That gurgling sound you hear is us laughing like drains
This is why we insist that government must pay the same taxes and charges that we do. So that government faces the same incentives as we do, so that government faces the same constraints and frustrations as we do:
Millions of pounds in landfill tax owed to the government has to be paid by the Environment Agency (EA) if it clears any of the thousands of illegal waste dumps across the country.
Of the £15m that taxpayers are paying for the clearance of the only site the agency has committed to clearing up – a vast illegal dump at Hoad’s Wood in Kent – £4m is landfill tax.
John Russell, a Liberal Democrat peer who helped push the agency to clean up Hoad’s Wood, described the situation as ludicrous.
“It is extremely unhelpful … to make the EA pay landfill tax on the illegal waste sites they are trying to clear up,” Russell said. “I strongly encourage the Treasury to take an urgent, fresh, cold hard look at these regulations.”
We can translate that for you - the Environment Agency should not have to pay those charges is the demand.
Which is wrong. Just as MoD has to pay market price for spectrum so must EA pay full price for landfill taxes. So that everyone gets to see the full costs of what the law demands we do. For it is only when all see that full cost that proper consideration of that cost will take place.
We even harbour a desire to wholly abolish affordable housing, concil, social, housing associations and all to boot. We agree, wholly, that some of the poorer among us require aid in gaining access to decent housing. So, that entire bill should be on housing benefit. An actual cash sum that has to be paid out. The point being that only once we all see the enormity of that sum will the head of steam necessary to actually deal with the problem be generated. Housing is expensive in Britain because of the planning system. That’s the thing that has to be changed. And seeing a housing benefit bill of £100 billion, £150 billion is exactly the sort of impetus necessary to overcome the objections of the shrieking nimbies and bananananas*.
As we’ve pointed out before, whatever it is that they’re doing to us needs to be done to them, good and proper. For that’s the only way that the idiocies will be removed from the system, when those who run the system are subject to them as well. Good and hard. There should be no landfill tax at all. Charging it to the bureaucracy works as an incentive toward that sensible result.
Tim Worstall
*It’s Mrs Ogg who knows how to spell that word but not when to stop.