TPA Activist Brian Sturman (see left) is a prolific letter writer for the low tax cause and consistently writes letters holding our wasteful politicians to account. His letters routinely find their way into the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News and have reached as far away as the Northumberland Gazette. So regular are his letters that we’ll be adding a new feature to the TPA Grassroots Campaign blog: Brian’s Letters. Here are his two latest offerings, his first attacking the scandalous way tax protester Richard Fitzmaurice was treated:
Sir,
For withholding £1,568 council tax, a pensioner gets a month in prison, costing taxpayers many thousands. We also learn that early release prisoners are given £168 plus £70 rent per week in order to make vacant cells in over crowded prisons. Their unpaid council tax will be written off.
Where is the cost effectiveness in locking up a pensioner because he is reacting to the forcible extraction of a third of his annual state pension? How can a month deterrent stop repeated imprisonments, particularly those genuinely already having to choose between heating house costs and eating?
It is clear that this tax is reducing elderly people into greater poverty, and even creating criminals of vulnerable citizens desperately hoping for a sensible solution from the out of touch “fat cat” politicians living in their luxurious Westminster village.
Today Brian has highlighted the sharp contrast between life at the top in the public sector and life as a pensioner having to struggle to make ends meet:
Sir,
Local newspapers report top Norfolk and Suffolk council bosses increased salaries up to £220,000. 220 pensioners must each pay £1,000 (about quarter of their inadequate state pension), to provide one top official salary. There are many more top officials like this around the country.
Do these fat cat bosses have any shame for causing further reduction in the already low standard of living for so many poor pensioners? I think not, the evidence is they even use their powers to prosecute and send pensioners to prison in handcuffs (Norfolk magistrates, 19 Feb, Richard Fitzmaurice), just for reacting to this exhibition of taxes wasted on excessive salaries while Social Care Services to pensioners are cut.
Brian’s not the only activist who writes letters spelling out exactly how frustrated taxpayers are at the waste of money going on in government. How long will it take you to write a letter the length of Brian’s? With your letter highlighting waste, high taxation and over-spending, you can shift the debate and encourage more people to take up the gauntlet and fight for lower taxes. It’s your money, fight to stop the taxman taking more of it!