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item0067E 978, 979 978 Easter Monday 12 April 2004 "This is a
Well - No it isn't, actually. We are simply having to deal with the consequences of a sordid, misjudged post-Imperial adventure. I agree that we have no option but to stay with the Americans and sort it out: I have clearly stated my position.
We should proceed to elections straight away, without handing over to an interim US-puppet Government on 30 June. Special electoral processes can be devised for delivering a General Election which would be regarded as valid. After all, the key role of an Election would simply to bestow legitimacy, and that could be done under existing electoral law. No prior "Census" is necessary: any adult proving Iraqi citizenship could be entitled to vote, and special measures could be devised to counter double voting (it used to be an ink-stamp on the back of the hand, but modern methods would be far more effective).
But none of these factors, Tony, make this into a "historic struggle". Let's cut the purple Churchillian prose, and get down to real political work.
Where do you stand, Dear Reader? Drop me a line
979 Easter Monday 12 April 2004 Anniversary VAT
Fifty years old! The Guardian celebrated the French invention of taxe a valeur ajoutee (TVA), reported by Mark Milner. But Milner misses the Euro-point. At the beginning of the Common Market, the Continental countries had a chaotic mixture of cascading sales taxes. From its very foundation in 1957, the Common Market wrestled with a diversity of sales taxes. Some imposed a fixed-levy upon every sales transaction, as half-finished and finished goods proceeded on their way to the ultimate customer. This artificially encouraged "vertical integration", with wholesalers buying up manufacturers, retailers buying up wholesalers - because if there was no "sale transaction" upon which to levy tax, the tax was avoided, and the overall burden of tax reduced, perfectly legitimately. Only the French and the English had solved this problem, in the post-War period. The English solution was to levy Purchase Tax, which was a percentage levy on the retail sale of goods to the ultimate customer, but it was collected from the 650-or-so wholesalers who made up the UK change. They simply passed it on to the retailer, and the retailer passed it on to the eventual customer. There was no distorting effect, because in a system where retail-prices were commonly fixed in advance, the tax was collected very early, regardless of the number of hands through which the product passed. It was an incredibly efficient tax, because it was collected from a small number of big traders.The French had a quite different solution. They stuck with the concept of a "cascading tax", but levied a percentage tax only on the incremental value - the "value-added" every time a product changed hands. If one firm handled several different phases of the product's life, the tax-paid would be higher - simply because it was a percentage of the "value-added", la valeur-ajoutee. This was more complex to administer, but suffered none of the practical and theoretical drawbacks of other Continental systems. It also allowed for the free-play of competitive market forces - as the UK system certainly did not.So - when the British came along, and Ted Heath finally negotiated British entry, Purchase Tax didn't stand a chance! After long internal struggles, the sophisticated French tax system had carried the day - and we had to accept the conclusion. It was, I am glad to say, the right conclusion: it has proved good for trade, and good for Europe.
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NOTICE
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The Prime Minister writes in The
Observer, describing the Iraq invasion as a "historic struggle", a key
assault upon democracy, which "we must win". Faced with
the grave deterioration of civic order in Iraq, he is committed to winning
the struggle, which is "historic".