Downloading the Valuation Office Agency’s no-longer-secret £13 million database, I find that having lived in my house for the past 50 years and having, for those five decades, diligently paid my income and council taxes, my home is about to become my misfortune because of so-called taxable amenities. Using the Freedom of Information Act I find that another 94,373 households are listed as having a view of sorts; a further, whopping 777,189 householders have been covertly assessed as having the gall to improve their property by adding on a conservatory and will be liable for a retrospective tax.
I have discovered that unless this massively incompetent bunch of losers and dubious expense claimants on both sides of the House is exterminated at the next election, I will be penalised for possessing: (a) what is listed as a ‘general scenic view’ — something I have painstakingly made by my own labours; (b) partial view of a lake; (c) double glazing; (d) a garage capable of taking two cars; (e) a balcony up to five square metres; (f) a tennis court (I installed mine 39 years ago); (g) a family house in a quiet road; (h) a modest patio (from which I admire the aforesaid general scenic view of my garden; and (i) a crumbling greenhouse already here when I purchased the house. I have thus managed to tick many of the boxes that will condemn me, so thank God I never thought of building an outside lavatory or electing to live somewhere adjoining a ‘positive amenity’ whatever that is, otherwise I might have to resort to self-harm. I am amazed that the VOA has not included people who have a budgerigar, window boxes, garden gnomes or the nerve to walk on council pavements. Should I confess to owning a barbeque pit, seldom used for its proper purpose but which comes in handy to supplement my old age pensioner’s heating allowance?
Come to think of it, in many other respects I am somebody beyond the pale in the eyes of Commissar Brown’s administration. For instance, I admit to having been ‘selected’ at an early age and winning a scholarship to a superior, pre-war secondary school in West Ham, an area which could not by any stretch of political imagination be described as affluent or privileged. Even so, I suppose that now I would be labelled a working-class toff, since I proudly wore a cap, tie and blazer which marked me out as one of the elite. I enjoyed a first-class education from inspired and dedicated teachers who also taught me manners and self-discipline. After serving four years in the army during the war, I would have dearly liked to have gone to a university but was faced with the necessity of earning a living. And so, for the past 60 years I have lived by my wits and a measure of luck. Ironically, my best earning years coincided with Harold Wilson extracting eye-watering amounts of tax and super tax — I was definitely one of the pips that squeaked. It always amazed me that his government didn’t take 100 per cent of everybody’s wages and be done with it, merely giving us back a few quid for basic junk food.
I have not, to the best of my knowledge, ever been a burden on the state but now, in my dotage, my basic needs helped by a modest pension from the Writers Guild of America (termed ‘unearned income’ and taxed at 40 per cent), it appears that all I can look forward to is the erosion of my remaining pleasures. It must take a savagely vindictive brain to think of penalising people for looking out of their own windows to enjoy a view, but obviously the 4,300 staff of HM Revenue & Customs, which runs the VOA, sit there at our expense devising ever more cunning ways in which to clobber their fellow citizens. We are the mugs, alas, who have become so inured to the clandestine decisions of anonymous, overpaid officials riding roughshod over our liberties that we passively accept them instead of taking to the streets.
In times past when there was a move to tax windows, citizens sensibly avoided this by boarding them up. Now we tamely accept the myriad new laws and new taxes expressly devised to reduce us to impotent proles. Not content with putting micro-chips on wheelie bins and forcing us to accept dim light bulbs to satisfy the dubious global warming industry, our masters have decreed that mere enjoyment of England’s green and pleasant land can be turned into another cash cow. The whole concept is a hateful example of a political philosophy that is long past its sell-by date. The Labour party, bankrupt of intelligent ideas, clings to memories of the glory days when the Blessed Blair walked on water and was going to lead us into the Promised Land. Instead, his philosophy was exposed as corrupt from day three (come in for a pit stop, Bernie Ecclestone) and he eventually found his true vocation as a property developer.
I sometimes feel I have become an octogenarian Jimmy Porter, angry at the lies we constantly have to swallow and by the growing realisation that so much of the England I once thought unique and laudable is in danger of disappearing forever. If anybody dares to suggest that possibly our multicultural society is in any way flawed, immediately the label ‘cannon fodder for the BNP’ is used to stifle intelligent debate. The Health and Safety gauleiters have decreed that conkers and skipping ropes are dangerous for the young. Get a life, as they say. What is dangerous is to send young men and women into battle in Land-Rovers that were just about fit for purpose during the IRA conflict decades ago.
This government can always find the money — our money of course — to paste temporarily over the monumental cock-ups it has made of running the country, but is reluctant to pay compensation to those same young men and women grievously injured in our name. The Prime Minister prates on about a ‘disappointing day’ as four more coffins are flown home and the latest hapless minister for defence hasn’t a clue as to what he is required to do next.
I am more than angry. I am disgusted and I want the Tory party to start acting like a legitimate opposition and, instead of farting about on the sidelines, have the courage to come out fighting, nail the lies and start salvaging what is left of this benighted country of ours. In the meantime, while it is still free, I shall continue to peer out of my double-glazed windows at a view I created at no cost to anybody else and hope that Big Brother doesn’t catch me at it.
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