Why should relatively large sums of other people's tax money be wasted on chasing these childish twats up for a minuscule sum of money they can easily afford to pay? If they're that worried about not being here in 2012 then why are they being so cavalier about wasting a chunk of their remaining time on this earth in prison?

Fuck me, there's some epic moaning there.



Yeah, the point of a tax is that it might be used to pay for something you're not interested in.

£1bn of it is coming from London, but £6bn is coming out of the government pot, which means we're all paying a share of it. People in London are paying slightly more because it's happening in their council and they're getting all the associated increases in trade. I'm sick of these people that expect everyone else to be paying for everything, but you know if it was up here in Manchester and we made the whole country pay a levy for it they'd be moaning about that too. Where the fuck do they expect this money to come from if not taxes?

The Mail love a good 'tax martyr', don't they? It's another one of the acceptable middle-class bits of lawbreaking along with speeding.



Question, yes. Refuse to pay a minor one-off tax which has to be paid, even though they admit they can afford it, leaving it up to everyone else to pay since this money has to come from somewhere? Slightly less convinced by the righteousness of that.

These so-called martyrs piss me off and are typical of the Mail pick and choose policy on law and order. Particularly those who say 'I've never met anyone.....etc. Well get out more. Go to a different pub to the Burning Cross.


I'm sure the Mailites were up in arms at the Poll Tax defaulters. Not that I supported the campaign as it was also home to a lot of middle class people inciting poorer people to get themselves in shit.

My local Council at the time, had a Leader, living in one of the classiest areas, who did this and promptly paid the thing as soon as it got hot thus earning a bit of interest on her money and dropping people in the shit.

At least Jack Weems (hen-pecked husband kept in the attic?) has a good point. Sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek though!

I'd have preferred Paris to have got them as its easier and chaeper to get there from the frozen north.

Someone here with a slightly confusing definition of what 'obtaining money under false pretences' is:



I would think it was classed as trying to obtain money by tax for an expressly stated purpose, but what do I know?



Heroes, no less. They're Britain's answer to Aung San Suu Kyi or Gandhi.



I love that, sticking up for the 'principles' of these two, but deriding the government for sticking to its principles of pursuing its taxes. The government can't simply write taxes off whenever someone doesn't fancy paying for it, that would set a terrible precedent.



BECAUSE IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING TAX! I'm not sick, why should I pay for all these fucking sick kids on dialysis?



Prison: only for violent criminals.



Haha, good luck to trying to find billions of pounds from people prepared to voluntarily stump up an unspecified amount for an event four years away!

lets pray they get banged up and have to endure slopping out and buggery in the showers

Is right Billy lad!



The moderators are definitely more lenient now. They're letting more normal,rational people have their say. There are a staggering 294 comments on this, most of which,however, are "Daily Mail by numbers" comments, i.e. utterly predictable.



You should have sent that in, Raskolnikov. You got it in a nutshell.

"We'll go to jail rather than pay £33 Games tax"

"We'd rather go to jail at the cost of hundreds, if not thousands, to the average taxpayer (that includes me), then pay £33"


I can kinda understand their point. They already pay council tax and stuff, why should they get another bill.
Surely the government should have written the extra into the budget and let everyone pay a tad more on their income tax over a year (which no one would have noticed).

I do understand London will benefit the most, and in that sense only londoners should get charged, but given that people from all over the country (and world) visit london, and given that Britain as a whole will get the publicity, I don't think it's unreasonable that everyone contribute a much smaller amount over a longer period.

Besides all that, when the hotel/restaurant takings go through the roof for the 2 weeks of the games, they'll be paying more in VAT and I doubt this lot will get their £33 back when the economy gets it's surge.

So while I understand the need for the tax, I also understand why these two are complaining.

By the way, I think people who say "I won't be watching the games so I shouldn't pay" have a piss poor argument.

Thing is, if they'd written it in over the course over the year, Mail would've just branded it the Great Olympic Stealth Tax Swindle. Lose/lose situation.

I wonder how differently the story would of been if it was a young couple that refused to pay....

I'm extremely tempted to phone the council and pay the £33 myself - just to take the wind out of the Mail's smug sails.

In Mr Hislop's diseased organ there's an article about Seb Coe. He has set up a company that manages and sell the rights for his 'image' and has made a few shillings on the way. Over the next few years he will receive press attention once enjoyed only by the likes of Lily Allan, Myra Hindley and Blair, the Butcher of Baghdad thus raising his profile to the stratosphere and making the demand for his image rights even more valuable.

His management company has, of course, 'ring-fenced' his company from his Herculean effort to produce an Olympic extravaganza not seen since, oooh, Papillos 88BC.

Meanwhile he'll trouser a cool million from the London Olympic Committee between now and 2012.

What is odd is that the Mail hasn't highlighted this rather uncomfortable link. Could it be because Lord Coe is above such things being an ex-MP having lost his seat in 1997 and then enobled as a Tory Peer?

Particularly a young couple from a northern city (or Scotland/Wales) who had relocated to London. Can imagine Mail readers would have been spluttering their Muesli in rage at the brekkie table. "Peasants...not paying their way! Why,it's nothing more than common theft! Bring back the workhouse!"

I live in London, and whilst I'm not going to do anything as daft as refuse to pay my council tax I fail to see how I am going derive any benefit from the Olympics. My local sports centre is going to be demolished in 2010 and replaced with... absolutely nothing.

'Gipsy' families given £3million home next to site of 2012 Olympics

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ippos.html



Bill is the only dissenting voice amongst the bile.

I have read and re-read this bit and the piece I have put in bold doesn't make any sense...



The London Development Authority moved them from an official site nearby which had to be bulldozed because it is on the Olympic Park.

The travellers, it told residents, would be housed in what was formerly the Travellers' £3m 'Olympic village' on the taxpayer Hackney Marsh Staff Depot.

Since then, however, the rundown depot has been transformed, culminating in its being re-named St Theresa's Close after the travellers were asked to come up with a name.