Most of the time when I was up to no good trying to strangle the cat or putting broken bottles under the minister’s tyres, I was fly enough to always pass the blame on to other members of the family. Hey, what are younger brothers for?
Having discovered when we got back home that I had half-inched a penny chew from Murdo’s shop, I was duly frogmarched back to the scene of the crime by mother and compelled to say sorry.
Adopting a ferocious look that I have never been able to master as a parent myself, she would loudly insist in front of Murdo, his wife, Mary, two other customers and a collie that I had to say sorry again.
How I hated being dragged aloft by my right ear and being ordered to say it like I meant it.
No, I never did find it easy to sound shameful and penitent when someone twice my size was trying to rip off one of my sensory organs.
There is someone else I can think of who also didn’t grovel enough with his first bid to gain our forgiveness. As you know, I would never want to lose control and let myself get carried away on any wave of popular sentiment that may be sweeping the country.
However, I really would like to yank the ear of that top tax official over his tardy recognition of the fact that he and his entire government department are a bunch of snivelling, lowlife incompetents who could not calculate a tax liability if it came up and slapped the lot of them across the face and tell him to say sorry and dashed well mean it.
Dave “No Apology” Hartnett: Who does he think he is?
This is the permanent secretary, paid more than the prime minister, who saw nothing wrong with ordinary, decent people being walloped by surprise tax demands simply because the department he is responsible for couldn’t do their sums right.
The most wined and dined mandarin in Whitehall, Hartnett was asked if he was sorry about people getting unexpected bills. Er, he wasn’t sure he saw a need to apologise. The stories about blunders were not true, he moaned. Yet his own department’s accounts show they are making a pig’s ear of sorting out tax codes.
Hours later, after the chancellor had booted some behinds, the story had changed somewhat. Hartnett wanted to apologise if his remarks came across as insensitive. If? If? Say it like you mean it. Nah, not enough. The guy will be taking early retirement by the end of the month.
Utter chaos has enveloped the Revenue and Customs. They have even got my name wrong. A few years ago, they stuck several extra uncalled-for initials in. I was Iain W.R. Maciver.
I complained and they changed me to Iain A. Maciver instead. No, not me.
Writing to complain doesn’t help. I am just ignored – until my next payment’s due. No, they don’t forget that.
There must be a multimillionaire somewhere called Iain A. Maciver. He must be overjoyed how little tax he’s paying, because I’m paying his.
Tavish Scott, the Shetland MSP and top Lib Dem, has still not said sorry for taking potshots at us here in the Western Isles. OK, he was really having a go at the Scottish Government for extending the pilot road equivalent tariff (RET) scheme. Yet he managed to put our noses out of joint, too.
Despite its name, the pilot RET scheme is nothing to do with pilots or air services or even roads. It’s actually about cheaper ferries for those areas made poorer by all sorts of unfortunate reasons.
I am not sure of the criteria, but I suppose it’ll be factors like location, climate and rampant Presbyterianism.
Shetland, of course, doesn’t have a scheme to relieve them of the worst effects of such awful disadvantages. That’s the problem. In fact, they were due to get cuts in ferry services. Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson decided they were all so wealthy and unaffected by other negative forces that they didn’t need any more help.
Quite right, too, I say. However, just to be seen to be doing something, Lavish Tavish and the other oil-rich Zetlandic Lib Dems were jumping up and down, calling Stevenson duplicitous and other unparliamentary names and calling for his head on a platter. Tut-tut.
Unfortunately for the malcontents, the Shetland convener had a different strategy.
A wise and stable fellow who can see the big picture, Sandy Cluness welcomed our lifeline extension. So, of course, our MSP, Alasdair Allan, waded in claiming Cluness’s response blew the turbulent Tavish’s politically-motivated whinge “out of the water”.
Good one, Doctor Al. Good job you’re never politically-motivated, eh?
Clever Cluness twigged that if RET, which is based on mileage, was applied to the Shetland route, it would make fares dearer than they are now.
The government is already providing even more subsidy on that route. That told them.
My mates in Shetland have now cut me dead.
Not just the Lib Dems, either. Donald S. Murray, a friend from secondary one, is in a proper cream puff. He even boycotted my birthday celebrations the other day. He will probably claim he couldn’t come to the party, what with the cost of fares. No card, no phone call, no e-mail and not even one of his wounding insults on Facebook. I am devastated.
No, I’m not. Serves him right for going to live up in that God-forsaken place.
We shouldn’t really complain. It’s only money and we can’t take it with us.
Sadly, with extortionate taxes courtesy of people like Dave Hartnett, lawyers’ fees and funeral expenses, we can’t leave it behind, either.
