Budget Roundabout

In the post budget discussion about the extent of what is being given by the government to us all, allegedly, the usual suspects have been asking about where is it coming from.

Has May been growing magic trees in the enchanted garden at Chequers? Is Hammond obeying the Inland Revenue? I did wonder, but then a document including this dropped through the door and the answer is "of course".

Many of those who live in flats depend on a managing agent to do a lot of the jobs that have to be done and it is common to have staff on site to deal with this.

One part of this sector that has been growing in size and numbers is retirement developments which with the decline in the number of residential homes now have a high proportion of the very elderly and therefore disabled.

The document says:

VAT ON EMPLOYMENT OF STAFF

HM Revenue & Customs have issued a briefing and information sheet which requires  Managing Agents to add Value Added Tax at the Standard Rate (20%) to the total employment costs (salary), employers National Insurance Contributions  (pension contributions) of on-site staff. This charge will apply with effect from 1 November 2018.

This instruction applies to all Managing Agents and the additional cost, which will be included within the service charge of all staffed developments, will be paid over to HM Revenue & Customs, there is no benefit to the Managing Agent.

The impact, will, quite simply, increase the salary costs with the service charge account by 20%. Whilst we will not make any changes to the budget for the current service charge, there is likely to be an overspend in areas of the budget that include employed on-site staff, any resultant overall overspend will be recoverable when the accounts for the year are finalised.

We will, in the meantime, continue to monitor the situation in case the ruling is challenged.

Unquote.

In the Budget I do not recall seeing any mention of this or the doubtless many other administrative alterations, updates and revisions which will be in train from one part of government or another.

How typical it is for our government to promise extra for those in need and then to find the money from out of their pockets.

It may be a roundabout, but it ain't magic.

Wandering Hain Trouble

The current dispute between a shopkeeper who has done very well and a professional politician of the Left has grabbed the headlines. The shopkeeper is alleged to have let his emotions rule on occasions in the past with ladies.

Now he prefers it to be a private matter. The politician does not agree and insists that it be public. I can hardly wait for someone to come up with errors of judgement in the politicians past.

The shopkeeper has been given a knighthood for giving money away and the politician wants it taken away from him. The politician is now a peer in the House of Lords for giving away vast amounts of taxpayers money to people who agree with him.

Florrie Forde a wonderful singer from the past says it all.

Now back to the sports pages.

Looking To The Past

A document unearthed recently by archaeologists from a building site near Kings Cross, evidently a place of ritual, has been translated. It is a public declaration by an official called “Custodian” and is dated to the beginning of 410 AD in modern form.

“ After due examination of the entrails of several beasts and offerings to the great and good amongst our gods and officials we can confidently state that there is to be a new beginning to our future, quite unlike the beginnings of the past, which will lead to a recovery in our affairs to reinstate what we have lost forever and no longer need.

The reductions in our defence budget and planned future deployment of more of our legionaries to the furthest corners of the Empire to secure our borders against the Persians, Goths, Vandals, Dacians and others will enable us to concentrate our efforts on our own internal security.

This will be achieved by the empowerment of local officials in liaison with groups of the auxiliary forces in consultation with local interests. We are sure that the high level of mutual interests will lead to the political stabilisation of the Atlantic Isles for another four hundred years at least.

This will be enabled by the wise foresight of the control of the mints. The progressive reduction of the silver content of the coinage will continue to help increase the amount of money to further trade and critically the great work being undertaken by the money changers and lenders.

It is to them and their central role in the getting and spending of money and trade that we look to provide a continuing rise in our prosperity.
The reduction in the amount of gold we hold to assist the Empire in paying dues to the peacemakers on our eastern borders has been of great benefit and the continuing reduction will free us from concerns from this quarter.

Our policy of increasing the amount of protective fortification of the dwellings of our patrician class and local tribal leaders together with the concentration of trading in designated walled centres has helped our internal security and protected our vital interests.

The continuing troubles among the plebeians and the other classes dependent on free grain doles will be addressed by firmer laws and wider powers being granted to lower officials and others to allow them to act without reference to the usual procedures. We have no doubt that the best way of dealing with the problem is to extract promises from the disaffected elements and to then release them to adjust to their communities in accordance with their lifestyle.

