A 73 year old woman in England has expressed disappointment that she was not able to complete her one week prison sentence. She was released less than two days into the five she was due to spend there.
The BBC report Sylvia Hardy saying of the full week "That's what I intended to do and I'm unhappy about the way this has been dealt with". Of her treatment she said "I was treated very courteously and very kindly and efficiently by the prison officers, and I was certainly treated very well by the inmates who for obvious reasons, knowing the reason why I was in there, took me to their hearts."
Why was she sent to jail? For failing to pay about $90 in local taxes as a protest.
Sylvia lives on a pension from the Government but still has to pay local property taxes called "Council Tax" These are based on the value of the property with no reference to your income and there are other stupid anomalies. Because central government funding to local authorities has reduced to keep Gordon Brown's books balanced, these local taxes have risen disproportionately. At the same time pensions have gone up only by the rate of inflation. Sylvia and a number of others have refused to pay any increase above the rate thier pensions went up.
Sylvia was the first woman involved in the protest to be taken to the final stage of a court sentenceing her to prison. After a day in jail, someone paid the £53 for her, much to her obvious displeasure. This often happens in such cases and I have my suspicions that "dark forces" are at work to avoid the Government getting further embarrased.
Even so they have been forced to make an annoucement that looks like a concession. What it does not address is the basic injustice of the situation and introduces a further twist in the irrational system.
I said that the tax is based on the value of the home. Not quite. The values are in 5 "bands" according to the value 10 years ago. Now that does not take account of any improvements since like a new room being built on the side. When a home is built from new, the local "Valuer" has to go through a silly exercise of determining what the new house would have been worth a decade ago.
The rational thing to do would be to re-assess every value at a new, current fixed date. That went ahead in Wales last year but a large number moved up into a higher band because of those improvements. The higher band meant even more tax and in Wales a lot of the loss of Labour votes in the General Election were put down to that as well as the Iraq War. Clever Blair of course comes up with a wheeze to avoid the same thing happening in England. Simply cancel the re-valuation. Of course that means the valuations become more out of date and the new builds have even more ridiculous calculations. But it means Tony will not lose votes in next year's local elections. Oh, and he had announced his second "review" of how local government is funded so he can use that as an excuse for not doing anything to address the injustice of the Council Tax accounting for 25% of some poorer people's income. The earlier report he commissioned proposed radical changes and suggested a local income tax. That was dropped in July 2004 and the independent group was told to come back with ideas to tinker with the existing scheme. This conveniently put back any changes until after the General Election so the English results would not be affected by the proposals. The new report is due by the end of the year but any changes would not be in before the May local elections. On the other hand they will be able to make a big announcement that changes will be made to show how "in touch" they are.