Protester 'will go to prison again'
7:35am Friday 28th March 2008
Comments (23)A COUNCIL tax protester faces prison for the second time this year for refusing to pay £65 of last year's bill.
Steve Peers, 40, of Woodhall Lane, Welwyn Garden City, has been summoned to appear at St Albans Magistrate Court on Monday by Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council and could face bailiffs or prison . . . again.
The father of three is withholding the amount - the increase in his bill above the rate of inflation - as part of a persistent protest which saw him jailed for five days in January.
He refused to pay £44.62 of his 2007/08 bill.
Family and other protesters, including members of the Tax Payers Alliance, are expected to join Steve outside court to show their support.
Steve, who discovered the summons on his release from prison, said: "I don't quite know what to expect - whether they'll send me to prison straight away or issue a liability order.
"I don't want to be in this position - the idea is not to go to prison and I am worried about it. But I am prepared to go if it is the only option. I am going to do whatever I can for as long as I can. This is a terrible abuse of power and I can't just sit back and let nothing happen. The amount of tax we pay is no longer relative to the services we benefit from and I can't let it happen. The council is so arrogant that it thinks it can get away with this - if we sit around and let them then they will."
The self-employed security advisor currently pays nearly £1,400 council tax a year for his Band D property and believes if rates keep rising like this his three year-old daughters could be paying £6,000 annually by the time they are 18. As a father of two and a step-father of one with a long term girlfriend it seems extreme to risk jail, but Steve he believes he has no option.
Answering criticism that he has put principles before his family, Steve said: "Sometimes a little bit of sacrifice now is better than a sacrifice later. It's a difficult decision but it's a worthwhile sacrifice. I'II do this because I want things to get better for my children and parents."
Steve, who can be contacted on nomoretalk@hotmail.co.uk says refusing to pay council tax is a civil, not a criminal offence, and does not affect your credit rating.
Tim Akar, of the Tax Payers Alliance, which campaigns for lower taxes, said: "We like to rally people round and show people who are making a stand that they have support. If people don't make a stand then we will find that more and more people are unable to afford their council tax."
Your Say YourSt Albans & Harpenden Review
Jenny, St Albans says...
11:02am Fri 28 Mar 08
Peter Tate, Bexley, Kent says...
12:25pm Fri 28 Mar 08
Ian, Basildon says...
1:26pm Fri 28 Mar 08
factoid!, St Albans says...
1:35pm Fri 28 Mar 08
I'm joining the taxpayers alliance - do they have a webbie?
Aneeshaa, benefits Heaven says...
1:39pm Fri 28 Mar 08
Wot is cancil tax?
Mark Wallace, London says...
3:40pm Fri 28 Mar 08
yes, you can join the TaxPayers' Alliance through our site here: www.taxpayersallianc
e.com
Jenny, St Albans says...
4:26pm Fri 28 Mar 08
Peter Tate wrote:Why should I support him? He's not paying his council tax bill, which he is legally required to do. Thus he's breaking the law and desrves to go to prison. He's been doing this for years and escaped repercussions.
Good for you Steve. I hope you win the day! You have to stand up for what you believe in! As for Jenny from St Albans, you should be supporting the likes of Steve not knocking him!
I suspect if he were a tenant refusing to pay rent and from a minority group, working class etc you'd all be braying about civic responsibility and the council being soft.
Sorry, you get no sympathy from me. I do sympathise with his poor family though, having to stand by and watch him being sent to prison to prove his misguided point.
Alan, St Albans says...
6:03pm Fri 28 Mar 08
pam, Welwyn Garden City says...
6:44pm Fri 28 Mar 08
Christian, Reading says...
7:03pm Fri 28 Mar 08
harry, reality says...
12:22am Sat 29 Mar 08
Someone spell it out to her that there would be plenty of cash for the police, NHS and schools if Labour didn't waste so much money!
Sir Michael Black-Feather, West Sussex says...
11:02am Sat 29 Mar 08
Its about time the English back the English, and England was run under an English government and Jenny could move the Scotland or Wales as she ant English with her attitude, what this person forgets is most people in England are on low incomes
And most have not had a pay rise to keep in with the rising cost we see each day like fuel which is costing an arrange of an extra £30 plus per week and thats around £120 per month but your pay has not gone up to cover this? She obviously one of these that has money to throw away best join Labour has they like throwing it away as well, let face it Blair started a war that we didnt want with his lies, then does a buck and sits parity for the rest of his life why the rest of England pays the price, and Brown should be in No; 10 as he was not voted in, so we are now run under an illegal government that has know right to power in the first place.
Sir Michael Black-Feather, West Sussex says...
