Household Tax: Cynical Manipulation of Registration Figures by Agency facilitated by some media
The Agency trying to enforce the hated Household Tax is cynically manipulating the Registration numbers to minimise embarrassment to Government over level of resistance and is facilitated by many unquestioning media outlets:
Number Government said must register is 1.8 million NOT 1.6 million as now commonly reported.
The Minister and Department of the Environment have been quoting 1.8 million households as the number that must register for months, now suddently the number most often quoted is 1.6 million. This is to try to make the non registration figures look somewhat better. In any truthful assesment the baseline figure of 1,800,000 households must be used.
How did registration figure go from 426,000 reported by Drivetime RTE at 4.30pm to 482,000 by 6 oclock News today, Wednesday, March 28? There were apparently 35,000 letters unprocessed in bags. It seems that these were suddently added in to try and create the impression of a huge landslide. There is a panic campaign now to try and make the figures belie the massive resistance to this tax.
The reality is that even if there was a big uptake in registration in the next three days around a million households will not have registered or paid the Household Tax. That represents a massive opposition to what householders know to be a new tier of taxation on homes and water that will quickly go to €1,000 and beyond. There is also enormous opposition and anger over the price ordinary people and society are paying for bailing out the bondholders and speculators and over the corruption outlined in the Mahon Tribunal Report which helped to bring the country to the present crisis.
In a desperate bid to save face from the massive opposition to its new tax, the government will wage a furious propaganda war over the next three days. If media outlets are to represent the real view of a huge cohort of ordinary people in society they will query every pronouncement and give equal time to the campaign against the Household Tax to give an assesment from the point of view of the huge opposition that exists. There is an obligation to do this rather than act as cheerleaders for the government's disastrous austerity policy.
Joe HigginsTD Socialist Party/United Left Alliance