“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed” (Luke 2:1, King James Bible)
Kicking off with a seasonal quote, and closely following party promises leading up to the General Election, here are some thoughts from an ex-civil servant. I might add that I’ve also worked in the arena of legal tax avoidance and worked against tax evasion.
Governments have no money. When a party says ‘We will spend a million pounds’ they mean ‘You will spend a million pounds’.
95% of Government spending is already fixed, so any new administration has very little wriggle room. Public sector salaries take an enormous slice of the cake, property demands to be looked after and much expenditure is ‘formula led’ based on the number of people sick, homeless, unemployed etc. Quibble the percentage if you may, but this expenditure cannot be drastically changed in the short term.
Taxation changes behaviour, so increasing taxes does not necessarily increase revenue. This sounds counter-intuitive but has been proved repeatedly. The higher taxes are, the more people will cheat and the more worthwhile it is to look for legal ways to avoid paying. They might work less, retire earlier, give up work entirely, shift their spending pattern or move to Monaco. It may be cathartic to hit the rich, but don’t rely on it bringing in more money.
Reducing taxes can have the reverse effect. However, the government cannot determine how or where people will spend their tax savings so it can simply be a giveaway without that money necessarily reaching the parts of the economy where it is needed. Tax changes up or down need surgical targeting not a blunt hammer.
Tax evasion is illegal but tax avoidance is not. It is a principle of law that nobody is obliged to pay any more tax than they are legally required to, and only a fool would do so willingly. The more complex a taxation regime is, the easier it is for people to find loopholes. Big corporations and high earners are very good at finding loopholes.
A “1% increase” is not as trivial as it sounds. A 1% increase on a 20% tax rate is 5% by my maths. Most people and most businesses spend or commit most of the income they have, so even a small increase could bite heavily into the amount left after normal expenses, the difference between profit and loss. A lot of businesses are very marginal, so adverse tax changes mean they may close or simply pass the cost on to consumers.
Green Taxes cut one way but not both. If the objective is to raise money, the government must acquiesce in the undesirable behaviour (i.e. air transport levy). If the objective is to change behaviour (i.e. smoking), the government must expect declining revenues as people adjust their lifestyle.
No Taxation Without Representation swings back to become ‘No representation without taxation’. Progressive taxation is a fine idea, in that the poor pay relatively little and the rich pay proportionally much more. The problem is that this pushes a lot of power into the hands of the rich, or at least the wealthier 50% of the population who pay the majority of the tax. Governments have to treat the affluent carefully; one person on a million-pound salary pays enough tax to fund a dozen nurses.
Minorities have limited synergy. One weakness of the left is the desire to support a range of disadvantaged or self-defined oppressed groups which have little else in common. Whilst each cause in isolation may be deserving, they are competing for scarce resource. Do we support pensioners or the young low-paid, the single mothers or the asylum seekers, council tenants or firemen? If you are not in the smorgasbord of deserving causes you might ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ and vote for someone else.
Socialists have a very expensive constituency not only in those sections of the population who pay relatively little tax but have high demands on services, but also the public sector workers themselves. Once elected, they have a big pay-off to face before making any actual improvements in services. Ironically they must rely on a healthy capitalist economy to provide the taxes to fuel their programmes.
Conservatives will always have a hard sell at election time. Prudence is boring, pragmatism looks hard-faced, traditionalism looks old-fashioned and there is always drag against progressive ideas. As they play to the comfortable middle class and aspirant working class, their policies look selfish and their candidates can smell of money and privilege. Opposing conservative policy becomes child’s play and supporting it feels smug, whilst dumbed-down conservatism simply comes across as dumb. Hence we have the ‘shy Tory’ phenomena in Britain which has fooled pollsters and leaves energetic campaigners on the left flummoxed.
Whoever wins, there is not enough money and there never will be enough money. If we spent the entire GDP on health, people would still get sick and die. This is a big problem for my colleagues working in museums, libraries, art galleries and across the heritage sector. We don’t stop children dying or houses burning down or defend against the enemy at the gates so we know we will only get a fraction of 1% of expenditure, and have to fight for every tenth of a decimal point.
It is not surprising millions want to move to Europe or America, and it is unsurprising that Europeans and people who have already made it to America don’t want their already overcrowded lands crowding even more. I saw a t-shirt on sale in South Dakota reading ‘Fuck off, We’re Full’. You can buy them on Amazon, car stickers too. Trump and his ilk use unpleasant language, but they articulate the fears of their electorate.
