The NUJ Can Go Fuck Themselves

Journalists call for 'internet tax' to rescue media

The main journalist trade union in Europe and the UK wants citizens to be given 'European Democracy Vouchers', funded by internet service providers, which can be used to buy newspapers and pay for online media subscriptions.

The vouchers, which would work in the same way as restaurant vouchers currently used in several countries, would be funded through a levy on internet service providers (ISPs), according to the National Union of Journalists in the UK (NUJ).

The idea was aired in a submission to the European Commission's consultation on creative industries, published in April (EurActiv 30/04/10).

Faced by the fact that their industry can't adapt by itself to changing market conditions, ie the internet, journalists are now demanding the taxpayer fund them (via a levy imposed on ISPs). If the arts can receive public subsidy then so should journalists, they argue, among other things.

Anyone familiar with the jourmalism produced by the British media will be aware that many of these goons are not worth being paid at all.

It's such an insane, ridiculous idea that the EU will probably give it serious consideration.

EU Commission Considers Direct EU Taxes

Secret plan for Euro income tax

Proposals included in a draft report by the Commission on the budget include phasing out the UK's rebate:

"The justification for the existence of the remaining correction [rebate] in favour of the United Kingdom, and corrections on this correction, disappears progressively.

In any event, the ultimate objective is to eliminate all the correction mechanisms."

Other suggestions are to slash the CAP budget (French farmers, for whose benefit the whole thing was devised, are already sharpening their pitchforks); and raising direct tax from "communication charges (SMS), financial transactions and levies related to aviation [departure tax or kerosene]." A lot more can also be filched away out of anything that comes under the green/emissions-reducing category.

Not to be forgotten, of course, is the fact that the EU's budgets for the last dozen years have not been signed off by auditors because they're a mess.

There's More Than One Way To Tax The Life Out Of You

Gordon Brown may be poncing around promising tax cuts to everyone while ramping up the national debt like a bankrupt cocaine addict scattering IOUs everywhere, but it isn't stopping him and his cronies scamming cash from us by using a multitude of underhand tactics.

This includes hiking up fines - The Magistrate's Blog reveals a disproportionate increase in motoring fines, for instance; and it's been revealed that increases in child protection case fees are putting children's lives at risk.

Motorists are prime targets for fines and penalties: how about being fined £20 for leaving your engine running while in a traffic jam?

Being caught stubbing out your fag end on the street could cost you £80. Fifty if you're caught smoking inside a public building.

Here's a short list of various offences from the Home Office. And the numerous jobsworths who can slap a fine on you.

As a parent, you can be fined £100 if your child plays truant.

Here's the government's own guide to fixed penalty fines for 'low-level environmental crimes'.

Not to mention being done for putting the wrong type of waste in your green bin - even though huge amounts of this recylable waste are now having to be stored in warehouses and military camps because the market has collapsed.

What with trying to regulate every aspect of people's lives, from childhood onward, and impose penalties and fines on us at any opportunity, this government is becoming more mediaeval by the day.