Thanet Life

It was nice to have a cheque from those kind people at HMRC, finally returning the tax that they incorrectly grabbed from me last year, with the normal, 'demanding money with menaces' letter. This year, I hear it will be even worse with as many as a quarter of tax codes completely incorrect and yet HMRC have once again posted these out in full knowledge of the error.

A week or so ago, I listened to a spokesperson from HMRC being 'beaten-up' on the Radio 4 'Moneybox' programme. The incredulous interviewer asking: "So you knew a substantial number of tax codes were incorrect and yet you still sent these out?"

She replied something along the lines of: "Waffle Waffle, working in partnership with our 'customers', waffle waffle, new computer system, waffle, better next year, very sorry, waffle, call us and we will set it right."

"But", said the BBC man, "The Audit commission has just censured you for not answering 40% of telephone calls….."

I have some personal knowledge of this, having given up trying to respond to two threatening letters in the last four months and found the HMRC number to be either engaged or out of service. In the end, I wrote them a letter, pointing out that I was sick of receiving threats for the recovery of small amounts of money, £5.00, which I didn't owe them, when in fact they owed me considerably more, as the cheque I've just received conclusively proves.

Ironically, if you don't have an account to fight one's corner, you can't expect a refund either. As the nice but defensive HMRC lady on 'Moneybox' pointed out, "If people tell us why their tax code/assessment is wrong, we will correct it," but then of course you and I have to be capable accountants to prove the error and then, quite demonstrably, HMRC won't answer the phone.

Much like the debacle over family tax credits, which has hurt many of the poorest people in our society, the HMRC continues to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that at best, its incompetent and at worst, unfit for purpose. Speaking at a conference I chaired a couple of years ago, Professor Ian Angell of the LSE, described the organisation as a 'real example of serious and organised crime' and perhaps he has a point, because no other organisation could get away with the activities of HMRC.

In the real world of organised crime, criminal gangs on the internet have seen the opportunity gap left by HMRC and have, as I predicted several years ago, started exploiting the opportunity and the naivety of the general public. If you receive an email like the one below, ignore it, as you would have to assume that HMRC were efficient enough to be able to calculate your tax accurately and have a working system of this kind in the first place.



HM Revenue & Customs

United Kingdom

tax-refund@hmrc.gov.uk

Dear Applicant:

Please note now you can get your tax refund, after the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 314.79 GBP.

Please take few minutes to fill your form attached to this message.

The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and as applicable; copyright in these is reserved to HM Revenue & Customs.



Sincerely,

HM Revenue & Customs

tax-refund@hmrc.gov.uk

Labels: HMRC, tax

Watching Andrew Marr's 'History of Modern Britain', I'm reminded of how I was once introduced to former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, when he visited my university in the United States to give a lecture and I was propelled forward to meet him as a somewhat reluctant token British student who was only too well aware of the mess that he had left my home country in!

I met 'Maggie' once as well but can't recall whether that was before or after we were blown-up by the IRA at the Ideal Home Show of 1975 when she visited the stand I was working on.

I've been a little short of blogging time this week and so have had to make do with reading everyone else's instead. How I wonder will Lord Nottingham of Northwood, react to three Labour MPs being prosecuted for false accounting and then promptly taking cover behind the 300 year-old, legal immunity excuse of Parliamentary privilege?  Even wearing the most rose-tinted of socialist spectacles, it's an indictment of an avaricious culture that should have no place in politics. Once again, in what may be the final hundred days of New Labour government, George Orwell's iconic novel, 'Animal Farm' springs to mind:

"Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health."

On a far more positive and uplifting note and celebrating the heroism of American airman in the Second World War, plans to properly commemorate the events of 27th April 1944, when two 8th Airforce Liberator bombers crashed on our coastline, are now well underway through the Mayor and Margate Charter Trustees.

The FBI's 'Man in London', very kindly put me in touch with the US embassy's 'Air Attache', a colonel, who has enthusiastically agreed to come and represent the USAF and officially accept the dog tag belonging to Lt Hafner, which was originaly discovered on the beach at the crash site by Norman Turner and recently passed to the Mayor's office by Paul Wesley. This week, with the colonel's help, I've also put in a formal application for a flight of F15s from Lakenheath, for a 'Missing man' flypast along the seafront between Westgate and Cliftonville. He can't promise the aircraft but he's trying hard on our behalf and I will keep readers updated with any progress and so keep the afternoon of 27th April free in your diaries.

Kevin Crace, the owner of the Westgate pavillion has also kindly offered it for a reception after the remembrance ceremony and our eminent local historian, Dr John Lodge Pritchard, is also working closely with our small organising group on other related activities to mark the occasion.

Finally, I think I see some small green shoots of recovery out there, in that I have three marriage proposals to fly this month, the first of these over Leeds castle tomorrow afternoon, weather permitting. Personal messages of this kind slowed almost to a halt towards the end of last year and even with Valentine's Day approaching, its suggestive of a recovery in consumer confidence which gives grounnds for a little optimism.

