Labour Has A Solution For Folkestone's Economic Woes: Make Charities Pay!

The Folkestone Labour party asks "Do charities cause poverty and unemployment?".

Before we jerk those knees (but do keep them on standby) there is a real issue at the centre of the argument: Folkestone's empty shops and the competition our large number of charity shops present to local businesses. Both are serious matters of concern to every resident.

The problem: the charity shops don't need to pay, and I quote, "Taxes, Insurance, Wage Costs, interest rates and Payroll Tax." which (as well as not necessarily needing to pay even for the goods they sell) makes them formidable competition to small businesses such as second-hand bookshops.

Of course there are ways to help the businesses that exist already and to encourage new ones to take over the empty shops and office spaces in our town centre. Lower the taxes and reduce the business rates. If the business rates are lowered just in our area, isn't that likely to encourage local business creation and movement of small businesses from other parts of Kent to Shepway? That way no one is being forced to do something by the local/national Government, but they are getting an incentive to do business here. Of course it'd involve some budgetary changes in the council but then again the gains might be worth it.

But that's not Labour's approach. Instead they would force, in Folkestone or throughout Shepway, all these charity shops to take on at least two employees. So instead of the willing volunteers (who have given up their time through a passion for fund-raising and helping the community) they currently get helping them, they'd need to give themselves the same shackles as currently faced by the small-businesses Labour claim to want to protect (i.e. wage costs, payroll taxes etc.). That's like seeing one child with a sweet and one without and confiscating the sweet as the one without felt sad! It's petty and authoritarian and it's a plan designed to punish the goodness in people.

And the idea that, aside from the central issue of the new Oxfam bookshop, most of the charities earnings go to fund head offices, overseas work and staff costs is a little heartless. Oh there is some truth there, sadly charities have become more and more like businesses (so how treating them LIKE businesses helps I don't know). But to say charity shops like the one in my street (the Rhodes Minnis Cat Sanctuary shop, who Labour probably thinks puts the cat in "fat cat")  or the British Heart Foundation shop, or the Cancer Research Store don't benefit local people and simply create poverty is to cast them in an unfair light. To say  no one in Folkestone benefits from the work of the YMCA, British Heart Foundation, or Cancer Research is a cruel lie.

Let's help businesses in ways they'll find useful, not punish charities just to create some sort of fake "level playing field". Next we'll need to ban local eBayers or boot fairs for undercutting the second-hand book and furniture shops! That way madness lies.

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Chris Grayling And The Bed And Breakfast

Every year, almost without fail, we have a news story about a gay couple being refused service in a bed and breakfast. Hey, we've even had a "Hotel refuses soldier" story before, because their policy was not to accept members of the military.

There's a problem in these stories for liberals. That problem is a conflict of individual rights. On the one hand I believe no one should be allowed to refuse you service just because of "what" you are. On the other there's the right to refuse to serve someone, for whatever reason, that a business owner should, in theory, be allowed.

So when Chris Grayling, Tory Shadow Home Secretary says:

"I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences. I personally always took the view that... if you look at the case of 'Should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from their hotel?'

"I took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home.
"If they are running a hotel on the High Street, I really don't think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes."

I find it hard to not, at the very least, see where he is coming from. But here's the problem... one right must be lesser than the other. We cannot have two rights left in conflict as that is absurd. So which is the one that must, sadly, be relegated?

If we look at the world where a business owner must serve everyone, except in cases of legal age requirements and bad behaviour, this does not affect their business detrimentally. It does not stop them making money. It does not impede on their rights ultimately because they can refuse to operate that business if their morality stops them from serving certain people (with rights, sometimes there come responsibilities).

But if we look at allowing them to pick and choose what types of people they serve, we can see a slippery slope. Would it be okay for a B&B owner to turn away a couple in which one person was black and the other white? Would it be okay for a gay B&B owner to turn away a Christian? Did you think it was okay for the hotel to turn away someone just because they were a soldier (who wasn't even in uniform, might I add!)?

By allowing that right we open up a world of closed businesses in which we shall have confusion, upset and bigotry allowed to spread through our land once more. If it is not right for someone to be allowed to refuse someone service because they are black, then it's not right for them to do so to a gay person, or a Christian, or even to clowns.

Ultimately Chris Grayling's comments seem to come not from a liberal, progressive place but from a small-minded old fashioned view of people being allowed to take out their bigotry in a very physical way upon others. No one is saying personal beliefs (homophobia masquerading as a misconceived form of Christianity) can be banned. But what we are saying is if you wish to be homophobic, you'll need to do so in a private place and not in your working life, and well away from anyone who might be hurt by it.

This is not just a misjudged comment. It also opens up some light on the strange, backward attitudes that we all know continue to lurk in some Tory MPs minds. As I've said before, 25% of the current set of Tory MPs were around in the 80s and voted FOR Section 28, that clearly shows that the Tory party has a long way to go before it truly sheds it's infamous "nasty party" image. I wish they would just get around to it so we can just move on with politics, past all these silly 1950s attitudes they seem unwilling to give up.

If you feel benevolent and particularly generous, this writer always appreciates things bought for him from his wishlist

Tax Cuts For Businesses? You Mean Businesses Pay Tax???

Oh our beloved Tories. Always thinking about what is best for the country... They want to cut regulations (health and safety and data protection laws) saving businesses in the UK billions. That's all well and good.

But I don't suppose the Tory party thought to wonder about the missing billions from this country stolen by tax avoiding fat cats. Maggie Thatcher deregulated our financial markets to make us more attractive to financial organisations. This lead to the new rise of the City and reestablished London as the business capital of the world. All well and good.

However we have allowed some British citizens to get away with paying very little tax for too long. How can it be fair that those who earn less pay taxes while the very rich can afford accountants who play their income just right to avoid any tax at all?

I want the Tories to come out and say "We offering tax breaks to good, honest British businesses but will also clamp down hard on those who use loopholes in the law to avoid contributing their fair share to the greater good". Is that too much to ask?

With the Tories it probably is. Sadly they are too involved in business themselves (just check out their registered interests!) to want to rock the boat and enforce tax laws fairly.

Better that the poor shoulder the burden and the corrupt prosper. Wait... do I hear the words "trickle down effect" waiting to be spoken? I give it 2 hours before a Tory MP uses that phrase.