Jason Kitcat

I was just saying to my wife the other day that it's when the older generation become activist that middle England often takes notice. I'd had a long chat with a refreshing lady who felt very strongly about privacy, ID cards and so on. When young protesters cause a fuss somehow they are more easily written off. But when some grey hairs stand up, you know they're fuming and they're not doing it just to cause trouble.

Cue today's story 73 year old Sylvia Hardy has been jailed for refusing to pay part of her exorbitant council tax. See the Guardian's story for more.

I think people wouldn't mind (so much) the high and every growing council tax they have to pay if they felt the money was well spent. But local democracy is pretty much broken, in England at least. I've been inspired by small towns in Canada and France where mayors and councillors have taken real care in protecting and nurturing their communities.

This isn't to say that English councillors don't care – I know the Green councillors in Brighton care very much – it's just that they are virtually powerless. One you factor in statutory targets and arcane funding formulas the limited powers are reducing to barely nothing. Additionally when councils can't afford to enforce their own authority, due to exorbitant legal fees, firms know they can operate with impunity.

What more, most councillors are paid an absolute pittance and with taxes as they are who can blame them for avoiding giving themselves a raise to a decent salary level? But if we want our towns and cities to be properly run then as well as reforming their powers we need to create a professional class of local politician – and that needs living wages.

I regard myself (rightly or wrongly) as fairly clued up on issues to do with the environment, food quality, globalisation and all that. I've read Naomi Klein's No Logo, George Monbiot's superbe Captive State, Noam Chomsky, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and many more. I'm an active member of the Green Party as well as on and off I've been involved with Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association (the pre-eminent organic association) as well as Greenpeace. I've watched the documentaries on TV as well as, of course, Super Size Me.

None of these prepared me for The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence and her book Not On The Label. What's unique about this book is how it comprehensively addresses food safety and quality, migrant labour, environmental degradation, globalisation, quality of life, health, culture, urbanisation and much more. Precisely and cleverly these huge issues are woven together so that one minute the reader is considering 'fresh' ready-made lasagne and the next they are wondering at how frozen food has higher nutrient levels than many 'fresh' items. Next thing one is in the packhouses learning how employment law is dodged to let supermarkets buy prepared fruit and veg at absurdly low prices with no contractual commitments. The list goes on.

Truly we are in serious, serious trouble as a society. I don't really know where to begin – but the book is a good place for you all to start – save me typing the whole thing verbatim in my fervour. I've already filed a LinuxUser column heavily influenced by my reading of the book.

Really it comes down to bread… I love baking bread but I haven't been that satisfied with my results. I was waiting for my wife and slipped into Borders, dangerous territory for a book lover. I, by pure chance as I leafed through a shelf of books, came upon a chapter purely about bread in Lawrence's book. Holy crap. Bread is made in a really sick way these days. And I think the problem with my bread is the use of 'Quick Yeast' which doesn't develop the dough properly over time. The book was bought and now I'm more furious than all the Soil Association and Friends of the Earth magazines ever managed.

What's just so incredible is that I've been feeling a very strong dissatisfaction with British society, food, bread and so on… I've been chatting about this with people for quite a bit but the feeling has got so unbearably strong recently. This book was just the straw that broke the camel's back, I have to change things now.

I’ve often had conversations, inspired partly through the Green Party’s citizens’ income policy [PDF], that governments would be better off with simple one-rate benefits payments and one-rate tax levels. Gordon Brown has been much criticised for all the various credits he offers on the basis that they’re so had to actually apply for few needy citizens really benefit. Complexity is the enemy of having a cheap government, helping citizens understand where their money goes and it is also the enemy of preventing fraud. Every wrinkle or exception in the tax-law is potential loophole to be exploited.

So I read the following with great interest in What’s Next (which I can highly recommend):

Flat tax idea

In 1994 Estonia became the first country in the world to adopt what is known as a flat tax system. This is essentially a system where there is just one rate of tax – in Estonia’s case, 26% for all individuals and companies. There is no schedule of rates and no exceptions. The idea proved so successful that seven other countries in Eastern Europe have introduced the idea and an eighth (Poland) is considering it. Critics who said that that the idea was unworkable have moved on to another objection, namely that it is unfair because it is not progressive (ie, everyone pays the same). However, while the amount is fixed there is nothing stopping countries applying a threshold (ie, exemption amount). The advantage of a flat tax system is its simplicity. Everyone knows how the system operates and administration and compliance costs are minimised. In the US the cost of running and regulating the tax system is estimated at between 10% and 20% of total revenue collected. That’s a sum equivalent to 25% to 50% of the US budget deficit.

Ref: The Economist (UK) 16 April 2005, ‘The flat tax revolution’. http://www.economist.com

Those final figures should be enough for even George W to take notice.