions from local councils when the firm's employees moved, asking me to verify where they were moving to or if they had live-in partners (I made a point of not knowing, then I couldn't possibly say) and citing that they had 'legal authority to make enquiries'.
Labour may be a shower, but it was the Conservatives and specifically Mrs T who handed them this power shower even though she had been warned of the danger. So I'm afraid the answer to your question:'what moron...' and 'how did this happen' is very much down to the way the theoretical political purpose of the poll tax was seized on, without taking proper account of the unintended consequences.
The South Africans did this during apartheid, to people in mixed marriages, to ensure that miscegenation had not taken place. They would touch the space in the centre of the bed to sense any tell-tale residual warmth.
Those are yet more reasons in favour of replacing welfare system with a Citizen's Basic Income-type system and replacing all existing property taxes (Council tax, Stamp Duty, Inheritance Tax, TV licence fee and various other bits and pieces) with Land Value Tax.
Both are completely indifferent to household composition. The CBI would be the same for single people as married people, and part of the point of LVT is to encourage better use of existing housing, i.e. the more people live in one house the better.
@WOAR: It only goes to show that the Tories are no bloody different and I'm pretty sure the LibDums would vary only in details.
How come you don't blog? Well, that I can find, anyway! ;o)
Fucking corrupt idiots! what else are councils going to have the right to check for? How long till a shit inspector, checking to see how many turds you have flushed on a daily basis (got to check your having your five a day dontcha know!!) When are they going to butt out and leave people to live their own lives. what i wouldn't give for a Reagon style 'small government' administration at the moment. Are the Libertarions looking for any new members?
mrangryman, I imagine that they're always looking for new members. For me, it could only be a choice between UKIP and LPUK, and after hearing what happened to Trixy recently (http://more-to-life-than-shoes.blogspot.com/),
I'm definitely joining the Libertarians.
As for shit inspectors - and this is totally OT - have you ever had a self-flushing turd, one that took you about 5 minutes for you to push out but when you looked in the bowl, wasn't there?
I only ask because whenever I dare mention it to anyone, they look at me as if I've claimed to have seen the yeti.
Sorry!
@Mr Angry Man: I'm sure they are, and it's cheap, too.
@Rob F: I'm so pleased my blog has become a home for erudite discussion. :o)
Thatcher might have started it, but in eleven years of Lbour, all they've done is introduce new 'terror legislation' and make use of the existing system to boost their spying capability.
Seriously, transvestites had better watch out. If they go out in the morning as a man, then go out in the evening as a woman (or vice versa), they might well return to find they've been visited by the council knicker-sniffer.
Soon they'll have children hanging around street corners on full pay. Cheaper than detectives, and much better at making stuff up.
The whole single person "discount" is bollocks anyway, as you effectively pay 25% more as a single person than a two person household (75% v 100%/2).
The power of the petty jobsworth in the local authority has gone up massively under NuLabour, and seems to be unchecked. And have you met people who work for the Council? I wouldn't trust them to tell me the time correctly while they were listening to the speaking clock.
A friend of mine bought their house of a guy who worked for a Housing Department. When they tried to set up their Council Tax payments, the council had no record whatsover that their house existed. Turns out the previous owner had removed his house from the system to avoid having to pay.
And that's the level of twunt who will be able to decide if I need investigating with covert surveillance, is it? Brilliant.
/me books flight to Canada
Rob F, there a Viz-euphemism for that so it does happen occasionally (presumably they just pop half way round the S-bend?)
You may like to know that these snivel servents can sit outside your pad for days on end, but they cannot come into your home and go through your knicker drawer without giving you 24 hours notice. So how do they expect to catch anyone????
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