It's official. We've been burdened with the circus.
To be fair, I don't have a specific problem with the Olympic Games. It's having them on my doorstep that's annoying me. More accurately, paying to endure the inconvenience. It's been postulated that each household in London can expect to pay an additional £20 in local taxes each year for the next 10 years to raise the necessary funds. Only £20, you might say, but in truth it's another £20 on top of an already crippling level of taxation1. What's more, as with every 'interim' measure of this nature, it's hardly likely that the bureaucrats in charge in a decade's time are going to reduce the taxes by £20 again because the term has come to an end, is it? Also, local taxes are increased each year as a function of the average rate of inflation. I'd place very high odds against some functionary excluding the £20 surtax from their calculations when they come to winding the press a little tighter at each year's budget review.
So here's to the £234.632 the 2012 Olympics will cost me personally, and the cost heritage in perpetuity to every London resident. Hip hip...
1 22% Pay As You Earn, 11% National Insurance, for a whopping third of your income going to the government if you don't earn more than £30000p.a., that is. Oh, and let's not forget local taxes of at least £1200p.a. Weee!
2 estimating average inflation at 3.5%p.a.
1 comment:
Oh, but "it's been costed and it won't mean a rise in tax", sez Tony.
Hur hur hur.
Honestly, I don't care about the tax so much as the fact that London really, obviously, cannot handle it. The infrastructure is already on the verge of breakdown; you think it'll be improved sufficiently in the next 7 years to cope with all those visitors? What are the chances.
But then, I don't plan to be here at the time anyway. So what do I care.
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