Clive George wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...

If the govt wanted to raise money it ought to ask the people first,
presenting the reasons for it, and raise it from a tax on something bad
in some way. As it is, theyve taxed people making their houses safer,
causing unnecessary deaths. Why? You figure it out.

I don't get this argument. They haven't taxed people making their houses
safer. They may have introduced a scheme which helps prevent people evading
tax, but that is definitely not the same as introducing a new tax.

Preventing tax evasion at the (alleged) cost of more lives lost is not
a lot different - I think it is just semantics, though.

I think Part P is crap for various reasons, but the 'tax' argument you're
presenting is completely bogus.

I think an argument (valid or not) against Part P is that it encourages
people to neglect their electrical safety as Part P makes the cost of
complying higher than many people wish to pay.

If the government paid all the costs of an electrician testing domestic
installations + the cost of any remedial works for faults found, and
paid you £100 for being a good citizen every time you requested such
services, it would be very popular indeed. It would also be very
expensive for the government, and therefore, us.

Part P was brought in on the (possibly spurious) grounds of improving
the electrical safety of fixed domestic installations. The fact that it
had the (offically) completely unexpected side effect of reducing tax
evasion is (officially) neither here nor there, but the Treasury are
not unhappy.

Just be glad that the European Court decided that we couldn't by
toboacco and alcoholic beverages online and by mail order from other EU
countries at their duty rates today. If the decision had been
otherwise, the government would have been looking at creative methods
of filling a £12 billion hole in the public finances.

Sid