1001 reasons NEVER to vote Labour

[hyperD]

Hooligan Tax

£10 or more on the annual Council Tax bill to pay for sorting out the extra incapable and violent drunks wished onto the streets by New Labour's 24-hour drinking culture.

[hyperD]

Manure Recycling Tax

Riding stables and other businesses using horses have to buy a licence to make compost (used as fertiliser) from horse manure. And from 2005/07/01, businesses doing so will have to spend thousands of pounds on installing a leakproof concrete flooring beneath muck heaps with a sealed holding tank for the liquid which runs off.

The average horse produces around 9 metric tons of manure per year. Muck heaps of between 5-50 metric tons will cost £252 for the first year and £174 for subsequent years. Heaps of 50-400 metric tons will cost £482 for the first year then £402 per year. Manure has been composted and spread on farmland for thousands of years. It has taken New Labour until 2005 to identify this source of a new stealth tax.

Cosh only posh Conservatives ride horses, so it's only fair...

[planetit]

National insurance : rates increased by 1% plus a new charge on income above the previous upper cut-off limit.

SUCKERS!!!!!! Cos you don't really understand the significance of that one... it's only a 1% increase isn't it - and I'm sure nice uncle tony will build a few more hospitals...

Yeah, that was a good one Hyper. And it’s not a tax in any case. It’s an “insurance”. You get it back when you’re old.

(There are people who actually believe this).

[hyperD]

Gross hypocracy and OK, let's say it, F UCKING LYING

The government has already diverted National Lottery cash to irregular purposes such as training teachers and school librarians, buying hospital equipment, buying fruit for school meals and the Jamie Oliver school meals improvement plan. The next step is using the National Lottery Bill 2005 to take formal government control of the Big Lottery Fund, which distributes one-half of lottery profits. The Bill will allow government ministers to set the amounts of grants and specify which causes can have a grant.

In 1997, Tony Blair said: "We do not believe it would be right to use lottery money to pay for things (health, education & the environment) which are the government's responsibility."

[hyperD]

Fiscal Drag - that old chesnut, no punter will get this one

Gordon Brown, seeking to fill the black hole which he has created in the nation's finances, is adjusting tax bands relative to a massaged inflation rate rather than the rate of increase of earnings. As a result, 3 million of the 28 million taxpayers are paying the 40% rate, an increase of around 10% since Gordon Brown became Chancellor.

Fiscal drag includes stamp duty on property purchases, which is now at five times the 1997 level (£3,600million compared to £675million) and twice as many people are paying it as in 1997 (1,200,000 versus 607,000).

[hyperD]

Inheritance tax - a tax on taxed income

Inheritance tax is another growth area. Thanks to the government's failure to allow for rising house prices, it has risen 75% since 1997 to £2.8billion per year.

[wendigo100]

Inheritance tax - a classic case of double taxation.

[hyperD]

Council Complaint Processing Fees

Triumphed as the policy to cure all known neighbour-to-neighbour shootings, home owners can now complain to their council if a neighbour refuses to trim leylandii hedges over 2 metres tall.

But the council will charge a fee for dealing with the complaint varying from £20 to as much as £550 in South Glamorganshire. The amount of the fee will be what the council thinks it can get away with rather anything much to do with the real cost of the work.

[hyperD]

Licensing & Registration Fees

Thanks to New Labour's willingness to go along with any new red tape that the Eurocrats of Brussels dream up, more and more people are having to pay a registration fee for being allowed to do their job – doormen, electricians and school dinner ladies to name but a few. And homeowners, who allow a job to be done by someone who isn't licensed to carry out electrical work in the home, are liable to be fined. Certification costs £ 877.50 and there is an annual renewal fee of £405.38. As usual, the consumer gets a bigger bill as someone has to pay for all the red tape.

Further, the cost of registering care homes, and the enforcement of new regulations, have both increased by huge amounts. As a result, many care homes have simply gone out of business and the rest are having to charge much larger fees.

Even further, pubs, clubs, restaurants, takeaway shops which serve food after 11 p.m., concert halls, village halls and any venue which holds events at which drinks are served are all required to renew their licence this year because New Labour changed the rules in 2003/4. And as this process involves a lot wrestling with jargon-filled forms, and time is running out for the August 2005 deadline for filing applications, there's a shambles in the making.

Anyone who misses the August deadline will find things get a whole lot more complicated for the October filing date, and the government will require them to jump through a lot more hoops. Worse, as processing the forms involves a lot of work, councils will have to shove up their Council Tax to pay for it.

[hyperD]

Business Rates

September 2005: As a result of a revaluation of commercial premises, which the government promised would be 'revenue neutral', business rates will rise by 8% this year – 3 times reported inflation.

Businesses, and their customers, will have to find £1.2b to throw into the clowns big black hole.