Questions for the Next Election?

I would like to tell the politicos that have power over us:

That we are not best pleased with so called Eco Taxes (Tax on Fuel, be that fuel for vehicles or the home and a possible Congestion Charge for Belfast).

I feel they are punitive taxes on the poor and middle income earners and will stifle inward investment. The government and Belfast City Council is cynically using the environment as an excuse to raise taxes.

We are being forced to endure these Eco Taxes before we have a global agreement on environmental issues, the UK alone will not save the planet. I as a UK car user knows that the car user in America, China and India are not paying Eco stealth taxes on their fuel. These Taxes confirm to us the voter that this is a cynical stealth tax. This applies to all Eco stealth taxes.

Do the peoples in the countries named above have to use by decree of government, Eco light bulbs?

The nanny state has arrived in your living room and is going in to overdrive in London. How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?

Politicians don’t need light bulbs as they can light up a room with the sun shine emanating from their backsides!
Or
We don’t know because we have never seen a politician do anything useful!

Other Stealth Taxes (Tax on Insurance and flights) again are a punitive tax on the poor and middle income earners and again stifle investment. The Irish Republic is a shinning example of a low Tax economy and look how the standard of living and investment has boomed in the Irish Republic in recent years with high paying quality jobs.

We need our politicos to reform the Tax take and make it more equitable. The burden of tax should not be on the middle income earners or the elderly who have saved all their working lives for their retirement. The tax burden needs to be more equitability spread over the full range of incomes.

On the Belfast Congestion Charge, we have a multi million-pound new shopping centre in Belfast nearing completion and several new multi million pound developments at the Holywood Exchange site and in the Titanic Quarter Shipyard site and another multi million pound proposed development at the old Sarrco Works site. What eejit in the City Hall suggested that we should have the congestion charge for Belfast City Centre? It will obviously affect the business of the new multi million pound shopping centres, if shoppers have to pay to get to the shopping centre and then pay again to park, people will vote with their shopping basket and go to Lisburn or the Abbey Centre. The mindset of City Hall takes some thinking through. This will be a classic example of how not to get investment into the centre of Belfast. Well done City Hall.

The average wage in Northern Ireland is below the national average and just like corporation Tax on business any Eco or Stealth tax will discourage inward investment. Let’s not forget we in Northern Ireland pay more for every day products and services so Eco and Stealth Taxes have an even greater and disproportionately larger impact on our pockets.

I would like to ask the political parties here, will they vote against any more or any increases in existing Eco or Stealth Taxes. This goes for the Water Charges and Rates.

I would like to bring up the taxing question of ID cards. What an unnecessary burden on the UK Tax payer.

The introduction of ID cards to the UK is another covert attempt by the Labour government to invade our lives at a level never experienced in the history of the UK.

Firstly my main concern is over the anticipated cost of this ID card debacle.

Can we trust the government with the amount of information that will be stored on these cards and the security of the information contained on the cards? I thank not!

The government say that no Medical, Tax, Ethnic or Religious details will be contained on the cards. Personally I don’t believe them, and the temptation to add this information and misuse this information will be too overwhelming for the government.

I can see the forward planning and future strategy of the National Health Service being dependent on the personnel information held on these cards.

Interestingly the government did not mention that the ID cards will not hold DNA information. In not mentioning DNA information, it can therfore be used as a backdoor for the government to abuse the system and ask for DNA information in the guise of National Security.

I would like to remind everyone that Police forces across the UK have DNA data bases and would like to expand this to cover everyone, add this to the governments desire to have a UK DNA data base and it only takes the stroke of a pen form a minister of state to make DNA part of the ID cards.

I also have a degree of discomfort that the government wish to have my fingerprint details and the fingerprint details of my children on any card. We are sleepwalking into a mix of an Orwellian society and Huxley’s A Brave New World!

