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.


The fact remains that there is a good chance that this tax raise is forgotten come next election, and for such a influential measure to be struck from members' political legacy would be a great shame. In fact, I struggle to think of any other measures they could approve that will have more of an impact on people's lives than this one, so it's fair to say that this should be the defining action of their tenure at Gilbert House. To this end, I propose that their LegAssy is renamed accordingly, so that in three and a half years' time people will freshly remember this council as the one that raised taxes for the poorest and made it more expensive for companies to employ people. During a time of global economic recession.

And this is where you, loyal Beak reader, can participate. The Beak is holding a competition for the most appropriate new name for the incumbent LegAssy, a name that will be dutifully adhered to by The Beak in future pieces. The prize: a much sought after "I am the Beak" t-shirt, design to be confirmed. And the pleasure of knowing that you are wittier than all the other disgruntled taxpayers, of course.

As for the name, anything goes really, you may want to go for something similar to the current name like TaxAssy, or LoonAssy, or you may want something more to the point, like ""Tobacco, Wage & Alcohol Tax Surge", although that would probably have to be an acronym. The possibilities are endless.

The deadline for entries will be 4:30pm on Wednesday 30th of June, emailed to The Beak's email address. You can enter anonymously, but then you wouldn't get the T-Shirt if you won, which would be very sad.

Other than that, good luck!

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