11:17am Sat 29 Mar 08
We have always had these services here in England
And they where far better until labour came back on the scene , all these tax rises our to pay for a war that is costing lifes and billions of pound each year, and a war that cant be won, you would think governments would have learnt from Northern Ireland that started in 1968 and we still have troops out there? If we spent has much money on looking after our own county as we do in Wars how much better off would we be here in England? Its time England was run for the English and Englands benefits and not in wars.
David Elledge, Jutland says...
2:32pm Sat 29 Mar 08
Alex, says...
7:10pm Sat 29 Mar 08
"2", should you be wondering, means "Adequate performance only at minimum requirements" according to the Audit Commission.
So, not exactly a glowing reference from the official Government body that monitors performance. Take a look at http://cpa.audit-com
mission.gov.uk/Distr
ictScorecard.aspx?Ta
xID=108951 if you want to see more. Perhaps everybody in Welwyn should be asking why the results are so consistently poor.
Tallulah Terrier, says...
8:17pm Sat 29 Mar 08
Britax, Dorset says...
10:26am Sun 30 Mar 08
If you want to support a campaigning group soley devoted to to the unfairness of Council Tax go to our web-site www.isitfair.co.uk we charge no membership fee and we are not funded by any organisation our individual. Without Isitfair you would be seeing double digit increases, this is the campaigning group for the man in the street.
V 4 Vendetta, Parliament basement says...
3:26pm Sun 30 Mar 08
Steve Peers, Welwyn Garden City says...
8:44pm Sun 30 Mar 08
w9vot
I'm genuinely saddened to say that I'm sure I'll eventually be meeting many of you in the dock, in the meantime have a look at; http://www.taxpayers
alliance.com/
Martin, Hatfield says...
8:57pm Mon 31 Mar 08
1996 4.32%
1997 5.69%
1998 10.70%
1999 8.62%
2000 6.46%
2001 5.79%
2002 8.78%
2003 17.94%
2004 6.00%
2005 4.76%
2006 4.69%
2007 4.41%
2008 4.36%
Have the services increased commensurately, even when allowing for inflation? I dont believe so. Do those of you who think that its wrong not to pay, happily pay when you feel youve been charged for something that you didnt get?
Go for it Steve, I wish I had your resolve.
Eldon Warman, Calgary, Canada says...
3:23pm Tue 1 Apr 08
child's registered name and converts the family name to a primary name - surname, then claims ownership of that name. It goes on a birth certificate and is pledged to the banksters as chattel in bankruptcy. The human adult has to use that 'legal identity' in all commercial and government dealings to gain food, shelter and clothing and enjoyments. By using, attaching oneself to that 'legal' name, one becomes owned by the corporate Crown as a slave. Taxes are just the reaping
of the production of labour from the slave. That which the slave gets to keep is called a 'benefit', and the benefits are becoming very few.
Austin Rayder, USA says...
10:03pm Mon 7 Apr 08
On December 12th of that year Warman's wife, Chavala, committed suicide by hanging herself with an electrical extension cord, leaving Mr. Warman with two teen-aged children, Brent and Marla, both predictably, from whom he is estranged.
In 2000 Mr. Warman was convicted of assaulting a British Columbia Provincial Transport Inspector who had pulled over the tour bus Warman was operating.
In March of 2001 Mr. Warman embarrassed his detax colleagues when his fervent anti-Semitic sentiments were made public by the Vancouver Sun causing him to be removed from the speakers list at Vancouver's "Freedom Fest", a gathering of like minded detaxers.
Over the years Mr. Warman has developed a number of detax "methods" claiming each removed the user from the jurisdiction of the courts. Each method failed resulting their user's tax reassessments and tax evasion conviction. Most notable, was the 2002 conviction of Jean
Proteau.
After several years of posting anti-Semetic screeds across various internet news groups Eldon's postings was found guilty of hate speech crimes by the Canadian Human Rights Commission In March 2005 Warman went so far as to threaten to kill a process server who had served him with court documents.
In September 2005 Mr. Warman, tried in absentia, was. Google removed his offending messages and he was ordered to "to cease the discriminatory practice of posting messages
or other material on the internet that is likely to expose Jews or any other member of an identifiable racial, religious or ethnic group to hatred or contempt."
Since that time Eldon Warman has posted across the internet as
"Vicegerent" and has dutifully ceased his anti-Semtic rhetoric.
In 2005 Warman's straw man theory was tested again when he counseled Cameron Hardy and Clifford Hanna to use it as a defense during their tax evasion trials. Mr. Hanna unsuccessfully used materials copied directly from detaxcanada.com and has since fled to Peru.
Mr. Hardy followed Mr. Warman's instructions by pleading guilt "for the straw man". Hardy has since appealed claiming that the court never proved he was Cameron Hardy. The court ordered a retrial citing that Hardy did not understand the import of the guilty plea.
Mr Peers and his family
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Sir Michael Black-Feather, West Sussex says...
10:31am Fri 28 Mar 08
Sir Michael Black-Feather KCt KCMG