What are you doing?
Not so very long ago, a passenger on a bus was approached by a man who announced he was the conductor. The passenger had never before seen a conductor on a bus of the sort he was at that moment travelling on: it had but one door, and so one way to get both on and off. A conductor appeared surplus to requirements. Still, this man had a badge indicating he was an official of the bus company, and the passenger had seen him making his way along the aisle asking to see tickets from people who readily yielded to his demand.
This passenger, however, was untypically contrary. He explained that circumstances were such that he could not happen to be on the bus without the knowledge and permission of the bus driver, since he had had to pay on the door for admittance, or present there a previously purchased ticket. As this was the case, it was preposterous that he should be expected to show to this conductor a permit to travel.
The conductor was somewhat taken aback. He countered by telling the passenger that the bus company had a right to ask passengers to show proof of travel as terms of service. If a ticket could not be produced, the passenger would be required to leave the bus at the next stop. Very well, retorted the passenger – and a complaint would be made to the bus company. The passenger had a valid ticket, but the service supposedly purchased by it was being denied to him. As far as the passenger was concerned, the conductor’s presence was unnecessary except to subject the bus company’s customers to an exercise in being dominated by being asked for their “papers”.
The conductor decided that he wouldn’t, after all, ask the passenger to leave the bus, and continued on his round. If other people on the bus had witnessed the exchange that had just happened, they certainly didn’t learn the lesson demonstrated to them: they didn’t need to produce their tickets just because a man with a badge and an appeal to authority demanded it of them.
And it is because people do not live in their liberty, even when they are treated to an example from the rare exception as to how it is done, that liberty is so easily vanquished by those who wish it to be so. As it has been exhorted here at FBEL many times, to preserve one’s rights, one must insist on them. Tyranny cannot be instituted when there is a propensity in a population that lives fully up to the bounds of its liberties, leaving no slack to allow for encroachment. Unfortunately, the British people are remiss in their duty, so that the extent of the territory of their liberty does not extend beyond the limits of the noose that tightly binds them together by the neck, like a clutch of throttled chickens suspended from a hook. Take, for instance, how this week the Government announced that a ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol powered cars would be brought forward from 2040 to 2035. It’s obviously a step to the denial of independent means of travel as part of the eco-sustainability agenda, which is actually a plan to impoverish and enslave. Even more fundamentally, how is it that the British Government can overrule the right of an individual to make a purchase: to interfere in a contract between buyer, who demands the item, and seller, who can supply? No doubt, the British people will bat not an eyelid.
And knowing the character of his countrymen, it is always with some reluctance that the author – who was of course the passenger in the story (a tale of a true event) – asks for donations, but in December, a request was seasonally framed as “giving a present at Horusfest”. This was a bit of fun. In fact any donations are not thought of in terms of a gift; the concept that there has been work hereabouts to make the readership cognizant of is that, if one wants to live in a properly capitalist country, one should abandon the hope of “anything for nothing”, and understand that there should be reimbursement for consumption of the product of expended capital.
The objective is to encourage the “exit from Babylon”; Babylonism, whatever else you would like to call it (socialism, crony-capitalism, autocracy, technocracy, utopia) is rule by a tiny minority over socialised masses who are not allowed to produce wealth from capital ownership, or are discouraged from doing so by the tipping the playing field against them, so that in either case there cannot be competition for the ruling elite – who rule, by their own reckoning, because they are most deserving of it. In this system, it is inevitable that the masses will be slaves, because the underlying philosophy necessitates it. Taking part in exercises of true capitalism and, in defiance of the agenda, creating a competitive environment, is part and parcel of living in one’s liberty. The readership of FBEL is given an opportunity to do this by paying for the material that it consumes.
But this is all very much against expectation, because otherwise the Government wouldn’t imagine it could just ban petrol powered cars with no peep coming from the sheeple; without going into details, or to a place where it would be necessary to issue thanks (because these have already been extended where they were warranted), December’s invitation to partake generally went unheeded. No feelings are hurt (they never are), so if the author remarks, as a result, that as far as it looks, freedom can go hang for the want of the price of a Brussels sprout, it is generated by what the non-response to his request is in fact indicative of on a larger scale. The title of this piece may load expectation in the reader that there is going to be an enquiry as to what the people looking at this page, and then the people they are friends and family with, are doing to live in liberty – but, in fact, no good answer can surely be forthcoming. Instead, the author is going to let the reader continue to spectate while there is a retailing of the many things that the author is active in as he “exits Babylon”
This year it will be necessary to defend a complaint in a small claims court brought by an amenities company that is unhappy that the defendant won’t volunteer payments in lieu of an absent contractual reality which would oblige him to pay for a service. It is pretty clear how things will proceed: the complainant to the case will appeal to the legislation, and the defendant will appeal to the law, and because legislation is an expression of political will that exists for the very purpose of bypassing the restriction of agenda that exists in law, the claimant will probably win the case. However, things are not 100% guaranteed that defending the case will only bring about another example of the system convicting itself as criminal in the eyes of the law, which is why it is being contested.
Also in the coming year there will be movement at last (at least, that is the hope) regarding a long running dispute between the author’s household and its local council: the reader should read the article, Taxation truly is theft: a “sitrep”, (here), for the background of the case.
A complaint is with the Information Commissioner’s Office regarding the council’s use of data that should have been deleted. However, the long duration of time that this complaint has been with the ICO without movement towards resolution is taken as a sign that the Council continues in its strategy to deal with its difficulty by ignoring it, and that perhaps the ICO is willing to let it. No matter, because the Council will not be able to avoid the legal action that must be taken to force an inevitable outcome. There is no forecast for a win for the other side in this matter.
And this will be a prelude to the main event, which is to challenge the Council in court regarding how it, itself, and not a Magistrates’ Court produces a liability order for non payment of Council Tax. The truth of this has been gotten from the courts’ system without the cost of an application to state a case for the opinion of the High Court; it has been freely admitted in correspondence. So the problem for the authorities is this: by the rules regulating the collection and recovery of Council Tax, a liability order should not be a mere expression of permission from a court to a council to go ahead in taking punitive measures against a defendant. Instead, a liability order is the very form on which it is printed, and this document must be produced by a court. In this case, a court has never produced a liability order. Moreover, the liability orders that the Council has produced are tantamount to forgeries of legal documents – and the article linked to above presents a sample.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise given that the court that issues “permissions” is not a real court, even though it might sit in real court function rooms, but in essence acts in these matters as a private instrument on hire by a council (because the practice is at the very heart of taxation by local authorities in the UK) to create an impression of authority. No surprises, then, that the summons to this theatre is not really a summons. This fantasy of authority is an important consideration to make, because it means that in actual fact an appeal to a judicial review (which has been deliberated) must be a waste of time because it won’t have jurisdiction over a theatre co-produced by a local council and a local magistrates’ court. There are two options for proceeding – and they aren’t mutually exclusive – but there will be a report on them as there is progress.
