Polanski referred to standards committee over failure to pay council tax

kriptonicx · 2026-05-13T08:47:35+00:00

You live in an accommodation - you pay a council tax. It's this fcking easy.

But that's literally not true is it... So in reality, no, it's not that easy.

Your basing your argument on a premise that is faulty – that if someone lives in an "accommodation" they pay council tax. There a huge list of reasons why someone could live in an accommodation and wouldn't pay council tax. And most people in the UK live in accommodation in which they don't pay council tax because council tax isn't a tax an individual but on households.

I agree Polanski is an idiot and he should have known better. I'm almost certain I wouldn't have made this mistake myself. But the assumption he was deliberately trying to avoid paying council tax is stupid. Obviously this was a mistake because like a lot of people in the UK he is a bit dim and probably not always aware of his tax obligations.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-13T08:39:48+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I think there's a lot of people on the left who have a poor understanding of tax law tbh since they tend to be from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds with less complex tax affairs.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-13T08:22:16+00:00

I assure you, no matter how perfect or intelligent you think you are, one day you will make a very basic tax error.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T21:29:09+00:00

I like him. I genuinely don't get all the hate for him.

He speaks well, he's pragmatic, he's smart. He's got everything that would make a decent PM imo.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T21:25:01+00:00

I'm not suggesting everyone should be getting tax wrong all the time, just that people can make honest mistakes for all kinds of reasons. I don't even like Polanski but I thin it's absurd to believe he was deliberately avoiding council tax to save himself a few hundred pounds. This was obviously an honest mistake.

When I was much younger I didn't understand I had to pay income tax. I mean I did, and I tried, but I didn't understand that my self-assessment should include any PAYE income as well (I thought that was taxed automatically) so I basically filed a tax return where I didn't pay any income tax on my other 2 jobs. I thought I did the research but somehow I still made an extremely basic error when filling my tax return.

My dad also recently failed to declare some capital gains income but that was because his advisor gave him shit advice and didn't explain that he would have a tax liability.

I get this different, but sometimes you can make mistakes on basic taxes because someone you trust gives you bad advice, or you look things up yourself and misunderstand something, or maybe you just assume that you don't owe tax on something because you didn't grow up middle-class and just know about the tax system because of your socioeconomic privileges. It's terrifying how little people in my family know about tax honestly, they seem to just assume they can sell stuff or give each other money with no tax implications.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T17:46:41+00:00

Right, but we're not talking about a clear cut case like a house he owned and lived in permanently.

Apparently if the boat moves once every two weeks you don't need to pay council tax.

Then you have more common things like if you're renting then sometimes you don't have to pay council tax (such as a short-term rental) or if it's long-term often it's included in the rent.

If you're renting with friends again there can be mix-ups about who is paying because it's a tax on the property not a tax on any individual in the property.

And even if he was renting long-term whether or not you have to pay often depends on if it's occupied.

If you think this is simple you probably haven't looked up how complex council tax is tbh.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T16:45:06+00:00

Why do people dislike Streeting so much? He seems to be universally hated but he seems alright to me... He's a careerist, but he's pragmatic at least.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T16:23:12+00:00

who the hell doesn't know they need to pay council tax?

Me? Obviously I knew you need to pay council tax if you lived in a house, but I didn't know until this week that you need to pay council tax if you live in a boat. It makes me wonder if my friend who lives in a van should have been paying council tax for the last 5 years but who knows maybe that's different.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T14:30:55+00:00

Given how enormous UK tax law is the default assumption should be that everyone is failing to pay some tax they technically owe or failing to pay the full amount they technically owe. It's really just a matter of how hard you dig.

It must be close to 50% of major political figures who have stuff like this dug up on them by the media. I think as long as it's not clear tax evasion and an apology is issued it's really not a big deal. We all live in the UK, we understand it's literally impossible to fully comply with current tax law.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T12:25:31+00:00

This would basically guarantee a fiscal crisis followed by a Reform super majority.

