eric the red, your comparison is emotive crap and you know it. Irrespective of what their living arrangements are, if two people are paying the same how is one subsidising the other?

As the example raised by WLD with Rates and Council Tax only each Householder pays, the basis for lobbying the tax being an arbitrary assessment of the rental value of your property (The old "Rates") or an arbitrary assessment on the value of your property (Council Tax). Under Poll Tax, or to give it its correct name Community Charge all those earning a living who are elligible to vote and who are on the Election Register pay a fixed amount, after all everybody living in the community benefits from the services provided.

Now while I can see an extremely easy way to determine how much is required for a communities budget and how much everyone should pay under the Community Charge scheme. I cannot see the same simplicity working on assessments on property values or rental potential which never reflect the current situation because they are obsolete the minute they are set. There are always more people working within a community than there are households therefore with a flat community charge everyone who has call on the services provided pays, with the current Council Tax it would seem that quite a number get a free ride at the expense of others.

Had the Community Charge been established the UK might just have some notion as to how many aliens actually reside within our borders. What was it our Home Secretary had to embarassingly admit last year? That he hasn't got a clue. As far as collection of the tax it should be the same as for PAYE, deduction at source.

A "Thatcher apologist", most certainly not - She's got fuck all to apologise for, she definitely put the UK back on track, having pulled it back from an abyss. Not one of her policies has been set aside, or rescinded. Certainly none have been reversed, ask Gordon of Cartoon, he was more than delighted to jump into the Chancellor of the Exchequer's job in 1997, the situation he faced and the funds available were far different than when Maggie's Government came to power in 1979 after Labour and their Trade Union Masters tried their best to completely destroy the country.