Community spirit will be maintained and improved by the provision of extra games and pursuits. Necessarily some of these will be violent amusements and others giving insights into the baser instincts and conduct of ordinary people. This is part of our lifestyle and we must learn to tolerate and welcome this as a staple of social intercourse.

In administration the greater influence and authority of Aquisgranum the city serving the interests of the Belgae, the Germanians and the Gauls is to be welcomed giving the Atlantic Isles a more central pivot to refer to for policy and trade.

Similarly the transplantation of local tribal peoples, the Scotti, from the territories of south eastern Britannia around Camulodunum and Venta Icenorum to the furthest north can only be of benefit to all concerned. We are sure they will be welcomed by the Picts and the remnants of earlier peoples who went north in past times.

The Empires greatest achievement is in creating a diversity of peoples and beliefs.  The steady flow of the skilled and able workforces from the lands around the Rhine and its northern and eastern neighbours we are sure will be augmented by more of these law abiding and peaceful tribes bringing with them their inclusive and benign gods.

Moreover increased trade and contact with the horsed tribes far to the east has opened other wonderful opportunities.  The Empire has little to fear from them. There are other groups with other gods, including some who believe only in a single god.

While the great majority of these are meek, submissive and helpful in their beliefs there are small number of extremists who give concern and who are both reluctant and unwilling to respect other gods and practices.

Some have taken down bridges to make their places of worship and only allow marriage and child bearing within the terms of their own laws.  More worrying is the lack of diversity in their relationships with others and secretive internal dealings. Nevertheless they are important to the Empire as a valuable source of slaves for the galleys and mines.

There are other issues for the Empire to deal with in the coming decade.  The deforestation of much of the Isles is leading to difficulties in sourcing fuel and building materials. Also the more fertile soils of the lowlands are no longer giving the yields that they once did which means that the Province is failing to meet its revenue and export targets.

The lack of maintenance of water facilities has led to breakdowns in some urban communities that are difficult to rectify.  The calls on the legions have removed not only soldiers but the water engineers who have kept the systems running in the past.

Nevertheless the future is bright and the Empire has guaranteed that more coins will soon be had that although different will mean that the chariots and pack mules will soon be as busy as before.

Morituri te salutant!”

How different it all seems from our modern world.

Refer What?

For those who have seen the Disney films of old, there are times when all this talk of Referendums past and those to come brings to mind that the dum in Referendum comes close to that of Dumbo, the flying elephant.

This short trailer at one minute and forty seconds makes as much sense as anything in the context of our modern politics and government, although Dumbo might say poliment and governtics.

Circus is a simpler way of putting it.

Glory Days

The Madrid Opera have done the Benjamin Britten opera "Gloriana", shown on Sky Arts, about Queen Elizabeth I and her affair with the Earl of Essex which went badly wrong. Whether this is to signal that Spain is part of Europe and so should we be or that they think the sooner they are rid of the Brit's the better is an open question.

It was Elizabeth One who did for the Spanish Armada in 1588. The first night of "Gloriana" in 1953 at Covent Garden also went wrong. This work is "not a lot of laughs" and was first performed on 8th June 1953 at Covent Garden as one of the major items around the Coronation of 2nd June of Elizabeth Two.

E Two is not an opera fan, although duty sometimes calls, but "Gloriana" is serious and heavy and a long sit. She was not best pleased, it had been a busy week. Neither was the audience of aristocrats who barely applauded.

The BBC at the time was telling us all that we should all join in with the various celebrations. But when we switched the wireless (!!!) on we lasted about twenty minutes and then it was off to the pub for a couple of stiff black and tans to restore the nerve endings.

What E One and E Two shared was the passion for hunting. But E One with a fine hunting lodge at Chingford was untroubled by peasants moaning about the damage to crops and the death of wild life and E Two and her family have had to stick to gentle rides in the park and none of this chasing foxes and stags, jumping, following the hounds and banging away with noisy guns at birds.

There is a lot of music about hunting but an evening of Tally Ho was perhaps lese-majeste. What is a puzzle is why Britten was chosen to do something for The Coronation, or indeed why have an opera at all. But after the death of King George VI in February 1952, it was decided to show the world that Britain was still Great, up to a point, and that a big buster Coronation was the way to show it.

