Good news before the budget

I just wanted to pass this email message on:

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

'When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection.

Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.

Where is the natural order of things in my son?'

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. 'I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.'

Then he told the following story:

Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, 'Do you think they'll let me play?' I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, 'We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.'

Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.

In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again.

Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay.

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman and Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, 'Shay, run to first! Run to first!' Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, 'Run to second, run to second! Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base.

By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head.

Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, 'Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay'

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, 'Run to third! Shay, run to third!'

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, 'Shay, run home! Run home!'

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.

'That day', said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, 'the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world'.

Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOT NOTE TO THIS STORY:

We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate.

The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

If you're thinking about passing this message, chances are that you're probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren't the 'appropriate' ones to receive this type of message. Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference.

We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the 'natural order of things.'

So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice:

Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it's least fortunate amongst them.

Maybe next Tuesday will be a little better if we look for the good rather than what we will get out of the changes.

And now the budget

There is a lot of press coverage of the budget, but so much of what was said is just words. Changes planned to come in later this year will only happen if Labour is re-elected with a majority. The polls suggest this will not happen, so most of what is said and written is just hot air.

Of course some of the changes are more immediate - stamp duty and excise duties (betting, fuel and alcohol) - so we will see these.

Is it worth commenting on the others? Probably not.

The most important question is whether the problem with the economy is going to be dealt with in the right way and it is almost impossible to tell.

• In theory we need to cut back on public spending and increase taxes to give the rest of the world confidence that the borrowing will be reduced.
  
• In theory we need to maintain spending otherwise the economy will slow down, tax receipts will fall further and the borrowing will, as a result, increase.
  
• Which means that the answer is a mix of both - cutting and maintaining.
  

Will the government get the answer right? Probably not.

But on the other hand, we will not know as we cannot go back and try something different. All we can do is make sure we have the best people in government that we can find.

Legal decent and honest

The accountancy press (accountancy age) has just told us that our own Revenue service (HMRC) has now obtained information from an illegal source and will be using it to try and track down tax evaders who have Swiss accounts. They did the same with some Lichtenstein information last year.

Apart from questions about the admissibility of any such information in court (I think the Police and Criminal Evidence Act ("PACE") makes life difficult for police officers by making sure they only use information they obtain using the proper procedures), there is surely the question of whether this sort of evidence should be used by the government at all.

By contrast we are shocked and horrified that information about terrorism obtained by America might have been obtained illegally using torture.

It is clear that, if HMRC were in business, it could not have a tax deduction for the costs (ITTOIA 2005, s. 55(1)(a)). Equally, if the recipient (thief) is taxable in the UK, the receipt by him is a taxable receipt (have a look at the Revenue Law journal). This indicates that tax law is not sure how best to deal with illegal acts. But surely there should be a standard (similar to PACE) which the government should follow when chasing tax debts.

After all (and it has been said), buying this sort of information only encourages thieves to go out and steal it, something which our government would surely condemn as illegal.

The tax return is filed

After the last minute work has been completed, what can anyone say?



Thought for the Day, 29 January 2010

Rhidian Brook

Today there will be a lot of people in Britain scrabbling to beat Monday's tax assessment deadline and so avoid the £100 fine. One man who won't be rushing to fill out his forms is the singer and activist Billy Bragg who has threatened not to pay his tax in protest at the bonuses being paid out by Royal Bank of Scotland. He's calling on the government to limit the proposed £1.5 billion that the bank wants to pay out despite the tax-payer owning 84% of it. And he's set up a protest website to rally support.

I confess I was tempted to sign up: as one of the 9 million self-employed I'm about to pay my annual tax and a bit of me always wants to avoid doing so. Every year, I go through the same internal process: I spend a few days moaning about giving my hard earned money to the taxman then I take a walk to my daughter's free school past the just-collected bins, or take a trip to the hospital to get that x ray and it reminds me where the money goes. Not unlike my American friend who lived here for a while and complained at the amount of tax we paid - until he got sick.

Like my friend's forebears, a revolutionary might well refuse to pay their tax on ethical grounds and end up starting a new country. But arguably it's just as radical to pay tax as not to pay tax, seeing in taxation a simple and just way of sharing wealth and resources - which recent stats concerning the gulf between rich and poor in the UK suggest is a serious issue. But the radical Bragg - who once sang "I don't want to change the world, I'm just looking for a new England" - isn't really asking whether tax is right or wrong or even right or left; his little protest is aimed at a group of people he perceives to be rendering unto themselves before they render unto Caesar.

It has echoes of that infamous exchange where the Pharisees ask Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. With this question they must have thought they had the loudmouth, self-employed, rebel stitched up like Galilean kipper. If he said yes, he'd be blaspheming; if he said no, he'd be preaching rebellion to Rome. They were probably already picturing the headlines: "Nazareth agitator plans to bring down state." But instead of answering them directly Jesus took the coin with Caesar's image on it and advised them to give to Caesar what was clearly his. Before adding the killer instruction "to give to God what was God's."

As tax advice goes the first part of his answer is straightforward enough, but the second part seems to raise the stakes. "Give to God what is God's"? How much is that? Even if we are not sure what we should give or what belongs to God, Jesus seems to be challenging his listeners to work out where their priorities and ultimate allegiances lie - in all areas of their lives. Perhaps, then, this is something we can meditate on whilst performing the seemingly unspiritual task of filling out our tax forms.

copyright 2010 BBC

This can also be seen at http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20100129.shtml