The UK governments record on honesty to the UK people has always been questionable therefore the opportunity and the temptation for the government to sell the information contained on the ID cards to foreign governments and banking and insurance interests will be insatiable. The personnel information about our DNA and health details could result in a refusal of NHS treatment or insurance maybe not today but tomorrow.

The control of emigrants and terrorists is being used as an excuse for the introduction of ID cards by the government. This will necessitate a huge government bureaucracy to administrate.
Instead of government getting smaller and the Tax burden getting smaller Labour are getting government into areas that government has never been before, and that invades the pocket as well.

The UK has huge numbers of transient workers from inside and outside the EU some who stay for short periods and others who stay for longer periods, add to this the numbers of UK residents who change address, the potential for system meltdown is inevitable. Any well financed terrorist organisation that wish to bomb the UK will not take long to have better fake ID cards than the cards the government can issue.

One just has to look at the existing NHS, Tax Credit and Child Support Agency computer systems are evidence that the government’s record on computer systems is not premiere league and the ID card computer system will inevitability be the same. The system just won’t work effectively.

One must ask the question if all the information that the card is going to contain is name, address, DoB, place of birth, immigration status, finger print details, iris pattern and photo. What is the point of the ID card, the criminals won’t care a jot for ID cards, they will make a fortune making fake ID cards and selling them on the black market. So I suppose it’s good to see the government encourage the economy, even if it’s the black economy.
International Forgers will have better ID cards than the government will produce within days of the first card being produced.

The cost of this ID scheme would be better spent in Schools, the NHS on Pensioners or on care for the elderly.

Can any politician tell me how an ID card is going to stop a bomb?

If Nu-Labour spent the money on police officers on the beat and not on CCTV and ID cards it would be money well spent.

CCTVand ID cards if they do catch a terrorist then it will be after the act, not like an officer on the beat who can intervene during the act. More police on the streets and less government intrusions in our lives would be a better idea.

The whole issue around ID cards is like a bad comb over on a semi bald man, it’s a stupid idea and it doesn’t work!

The government are trying to socially manipulate us into bottle water drinking; five fruit and vegetable portions a day super fit ID card carrying clones. However, and this may come as a surprise to the government we are all unique.

The elderly who have the need for treatment should not be denied that treatment, just because they have worked all their adult lives and now they don’t fit into some government targeted age range.

Then there is the lady who is denied cancer drug treatment because the government say it’s too expensive. However the government can pay themselves huge expenses on second homes, pensions and pay rises without the electorate having a say.

Then there is the gentleman who is denied treatments because he comes from an era were smoking was socially acceptable and he has paid tax to the government for the pleasure to smoke and is denied treatment.

The government need to be reminded that this is not their money to make these decisions with it is our money.

Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony B,liar have spent billons of our pounds on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will have no satisfactory conclusion. Gordon Brown is continuing to spend millions of our pounds a day on these failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suggest these acts are the acts of a perversely corrupt government.

A government that will fund wars yet the same government won’t properly compensate or fund proper treatment for our returning service personnel or fund treatment for the rest of the populace that they say they represent, is a sick government.

A government that can send men and women to war but can’t treat them when they come home injured because of NHS cutbacks is a perverse and corrupt government!

Our Assembly need to focus on:

Education: The 11+, funding for third level education, and pay and conditions for education workers.

The Health Service: The provision of drugs and treatment for everyone. The cost and issue of Hospital Cleaning and Infections (MRSA).

Provision for the Elderly at home and in Hospital.

Planning, Social Housing, Water Charging and Rates (why are landlords exempt rates)

Crime and the causes of crime and the sentencing of the convicted (end 50% remission).

The mundane: Quangos, and Non Elected and Non Accountable Boards, The National Stadium, Tourism, Transport, Investment.

There is a dragging off collective political feet, with review after review on mundane issues delays in implementing important day to day decisions on issues in Northern Ireland that are stifling our economy.

Years of indecision must stop and a collective political finger must be pulled out. The politicos in the big house make positive decisions to move Northern Ireland into the 21st Century!

We need more action and less jaw jaw.