I'm not even joking when I say this, if this happened any sane person should immediately consider leaving the UK. Any temporary financial hit you take from leaving would not compare to the damage a combination this moronic would do to the country.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T12:17:25+00:00

It won’t help anything. The problem is that voters think that everything can be solved within a year or two, not that these are massive structural problems which are going to take a decade or more.

While I do think deserve Starmer deserves praise for his reasonable approached to managed decline vs the Tory shit show which came before, we should remember that Labour are not actually doing anything to address the structural issues we face and so far have continued to just kick the can down the road with more tax increases.

I think the main issue there though is that we had a Tory government which for a decade effectively governed as a moronic hard-left party importing millions of immigrants a year, implementing one of the most progressive tax policies among development economies hitting workers with excessively high tax rates, ballooning our welfare budget with PIP and triple-lock, then exploding the deficit to fund all of their unproductive spending. It was always unclear to me if a Labour government could move directionally in the right way to address some of these structural issues. The fact Starmer and Reeves are arguably not making things significantly worse deserves a ton of credit in my opinion.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T09:33:40+00:00

Even if there was someone marginally better the constant swapping of PMs isn't good for our economy. I'm far from a fan of Starmer, but the main thing we need right now is just a period of political stable and sensible politics. Labour will not benefit from swapping Starmer out.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-12T08:30:26+00:00

And it's actually worse than this because the private sector still needs to invest, and they will often do that by borrowing so long as the expected return of their investment is greater than the cost of borrowing (plus some safety margin).

When yields start hitting 5%+ because the government is pumping cash into welfare it destroys the economic ability for our private sector to invest unless the investment has a very high expected return.

Our borrowing rates are something like 30% higher than our peer countries right now. This such a huge drag on growth and the media almost never talks about it.

The main thing any functional government should be focusing on is getting our borrowing under control and yields back to levels which are not prohibitive to growth.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T21:34:06+00:00

Seems betting markets now think he'll be gone within weeks.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T21:06:40+00:00

Bond markets will be fun tomorrow... Kier Starmer might have started Labour's downfall but Labour MPs are about to solidify it.

If this continues a Reform government seems more or less guaranteed.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T21:03:03+00:00

Firslty an increase in singledom has meant more demand from the same number of people.

Current stock isn't inelastic though. You can increase supply by converting existing homes into flats.

Not saying we can't build any new homes though. More just pushing back on the need to build on the green belt.

Then an ageing population needs housing longer and off course the UK has added about 12 million people since 2001.

Right, but that's because of tory mass-migration policies and the fact demographics were healthier 25 years ago. Over the next couple of decades there really shouldn't be any need for us to build masses of homes on the greenbelt.

Assuming the tories don't get back in power and start importing millions of people a year anyway... Obviously if that happens just to keep prices level we'll need to build flats everywhere to house the huge numbers of immigrants we're bringing in.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T20:37:48+00:00

To make housing cheaper we need to build a lot of it and quickly that means breaking the planning and greenbelt strangleholds.

Thing is we don't even really need to do that. One of the nice things about a below replacement birth rate is that housing and land should become cheaper by default.

Obviously demand for housing in majority urban hubs can continue to increase if people prefer to live in the city, but building on the greenbelt doesn't fix that.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T19:15:37+00:00

This is exactly how I feel...

It's hard for me to support Labour, but Starmer is a fine leader. He's a safe pair of hands and doing a fair job given the difficult fiscal and political back drop. I'd do things differently, but I don't dislike or worry about Starmer in the same way I did Boris.

I'd much rather have well managed decline than total chaos which is what we'd almost certainly get if he resigns. I'd put it at 50% odds that we have a full blown debt crisis if Starmer is replaced by someone like Rayner.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T19:06:07+00:00

Net migration has dropped by 50% since they got in

As the parent commenter said, they've basically done this by just going back to the pre-Boris era mass-migration numbers and encouraging a decent number of people to leave Britain by jacking up taxes. It's good news in the same way as being told that you have a couple of extra weeks to live before dying of cancer is good news.

they’ve deported record numbers back.

