ANOTHER VOICE
A long moan to make the point that the state juggernaut has run amok
AUBERON WAUGH
Last week I received my second sum- mons of the year to appear at the West London Magistrates Court to answer a complaint by the director of finance to the Council of Hammersmith and Fulham that I had not paid my council tax. The sum- mons was dated 3 October 1994 and answerable on 20 October, but the council tax was not due until 15 October, and in any case I had paid it on 5 October. On this occasion my secretary was able to tele- phone the finance department who apolo- gised and said that their scanner had mis- read my cheque to make it 6p short. Within days a clumsily roneoed letter had arrived from the Council's principal tax officer, S. Dhaliwal, confirming that the summons had been withdrawn and I was not required to attend the hearing at West London Magistrates Court, Southcombe Street, W14 on 20 October 1994. It was an identical document (with dates and refer- ence numbers changed) to the one I received on 13 July this year, confirming that I did not need to attend West London Magistrates for non-payment of a tax bill I had paid all of two months earlier — except that on this occasion it was signed by the great S. Dhaliwal himself, instead of by what looks like Jan or Jean or Sean Rupiol- da on S.D. Dhaliwal's behalf.
The council tax on my flat in Hammer- smith, I should explain, is £760.66. The finance department likes this to be divided into two payments of £380.66 and £380.00, but for some reason, at my end, this was interpreted as £380.60 and £380.06. Hence, apparently, the two summonses with myste- rious sums of £23.90 added for court costs, thus making the sum unrecognisable. Flow- ever, I cannot help observing that, if I did not happen to have an efficient secretary, I might easily have paid both bills twice over, since all these 'final reminders' arrive deny- ing that any sum has already been received. In fact I think I may have done exactly this last year, where I see I made two payments to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for unrelated sums — £284 and £335.95 — on 23 August 1993 and 12 December 1993.
No doubt these were in response to final reminders threatening distraint of all my goods. I simply do not have time to chase up every not-very-large invoice and every not-very-large payment. My practice is to pay every bill within a week of receiving it, and, unlike the younger generation, I am
unreasonably upset to receive court sum- monses. Rates and poll tax used to be paid by banker's order, but Hammersmith and Fulham will no longer accept banker's orders, suggesting a direct debit instead.
I am extremely nervous of direct debits, which effectively mean that the beneficiary can help himself to any sum he chooses out of your bank account at any time, subject to your taking him to court to get it back. To trust Hammersmith Council with a direct debit would be the act of a lunatic, after it gambled and lost huge sums of ratepayers' money — whether £60 million or £600 mil- lion — on incompetently playing the cur- rency market, managing to wriggle out of payment only by having its own transac- tions declared illegal.
Perhaps it is to punish me for refusing to sign a direct debit request that I am being persecuted by these summonses in place of invoices. But whether Hammersmith is genuinely incompetent, or whether (like so many government and local government agencies nowadays) it is on the grab for money to pay its gigantic wages bill, my point is that it is not to be trusted. As it cre- ates work for itself, it creates work for all of us checking up on it. I described earlier how my son, in another part of the bor- ough, foolishly invited some building inspectors to inspect his new staircase and was immediately invaded by a ferocious gang from the subcontinent who demanded £70 attendance fee and ordered him to spend a fortune on unsightly fire doors, recommending him to a particular supplier . .
I hope nobody will think there is any- thing racist in my reference to Hammer- smith's admirable Extra Opportunities Pol- icy, although I must admit that visitors to India seldom remark on it as being a model for the efficiently run modern bureaucratic state. But if it is any consolation, I can reveal that Somerset County Council, which has not yet emptied all the Indian restaurants in the interests of cross-cultural recruitment, is much worse. Here the Lib- eral Democrat stinkers tried the direct debit wheeze and when that was denied 'I'm suffering from reader's block.' they hit on another. So desperate are they to raise money for their idiotic and repul- sive purposes, that they announced that the house which I and an ever shrinking num- ber of family and retainers have been living in for the best part of 40 years is really two houses, so I must pay double rates on it. They justify this by the fact that my secre- tary also lives in it, and maintain that some incompetently drafted legislation by the present Government enables them to do this where there is a second kitchen, as there has been in this house for at least 98 years and probably much longer.
Of course it would be the work of a moment to take the second kitchen out, but this would be rather hard on my secretary, who has lived in my house with her own kitchen for the last 12 years, and is certainly in no position to pay rates on the wages I give her. So I am now double-rated, subject to appeal to a Valuation Tribunal in Yeovil. I do not know whether the Tribunal will be able to take into account the obvi- ous intention, rather than the cretinous wording, of Statutory Instrument 549 to the Local Government Finance Act 1992, but in any case it has been unable in 15 months to fix a day for the hearing. Meanwhile, I pay double rates, affording — at the very least — the Liberal Democrat stinkers in County Hall an interest-free loan for their foul purposes.
If I lose the appeal, as I may well, I can take the stinkers to the High Court, but they have virtually unlimited resources of ratepayers' money to deploy and I have not. They have already revealed the extent of their ruthlessness in using the High Court against villagers who objected to a New Age Travellers' camp being dumped on their doorstep; and again, having been trounced in the High Court by the Quan- tock Staghounds, by taking their smelly lit- tle programme to appeal. It is for this sort of thing that I have to pay double rates.
My purpose in this long moan is to point out that the state juggernaut has run amok. We are back to robber baron government. Unless we soon have a government pre- pared to sack the 1.5 million redundant public employees and put them on income support, which is infinitely cheaper than
employing them, we will have to take dras- tic action. As Paul Johnson might have written in Wake Up Britain!, if the Govern- ment won't sack these nuisances, the rest of us will have to rise up and slit their throats.
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