Labels: Labour, Liberator

I see the government has rumbled one ruse, reportedly used by schools to 'get extra funding and inflate their position in new-style rankings' and that's to label as many pupils as possible with 'Special Educational Needs'. Apparently, in some schools, as many as half of pupils are now diagnosed with learning difficulties or behavioral problems, it was revealed, just weeks after a cross-party group of MPs criticised schools for being too quick to label children with poor reading skills as dyslexic.

Given the enormous pressure placed on schools to improve their results by the government, I'm not surprised at this or in fact any other gambit being used to show an annual league table improvement and in many ways, it mirrors the pressures being applied to hospital trusts in showing constant improvement or to conceal what often appears to the man-in-the-street, to be a steady decline in overall standards which are contradicted by statistics.

The reality of the matter is that few people trust what the author Mark Twain described as: 'Lies, damn lies and statistics' and an excellent example might be the audit commission and the way its assesses councils and local authorities. Naively, I believed that a common set of metrics were used but I've since discovered otherwise and so in future I'll accept 'independent' performance figures as lying somewhere between 'Showing improvement' and 'How long is a piece of string.'

Staying with teaching a moment, I felt this month that the Conservative plans to make teaching a higher-level graduate profession might discriminate against those very good teachers I know who might not carry a first-class degree but show a wonderful control of both the class and the subject they teach. Half the struggle, these days, outside grinding paperwork, is simply class control and keeping the attention and interest of pupils, a number of which might have Special Educational Needs. My own experience is that the best teachers are not always the academically brightest but those with a vocation, incredible patience and a love of their subject. Quite honestly, given the challenging nature of teaching today, which to many educators appears to be more about making children feel good about themselves rather than teaching them, one has to be extremely committed to consider a career in the classroom. It can be extremely rewarding but like water under pressure finding the smallest crack in a dam, today's children will very quickly assess the character strength of any teacher in front of them, which is why the profession experiences high early retirement, nervous breakdowns and stree-related illness.

The issue that government, really has to address, I believe, is not education as such but the nature of the society that feeds into the education system. If like me, you find yourself in a classroom with six 'statemented' teenagers, attempting to play havoc at any opportunity, you really have to ask what the purpose of the teacher really is in such circumstances, as a professional educator or an extension of social services.

Labels: Audit Commission, education, statistcis, teaching

Black is white and white is black. Well maybe, if you listened to the 'Ken and Mandy' show on Channel 4 News last night.



Meanwhile, more worrying news today, that the poverty gap has widened even faster than before under Labour and of course Harriet Harman is disappointed, as you might expect.

The good news, of course, lies in the announcement, not that Tony Blair is set to make another small fortune by giving a series of three speeches to one of the world's largest hedge funds but that reportedly the wiley Lord Mandleson has revealed that Mr. Blair will be back to fight the forthcoming General Election on the side of New Labour and Gordon Brown.

Now whether anyone, let alone a Labour politician, would want Tony Blair turning up to offer campaign support is a matter for deep discussion. I'm sure, there are a number of Conservative marginal seats that would be delighted if Mr. Blair hove into view to offer a stirring political endorsement of this government and his own record as Prime Minister. I can see Dr Ladyman writing the invitation now and I'll certainly turn-up to listen with everyone else if I can afford the fee.

Finally, if I had my time again, I might follow the stirring advice from a Gilbert & Sullivan opera and go to sea, not to join the Royal Navy but to become a Somali pirate, an adventurous life, where the hours are somewhat better and quite possibly the pay too. Apparently, possession of a rocket propelled grenade launcher and a small boat full of light and heavy weapons, isn't enough to prove that one is a pirate, hundreds of miles away from land in the middle of the Indian ocean. No, any intercepting Royal Navy vessel has to assume that you are an honest fisherman, casting out for your meager catch with high explosives and so it's only reasonable to detain you long enough for a quick medical check-up and a re-supply of food and water, before sending you on your way.

One former Navy commander said the Navy appeared to be operating a 'maritime welfare system' rather than enforcing law on the high seas.

Of course, in less enlightened times the Royal Navy would hang anyone with a striped-shirt, a wooden leg, a parrot and an eye patch, simply on suspicion of piracy, which is why Somali pirates are careful not to draw attention to themselves by dressing in this manner. I recall that a young Julius Caesar, having been captured and ransomed by north African pirates, returned with a fleet and crucified the lot of them in a very unenlightened fashion, which must leave pirates everywhere thankful for the Human Rights Convention that all civilized nations now follow.

Labels: Channel 4, Piracy

I welcome the suggestion, from the Home Secretary, that 'Sarah's Law' might be expanded beyond its existing pilot sites in trialled in Hampshire, Warwickshire, north Cambridgeshire and Cleveland to the rest of the country.

"Sarah's Law" was proposed after the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne by a convicted sex offender 10 years ago.

Sarah was kidnapped and murdered by Roy Whiting in West Sussex in 2000.

