Originally Posted by
Pain
The cleaning of red diesel (gas oil) was a significant enterprise, but there were others, like heating oil (which was a straightforward substitution for derv; more prevalent in another corner of the UK). Such fiddles are a part of everyday life for us hicks-in-the-sticks, and the more rural the area, the more commonplace they are. (This is an observation; I’m not condoning as acceptable the diddling of HMRC, but I do understand the motivation – particularly when our Government gives such scant regard and even less funding to such areas.)
The Irish have been ‘commuting’, sometimes migrating, to mainland Britain forever (which is how some of my lot came to be here – they left in a time of great hardship and never went back, even though they lost pretty much all their worldly possessions and a heap of self-esteem in the process). I think it’d be very sad indeed if our close ties with Ireland (all of it) were chopped off because of spiteful interference from the EU. Collectively, we are, after all, the British Isles – a much stronger common identity than the catch-all, anonymity of being a contrived part of Europe.
Lack of trust and human nature – I can come up with no other compelling reasons why FOM should be bound so closely to tax/duty. I suppose a certain amount of euphemistic ‘human nature’ can be tolerated, if the resultant losses aren’t too deleterious to Government finances and ‘face’ (but an annual figure of about £100 billion across the EU – a guesstimate of revenue lost to such ‘human nature’ – is hardly negligible).
For most long-standing forms of criminality (new ‘tech’ crimes excepted to some extent), there are enough laws, rules and regulations on the statute books to deal with every offence imaginable. But justice seems so often to want to place the ‘blame’ elsewhere rather see its own failings to do its job – eg, criminal migrants who aren’t deported (those that have committed crimes in addition to any prima facie illegality of arriving without authority).
It’s all a very tricky subject: human freedoms and moral restrictions. To be just a bit philosophical: from cradle to grave, are any of us ever truly free?
And I still don’t think this fully answers your question, Terry.