For my next trick...

By crikey that Tim's a cunning man. Prior to the election in November a number of the candidates wanted his head on a plate and a number of those got voted in. If the pre-election chatter made him nervous then he must have been crapping himself when the results came in. Or perhaps he just coolly surveyed his opponents with a contemptuous eye in the comfort of knowing his contract of employment would be twice the shield against any puny arrows than might be shot his way.

Rename Their LegAssy

"Death and taxes and childbirth! There is never a convenient time for any of them!", cried Scarlett O' Hara in Gone With the Wind. How very true, and it's perhaps a thought shared by our incumbent council: people are always going to complain about taxes, so we may as well raise them (and introduce an extra one for good measure). And voilà. Or maybe it's not their reasoning at all; there may never be a convenient time for taxpayers, but there is certainly more of a convenience scale for politicians. As a general rule, tax raising measures tend to become more inconvenient as the politician approaches an election.

How convenient, then, that our members have decided to raise taxes early on in their term, when there is still three and a half years left for the electorate to forget all about it (and as the election of Member Edwards Sr shows, we the electorate here have a very short memory). Now, far be it from me to accuse them of timing the tax hike with re-election in mind, I don't think they're that cold and calcula... Well, let's just say they didn't time it with re-election in mind.

Legally robbing poor Bennies

The budget proposals are out and while much of the content was probably unavoidable I was suprised by the multi-pronged attack government is making on the lower income earners and the private sector.

Lowering the personal allowance by two thousand pounds perhaps seemed an easy win and is also somewhat difficult to argue against on first consideration, however when the lower tax band too is lowered by a thousand pounds, it becomes clear that the main point of this budget (from a tax point of view) will be to squeeze as much money as possible out of the lower paid while keeping those on more significant salaries paying little more.  The tax bill for someone with a salary in the low to mid teens will significantly increase - this in a country which has a high cost of living as it is - while someone with a salary in the 50-60K bracket not only has a much lower increase in percentage terms but the affordability of the tax increase for those more blessed is of course much higher.

It's all in the name

I felt a subtle but unmistakable loosening of my bowels when the Edwards double act was elected in November. It wasn't necessarily anything personal: I didn't feel comfortable having a husband/wife combo elected in 2001, fearing family loyalties could dominate rational decision making, and I still don't believe that a father/daughter team on council is any more healthy. And, quite frankly, the concept of "three for the price of two" touted last year scared the bejaysus out of me. But that's democracy for you.

It was the non-elected Edwards from Fox Bay that set the alarm bells ringing over the weekend though. In a letter to the Penguin News she expressed her outrage at apparent Argentine manipulation of the name of the Malvina House Hotel and invited Islanders to come up with a new title for the establishment. "Let's change the name" she urged, "and stop the dirty Argies from thinking we are proud of the name Malvinas". Or words to that effect.

Law passed, things expected to stay pretty much the same

After months of rumblings and tremors, the imminent oil exploration and the Falklands were last week cast onto the media spotlight amid a newsprint ejaculation of scaremongering, exaggeration and conjecture that couldn't have been more sensationalistic if it had included Dad's Army's Private Frazer exclaiming "We're doomed!" after every article.

All it took was a new Argentine law that requires ships that sail via here from or to Argentina to obtain a licence. Irritating, perhaps, but hardly the harbinger of an apocalypse that newspapers would have us believe. Dare I use an example applicable to today's youth and suggest that if all this was going on on Facebook, the law would be little more than a snide Argentine comment under the Falklands' status.

Eyes wide shut

Among the significant dates which may have passed unnoticed by readers of The Beak is February 2nd, which is celebrated in the USA and Canada as Groundhog Day, when the emergence from hibernation of a small beaver-like creature is taken as an excuse for all sorts of craziness. Since 1993 and the screening of a film called Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray as a TV reporter who gets stuck in time while reporting this event, the expression has come to mean something akin to a rather severe case of déjà vu.

United we fall

There is an old adage: "United we stand, divided we fall", wise words indeed but the events of November 5 would appear to bely this.

The previous council made quite a show of always presenting a united front, regardless of the debate which went before. Very admirable apparently, but it leaves the voter only one place to turn to when it comes time to mark the ballot paper.

A balanced budget?

According to Jan Cheek a balanced budget tops the Councillors' list of priorities. Therefore under current circumstances of reduced investment and fishing income we can expect this to mean that either FIG spending is going to be reduced and/or taxes and charges will be raised.

With the worldwide economic downturn it is perhaps easy to begrudgingly agree that these are our ways of experiencing the pain that everyone else in the world is suffering. However when something on the horizon suggests I might suffer pain, I'm quick to scurry about in search of reasons to avoid it.

Feathering The Nest

Watching the development (and degeneration) of discussions on here over the last couple of months from my elevated perch, it has become clear that there is an appetite for a proper discussion forum dedicated to Falklands issues. Blogs are not a good place to have a two way discussion: it is difficult to follow conversations and impossible to see if there have been any new comments unless you have a magical head for numbers or, of course, you subscribe.

So, as FIG cannot seem to get organised enough to do it - and really, why should they? - The Beak in its magnanimous role has decided to open and run a discussion forum.  The link is at the bottom of this post - we shall call it The Nest.

God bless the initiative

I had quite forgotten about the small notice in the PN to say that the BBC would be back on local FM but by chance this morning I cranked the dial to 106 in a moment of unconscious fiddling.

You can imagine how delighted I was to hear the smooth eloquence of the BBC delivering the news. I found the experience so intellectually uplifting that after just a few minutes I actually cooked breakfast by simply thinking about it and using the energy from excess IQ.

If Stuart isn’t knighted for his initiative then at the very least I hope he’ll feel the warmth of the Lord’s smile.