We are in very scary, apocalyptic movie territory; No Blade of Grass and Interstellar both play on the results of global crop failures. The crazy world of Mad Max fights over water and oil. As a teenager I was chilled by the overpopulated world of Soylent Green and J G Ballard’s Billenium.
The Awards Dinner has moved up a gear in the past few years and have become a swish affair with stylish dressing, polished presentations and a sensation of being right where it matters. It was held at the Leonardo Royal Hotel, London, which has assumed a new name since last year so challenging the detection skills of attendees. I was seated on the Debut Daggers table in the company of shortlisted writers of unpublished crime novels of whom most had traveled from the USA. As fate would have it, the award went to the one nominee who couldn’t make it, the Australian Shelley Burr.
Of course I made that quip about badge and gun in my farewell speech and indeed symbolically removed my ‘Head of Heritage Services’ badge; made all the more symbolic by the fact I had almost always forgotten to wear it for the past 13 years, and indeed once accidentally put on the ‘Head of Nerdery’ one of my staff made up on Big Geekend.
Whilst working on a new thriller, and editing the one I ‘finished’ earlier, I have a new project to keep me out of mischief. I’m teaming up with artist Peter Le Vasseur to produce a book on his life and work. In particular the book will feature Peter’s later works with ecological and conservation themes.
Although Peter was born in Guernsey and returned here to live in the 70s, his formative years as an artist saw him enter the ‘sixties London art scene with clients including film stars, musicians and the aristocracy. The Beatles bought one of his earliest works, whilst he was experimenting with fantasy in what he calls his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ period. His early fantasies are still cropping up in London auctions, with his 1964 work Tattooed Sailor recently selling at Sotheby’s for many times its estimate.
It is with great pleasure that I can announce that I have signed up with London Agency A for Authors. I am looking forward to working with Annette Crossland and Bill Goodall on a new mystery series. 2018 is going to be an exciting year.
Okay, I admit it. My work-in-progress contains a rubber duck moment. Codename NRT, the novel has a very short timeframe. There is no chance to get to know the characters before they are plunged into the mystery on page 1. Thumbnails must suffice until enough pages have been peppered with hints and clues from their mode of dress, their speech, the background information they let free with and straight prose description. I’ve avoided ‘plot bricks’ as far as I can; those clumsy speeches where someone says ‘But Sally, you are my sister!’ 
The opening party was fun, only an hour, but chance to hear from a quartet of speakers and mingle with many like-minded friends on the island. On the Friday I was asked to introduce Dr Matthias Strohn (who was quicker to smile than I was when the camera was produced!) speaking at the blow-up Festival Hub in the Market Square. I’d met him at the Alderney festival two years ago and his subject this time was the end of the Great War. As a German historian and reserve army officer who advises the British Army and lectures at Sandhurst, Matthias offered some unique insights. Most telling was how ‘Britain centric’ our view of that war is. The Germans on the other hand were far more concerned with the Russian threat to the east and the French to the west, until the final year of the war at least. He explained how the German view that their army had not lost the war came about via the observation that (1) Germany fought the war because it was surrounded by enemies (2) none of those enemies had any soldiers on German soil at the conclusion of the fighting. The scene was set for ’round 2′.
On the Monday it was a change of venue again, to the spanking freshly refurbished Frossard Theatre at Candie to introduce Dr Gilly Carr. Gilly has worked with the Museum on a couple of occasions and co-created its current exhibition ‘On British Soil’ about Nazi persecution in the Channel Islands. Gilly has worked consistently for the past decade to change the narrative on the German Occupation, which had become in parts saccharine encouraged by cosy tales of wartime make-do-and-mend, partly ‘boys toys’ enthusiasm for the many fortifications and weapons left on the islands and partly by the euphoria of Liberation Day celebrated every year on May 9th. Gilly was talking about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as experienced by Channel Islanders who were persecuted by the Nazis. Victims deported to Nazi concentration camps belatedly got the opportunity to apply for compensation in the 1960s. Many were in no state to describe their suffering, and there was an added complication that PTSD was not recognised as a medical condition at that time. Claims could be made for wounds, diseases or disability, but how could people find recompense for damage that has not even been defined? More can be found on Gillys website 