Readers may recall that a couple of years ago, I wrote to the Chief Constable of Kent, under the Freedom of Information Act, and asked how many registered sex offenders were living in Thanet, who might pose a potential risk to local children. You may also recall that such information was refused on the grounds that it might' provoke public disorder.' Given the Government's unwelcome policy of 'dispersal' to seaside towns without informing the local authorities, I believe it  would be in the public interest to be able to enter a postcode and at the very least, be given some indication of the presence of potentially dangerous and registered sexual predators living in the local area, without necessarily revealing their identity. It makes the difference between allowing one's child to walk to and from school or the shops or not for many parents.

Listening to Labour's Harriet Harman 'fudging' this and the Government's poor child poverty record on the BBC Politics show today, I would also welcome both of these topics as subjects for our coming General Election debate. Apparently, the big date is now May 6th, according to an interview slip by Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth today.

Now, for all readers and indeed many councillors who haven't visited the site, I would also draw you attention to the Office for National Statistics website, which has lots of useful local information. So if you happen to be a councillor, like me, looking for any manner of local statistics on population, poverty, housing, employment or more in and around your own ward, simply tap in the postcode and read-on. For example, my neighbourhood, had at the last census in 2007, an estimated 1,686 residents and 1,100 dwellings.

I have left a link in the sidebar in case you forget where to find it again.

Finally, I see that David Cameron, interviewd on the BBC Politics Show, said he hadn't yet been on holiday in Margate, Sandwich or Deal and so I think we should get this particular tourism bid in early!

Labels: Law, Paedophile, Statistics, Thanet

With the risk of a terrorist incident now raised to the level of 'Severe', I've come out from under my desk long enough to write this short blog entry, before returning to cover my windows in brown paper.

What this heightened state actually means in real terms is hard to fathom and the Home Secretary doesn't appear to be any wiser either. What he can't say of course is who might be responsible or indeed, whether 'they', whoever 'they' might be, may have returned from any recent adventure holiday break to Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia.


I'm pretty sure though, that if you went down to the bookmakers and placed a bet, call it risk profiling if you like, based on actual incidents over the last ten years, you would get pretty short odds on the suspects, leaving one to wonder why Auntie Mabel really needs to experience the indignity of airport body scanning, now she's passed the age of seventy.

So for now, we all have to treat each other with equal suspicion in what is yet another paragraph taken from George Orwell's novel, 1984, just in case….

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

I heard on the BBC news this morning that Kent Police want to use BAE systems 'drones' – rather like the 'Predator' in Afghanistan but without the impressive weaponry' – for a range of different tasks which include traffic policing. Forgetting the enormous expense for one moment, I've a personal objection to unmanned aircraft buzzing around the world's busiest airspace. Last summer I was prevented from flying a banner over one of the V-Festivals in the north of England by the police and subsequently discovered the reason, that they were testing an unmanned drone, sitting over the stage at 2000 feet, watching and photographing the crowds. While I'm sure that the intelligence these systems offers can be extremely useful, the Kingsnorth power station demonstration would be an excellent example, I worry that the system would be abused; isn't it always, and the costs would detract from the investment to police communities properly, which is what people really want rather than 'RoboCop'.

Unfortunately, with 2012 and the Olympics fast approaching, I can promise you that RoboCop and much more is what we are going to get as the authorities become increasing paranoid and security conscious in the period between now and the games. But when the Olympics are over, the security infrastructure will remain in place and like proliferating CCTV, is most unlikely to be dismantled, ever.

Labels: drone, security, Terrorism

The smoke billowing from the corner of Rowena Court attracted my attention at just about the same time as I heard the approaching sirens from several fire engines this morning.

I was out walking the dog along the beach at Westgate's St Mildred's Bay at 8am and so had a grandstand view of the action unfolding in front of me.


There was a fire-alarm signal bleeping loudly from the corner building – one very good reason to have one of these installed in your own home - and the firemen were energetically trying to find the best way to approach the building with their engines. From where I was standing, this offered a future lesson to our own planning officers and members of the planning committee at the council when judging such applications in the conservation area. Building Rowena court flat-up against the sea front provides no easy means of access for the emergency services and this led to a visible delay in deploying the vehicles, ambulance included, as they had to leave the road and negotiate tightly parked cars. Before I was a councillor, some readers may recall my aerial banner protest against the demolition of Sea Tower and a new development, positioned just next door to Rowena Court and in future, I believe better planning attention needs to be given to the possibility of events similar to those I witnessed this morning.


I watched, as Fireman donned their breathing equipment and went into the building, apparently recovering one elderly gentleman, who was taken to a waiting ambulance. As I left to take my daughter to school the four fire engines appeared to have the incident under control. While I don't pretend to be an expert in such matters, fire engines are of a standard size and if the fire had been more serious, I believe the delay in being able to deploy the emergency response in such a tight and potentially inaccessible spot could have proved an important factor in rescuing residents.

Labels: Fire, Rowena Court, Westgate