As Booker recounted in his column of the period, it was actually just a few days before Christmas in 2004 when I last confronted Bradford MDC over Council Tax and, as I recorded on my own blog, the result was that I was raided by the police and locked in a cell over the weekend.

My offence at that time was to withhold Council Tax in in protest at the lack of police attention to the spate of burglaries in our street, culminating in Mrs EU Referendum's car being broken into overnight.

The interesting thing here is I got jailed for not paying it. Yet here we are in 2011 and I owe £316 to the council in unpaid Council Tax, which I am refusing to pay … and they roll over and waive fees already paid, in order then to relieve themselves the obligation of pursuing me for the unpaid sum. What is going on?

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Good grief, North. I hope I never get involved in a dispute with you ... about anything.

Their were some right mong commenters on that old prisoner 24601 blog of yours...

We the sheeple, methinks. I wonder if they would be so forthright now, when they look at all those CEOs on six-figure salaries, and all the sustainability officers they are funding.

Well done Richard - you are giving us all hope that we can beat the beast.

On Council Tax fraud RAENORTH wrote -




And I bet it is. Local Authorities are all much the same.

getting ready.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangman%27sknot

A bedtime story, or rather a little teaser, known as the 'Paradox of The Unexpected Hanging'. In the hope that not everyone has heard it, here it is in brief.

It was a Friday afternoon and a prisoner was in the dock at the Old Bailey after being found guilty of a capital offence by a jury of his peers. The judge donned his black cap and pronounced the death sentence:

"...yadda yadda ... and hanged by the neck until dead. But in your case, you filthy fcuking animal, we're gonna pile on the agony. As I said, we're gonna hang you at 6am one day (Mon - Fri) next week only you won't know beforehand which day it will be so you can fcukin' stew on that too. Yeah, that'll be a nice surprise for you, you sick fcuking bastard."

I'm paraphrasing the judge here and have had to tone down what he said a little as the man was a law unto himself with diction to boot, but he was of upstanding character and always a man of his word and everyone knew it.

Anyway, ten minutes later the villain was back in his cell lying on his bunk, where he started to think hard on what the judge had said.

He figured they couldn't hang him on Friday because if they were to do that then he would know early after 6am on Thursday that Friday was to be the day of his execution, contradicting what the judge said about him not knowing beforehand. So he wondered if it could be Thursday instead. But nope, he concluded it couldn't be Thursday either because, he reckoned, since it couldn't be Friday, if they hadn't hanged him by Wednesday then he'd know early on Wednesday that the hanging must be set for Thursday, again contradicting the judge.

He carried on in this vein and worked his way back through the rest of days of the week. His argument was similar for each day proving that it couldn't be any of them. "Aha! The judge has stuffed himself," he thought, "and there can be no hanging. I'm going to live!" Confident in his impeccable logic he relaxed and enjoyed his weekend.

So it was quite a surprise to him when they dragged him out of his cell screaming at 5:59am on Monday morning and strung him up. The judge was right after all.

Well now, I hope everyone was sitting comfortably as that little story was especially for you, Martin Stubbs and gang. Judge RAE North's not telling you when, and you won't know beforehand, but he's gonna fcukin' hang you. Promise.

Relax with that one, you bastards. Figure away!

I bet these ratbags try to blame the egregious Local Government Association

It is only a tweak of the tail ... but I hope that it will show that the beast is not invincible. There are other issues, and we can pick up some of those as well in due course.

What is particularly useful is that almost all the local authorities are implicated, and the sums involved are huge. Thus, it is something everyone can have a go at.

A relevant post on Orphans
http://4liberty.org.uk/2011/09/24/the-basic-mechanism-of-government/

RAENorth said:-

A polite question. What was the cost to the enquirer for requesting this FOI?
I will be sending my FOI in this weekend. Just hoping the reply is not too expensive.

Barrow Borough Councils Transparency extracts for all spending over £500 Jan 2011-Aug 2011.
HMCS court costs for recovery of Council Tax during this period
January £1467
February £1872

April £2016
May £1197
June £1743
July £2289
August £1296

Total to date for 2011 £11800

The first time I have ever delved into these public records and some really bizarre things are going on in local government. Ignoring the many 'redacted' records, the many, many 'professional fee' payments all of which require more delving one truly odd one stands out.
Apparently Barrow Borough Council buys some of its gas from Cumbria County Council.
There are also a great many 'registrations' and fees going to central government departments as well as the County Council.

I urge everyone who has an hour free to have a dig around these documents for their local council. I suspect that with a little bit more digging all manner of scams will come to light.

Richard you are doing us a great service. Most of us don't know the law and would roll over because we can't be bothered. Some points.

1/. Everyone hates politicians and councils.

2/. They are supposed to be there to serve us, but your experience shows us the truth

3/. But who to vote for? Labour and Tory same middle class fuckers who have never done a days work or paid a bill in their privileged little lives