An 84-year-old vicar is facing jail for taking a stand against poverty

[Ken Burch]

Last edited Sat Aug 6, 2016, 02:12 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/08/05/84-year-old-vicar-facing-jail-taking-stand-council-cuts/

A retired vicar is facing jail time after refusing to pay his council tax in protest over the poverty that the tax is causing.

Paul Nicolson, 84, has refused to pay the tax since 2013 and owes Haringey council £2831.42. At a hearing at Tottenham Magistrates’ Court on 4 August, he was ordered to pay the amount due. If he fails to do so, he faces a prison sentence of up to three months.

In a statement to the court, Nicolson set out his reasons why he is refusing to pay the tax:

I am refusing to pay £2,831.42 council tax because of the damage the tax is doing to the health of very badly off residents of Haringey some of whom have had their income stopped by a benefit sanction.

Nicolson is also protesting about the way the court charges, and the fact that the issuing of liability orders for bailiffs to collect the money is adding extra costs and stress to the lives of already impoverished people:

Meanwhile Haringey council continues to tax the benefit incomes of its poorest residents, adding court costs, sending in the bailiffs, ignoring mental and physical ill health, the short life span, the low birth weight, food and fuel poverty, in some of the most deprived wards in the UK […] I will stop protesting when Haringey stops taxing benefit incomes.

Nicolson has refused to pay the tax since 2013, when government changes to council tax benefit took away the full entitlement and led to 2.3 million people having to pay an average of £167 a year. Haringey Council decided to make these people pay 20% of the tax, meaning already impoverished people have had to stump up between £2 and £8 a week depending on their property band.

But when people fall behind on these payments, they are charged even more by court and bailiff fees.

(Sickeningly, Haringey is a Labour council-in fact, was once considered the MODEL Labour council by the anti-left wing of the party in the 1980's...with a book called "The Haringey Triangle" boasting about how right-wing, tightfisted and indifferent to the poverty and human misery Haringey Labour were, while at the same time being totally "efficient&quot i.e., subservient to the banks, the rentier sector and class privilege). If you were Neil Kinnock or Tony Blair, you saw Haringey(as opposed to Liverpool Labour-those terrible people who actually BUILT hundreds of council houses during Thatcherism- or that tacky, uncivilized Labour GLC group who increased social spending and, God forbid, DEFENDED the interests of the people who vote Labour)as what a Labour council was supposed to be.)