You know what this is worth a pullapart.
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A pensioner who has stopped paying his council tax in a protest over the "lavish lifestyles" of staff has vowed to go to jail rather than pay up.
I wonder what these "lavish lifestyles" might be.
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Great-grandfather Walter Staniforth, 71, has refused to pay £256.43 since October.
He's a great grandfather. That's important, apparently.
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He and his severely disabled wife Mary, 68, who live on pensions and allowances totalling £200 a week, pay council tax of £639 a year on their three-bedroom home in Swinefleet, near Goole.
And she's severly disabled. Again, important to the facts.
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Yesterday Mr Staniforth asked Goole magistrates to excuse him the arrears owed to East Riding of Yorkshire council.
Without a lawyer, he told them he calculated that 28p in every pound of council tax went into the council's staff pension fund.
Did he now. Does he actually know this? What's it based on?
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He said: "I have paid towards staff pensions, laptops and mobile phones and there has been no public consultation over council tax rates."
Mobile phones count as "lavish lifestyle" do they?
And I seriously doubt that 28% of all expenses in a council is put into pensions.
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Magistrates threw out his request and ordered him to pay the outstanding bill, plus £70 costs. If he still refuses to pay, a further hearing could be arranged where he is jailed.
I wonder if he realises the irony here - that hearing will cost money, and guess who's paying (well, he is in part).
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Outside court Mr Staniforth, who walks with a stick after a double knee replacement, said: "It looks like I'm going to jail, but it doesn't frighten me.
Great grandfather. Severly disabled wife. Double knee replacement. All completely irrelevant to the facts. I also wonder if he had that replacement on the nhs.
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"They have not listened to one thing I said. Why should I pay out of my pension for these people to live a lavish lifestyle?
Translation: They've listened to what I said. They've gone away and made a judgement and I don't agree with that judgement. Therefore I'll claim they've ignored me.
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"I have paid taxes all my life and now they are making us scrap and scrape to get by. I should be able to live with what pension I have. They are not allowing me to do that."
You might well be right. But witholding tax creates more problems than it solves.
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The case is similar to that of another council tax 'martyr' Josephine Rooney, 69, who was jailed in 2006 after failing to pay money owed to Derby City Council.
The former Eucharistic minister said the council had "failed miserably" to deal with problems such as bad behaviour and disrepair of properties that blighted her street.
Maybe she was right. Maybe she was wrong. But what did her actions get her? Jail time (paid by the taxpayer) and, er, no change.
I don't get these council tax moaners.
I pay £1000 a year in council tax, and for that I get clean and maintained roads, unblocked drains, maintained parks, pretty plants to look at on bus journeys, help if my house is on fire, and all the other thousand thinks that councils provide that go unnoticed.
But noooo none of that counts, just pick on some made up figure about mobile phones.
I'm not saying councils are perfect. Some of them are shitfucks. But these incidents don't do anything. If you really want to make a change you have to think smart.
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