Typically, it meant fifteen months to organise something that might have been done simply in days, or with a more ceremonial in three to four months. As ever the bungling had a great deal to do with politics. The Tories with their narrow majority wanted a big bang patriotic show piece of everything firstly as a reason to keep them in power and secondly to be part of the run in to the next election. The Department of Bright Ideas ruled supreme.

There could have been a evening aligning the music of the age of E One with that of E Two which would have been much easier on the ear and without the anguish. William Walton was around and might have been a good choice but he was embroiled in trying to finish his "Troilus And Cressida", which did not suit.

One of the composers of that era was William Wordsworth, who we now hear little of but whose style and interests would have fitted the bill a great deal better. But he was not "modern" and Scottish and may have been inclined to have little sympathy with the world of E One if this part was needed.

Britten, following his major success "Peter Grimes" (also not a lot of laughs) and other works may have seemed the obvious choice. "Albert Herring", "The Little Sweep" and "Billy Budd" had also been written and he could clearly come up with a score etc. in the time.

What was not seen in his works was the dark world inherent in the stories which emerged in "Gloriana". Also, that it was based on the text of a play by Lytton Strachey should have put up the warning signs. If that then it was going to be a serious evening.

If it was to be fun, then it might have been better to go back to Shakespeare in the form of Verdi's opera "Falstaff". But we were supposed to be on a Great Britain roll. Stanley Matthews had just won his FA Cup Winners medal, Gordon Richards had ridden a winner in The Derby and so on.

A few days after the Coronation, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill had a major stroke from which he never fully recovered. Anthony Eden had the reins of power in his hands and was determined to show the world that Britain mattered.

So in 1956 we had the Suez Crisis which showed it was all over. Perhaps Britten was more right than wrong.

The Ownership Of Mankind

There is a great deal being argued on the subject of the history of the slave trade, largely in the limited context of the British involvement of between 1603 and 1833. It is said that in the schools the subject should be taught usually meaning only that small part.

Since Homo Sapiens, that is us, began to increase in numbers and occupy the various territories of the Earth; at some stage this began to entail warfare, claims to owning land and rivalries. In turn came social stratification and changing systems of rule and the way people related to people.

The consequence was that the ownership, servility and oppression of mankind came to take many forms. They might be distinctive but represent layers of domination that often arise from force but also from the structure of society, its economic foundations and related belief systems in religion and law.

The existence of one form does not exclude others and there is the contingent risk of lower level forms becoming more servile as a result of events, policy or radical change. Below is a summary of forms of control or ownership of humans by humans.

Slavery

Persons are taken, used at the decision of owners or their representatives, bought and sold and counted as assets. In slave based societies some levels of work at high levels might have slaves, for example Greece and Rome. Very many societies in history have been slave based.

Contract Labour Slavery

Persons forced or induced to enter contracts that entail loss of personal freedom and decision. They might expect to be able to fulfil the contract but the nature of payment means this may be cancelled by charges and failure by the contractors to observe their part which then entails forced labour which cannot be escaped. In the 19th and 20th Centuries this form became common after the abolition of full slavery.

Debt Slavery

Debt slavery may result from Contract Slavery but there are many ways where a person may take on debt at levels greater than they can afford. In particular, the charges and rates of interest may be at levels, little understood, which mean it is impossible to repay. It exists in modern times.

Social obligation and standing.

This might be family, inherited and in the forms of bound labour or laws of land holding and requirements. The terms of bound labour may in effect amount to a condition of slavery, for example when a whole family is bound.

Captive

Persons captured in conflict or interned politically and used as slave or forced labour.

Institutional

Societal, such as feudal, picture above, or similar systems, or the precepts of religious faith. Also, there can be structural in business or trade, for example some types of apprenticeship, job requirements etc.

Governmental

Governments may enact laws or put in place organisations that require types of servility of those affected or employed that take various forms.

Accidental                                                      

Localisation, servants, unintended consequences and lapsed political or social systems or absence of the rule of law.

Expansion

Demand exceeds supply.

Note

We can only theorize as to how and where any began. Over the whole of known history one form or another can be found. It exists today and the question is will any of these forms of stratification become greater or less.

Drying Tonight

Very often I am on the web to find things to cheer me up and to look forward to happier things. Especially, advances in science etc. that are to the benefit of us all.

Then I read this in Science Daily. So today is Mr. Glum day and I wonder whether to amend the grocery order to include large quantities of bottled water.