Peter Rhodes on taxing the car, a black-and-white success and looking for a victim in a tax yarn
The best political scandals must have a victim, a villain and a clear morality tale that even the dimmest can understand. Something like a prime minister eating cake while Covid victims perish.
In contrast , the tax affairs of Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner may excite a few Whitehall hacks but I suspect they are just too boring and complicated to rouse the interest of mere mortals. When I hear the blokes down the pub snarling about this issue, I'll let you know.
I did something this week I have never done before. I applauded the telly; physically, spontaneously clapped at the screen as a series ended. Ripley (Netflix) is a clever, engrossing thriller, filmed in black and white for added atmosphere. Outstanding.
Ah, the pure joy of the internet. I have just beaten my record for re-taxing the car online, shaving almost a minute off the process to set a new personal best of three minutes. This tells us two things. Firstly, I really ought to get out more.
Secondly, it is untrue to claim that we live in a country where nothing works. The vehicle-licensing service is excellent and a friend tells me his new passport arrived barely a week after he applied. So if some parts of the State can function efficiently, why not all? The NHS is sclerotic, the education system patchy, our rivers are unfit for swimming, the BBC is an embarrassment and our nuclear deterrent plops into the sea a few yards from its launch sub. It's as if we are fated never to get everything working at the same time.
Take, for example, a stretch of road I use regularly which has been bedevilled with pot holes for months. The only good thing about pot holes is that they make people drive slower. The council has just repaired all the pot holes – and then installed a dozen extremely lumpy road humps to make us drive slower. Caution: great minds at work.
Incidentally, if the online road-tax system can send you a print-off notice of payment, why can't it send a little round print-off document to fit on your windscreen? We could call it the tax disc.
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