these types of cross country comparisons simply don't work. You're a nice chap Guy, but please don't fall into that old Labour policy of cherry picking things to shift the blame or to give a false impression. As you point out, Luxembourg is a richer country than the UK, so of course there's more tax paid by the average individual, because he or she earns more. As another example, look at their property purchase tax and you'll see it's 7%, which is a lot lower than the 12% that a large portion of London property buyers have to pay, and the price they pay to buy each square meter of property looks like it's a third of that in London. As a third example if Gordon Brown hadn't sold all our gold off when gold was at historically low prices, then perhaps we'd have enough reserves to pay for something like free hoppa tickets. Forth example; perhaps the cost of the Nuclear free zone policy that the local council had for Houslow back in the 80's. Fifth example, the cash reserves the supposedly broke council is hording (about an entire years council tax for each of us council tax payers). Sixth example.... and so on.As to making people pay to park at their offices, then on one hand I'm in favour as it reduces the illegal level of pollution we all breathe in Brentford (which the council appear to be very good at doing nothing about) and on the other hand I'm not in favour of it because it's a touch draconian and in the style of local government that you might expect from 1970's East Germany.
Lorne Gifford ● 2786d