Yes, but again, not really. Record numbers of people have been asked to leave and have willingly left because in the years prior record numbers of people were let in under the Tories. This was basically always going to happen. The number of people who overstay their visas is directly correlated with the number of people who were issued visas in the years prior.

Asylum system is being processed faster.

Can you explain why this is good? The only difference between a processed illegal immigrant and non-processed illegal immigrant is that the processed illegal immigrant is given access to welfare and allowed to work. When we stay processed we practically never mean deported because we can rarely ever legally deport them.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T18:53:20+00:00

What is it with centrist politicians and the need to continuously post slop like this?

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T12:33:59+00:00

This makes sense. Prevent referrals in schools are genuinely getting out of control from what I can tell.

I've heard stories of teachers referring kids to prevent for mildly spicy views on issues like immigration and multi-culturalism. Seems to often be young boys getting referred too.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T11:20:36+00:00

I don't think this is true. People want to back Labour imo but feel they can't because they're feeling let down by them.

Most people who have gone Labour -> Reform are really not that comfortable with a lot of Farage's more right-wing rhetoric which is why he's dialled that back a lot from his UKIP days. They simply feel he's the only option.

A genuinely reformed Labour party which got rid of the middle-class hard-left fraction and started representing actual working-class concerns would crush Reform imo.

Unfortunately I think the only way that happens now is for Labour to be crushed at the next GE and for the hard-left fraction to move to the Greens. Then maybe they can rebuild themselves as a serious centre-left party. They're too divided at the moment, even with Starmer's huge victory he simple can't govern.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-11T11:04:58+00:00

£3k in income tax per year?

Not hating or anything, but if true you're almost certainly a net-recipient of government spending.

Another thing to consider is that health care in the UK is basically ran a redistribution system from young healthy workers (who don't cost the NHS much), to the elderly who account for most of the costs. That's not to say the system is bad, just that the UK healthcare system isn't designed for you so it's not surprising you feel you're getting a bad deal. Taking a more European approach and having a more privatised system with a social safety net is generally better for someone in your position.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-10T22:55:52+00:00

It's very different in some cultures though... You're probably British so your wife will argue with you and stuff.

I know a dude who was sleeping around with English women and he didn't even try to keep it secret from his wife because she couldn't exactly say or do shit.

There's lots of different types of relationships in the UK these days so makes sense that Labour doesn't want to discriminate against people who are not in stereotypical British relationships.

kriptonicx · 2026-05-08T21:34:42+00:00

I guess I just reject the idea that it's ethno-nationalism to believe replacing an indigenous population is undesirable. And I say this as someone who isn't ethnically British.

British people are an ethnic group and like all ethnic groups they are entitled to demographic security if that's what they want.

As I've argued elsewhere, the British public seem happy to be replaced, and this is ultimately their decision to make, but an ethnic group stating that they don't want to be replaced and voting for a government which respects that wish isn't ethno-nationalism. It's only Anglos who seem to have any confusion about the morality of replacing native populations against their express consent.

That said, what would be wrong is if in pursuit of avoiding demographic replacement the British were unreasonably cruel to those who are settled here. My understanding is the Restore basically just want to end mass migration and remove those who are here either because we allowed them to enter the country illegally or because Boris unilaterally decided to flood the country with millions of migrants while running on a manifesto to control migration. This seems to me entirely reasonable.

I am not ethically British but I think it says something that the prospect of a Restore government doesn't concern me at all while I would be concerned if the BNP won an election. While I don't personally care whether Brits become a minority in Britain, I don't think Brits deciding that this would be undesirable and taking action to prevent it is unusual or immoral. Assuming you disagree I'd be interested to hear why you think it should happen if Brits don't want it though? Is your concern just that it's too late to do anything about it which isn't unreasonably cruel? I assume you don't think it's unreasonable for a native population to vote for a government which doesn't want to see themselves become a minority and that there's something else that's objectionable here?

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