.: William Newton Dunn MEP (Liberal Democrat - East Midlands)

Approached  William Newton Dunn MEP  on  6th July 2008 via e-mail with a letter of introduction.

We received the following e-mail from William Newton Dunn MEP on 8th July 2008:

Thankyou.
I have looked at the website.
My opinion is that I don't think you are going to be able to muster sufficient political support across 27 countries to get this off the
ground.
Why ? Somebody would have to administer the scheme. That means at least one central office somewhere (or worse, several offices in different places), employing bureaucrats, furnishing them with computer equipment, giving them the ability to check that the Passes are uptodate, are paid for, are not forged etc, giving them the ability to pursue cheats and punish them,...
I cannot see any benefit to the European tax-payer to have to take onthis extra burden.
Bill Newton Dunn
 

We replied to William Newton Dunn MEP, via e-mail, on 8th July 2008 as follows:

Dear Mr. Newton Dunn,

Thank you for taking the time to review our proposal but I must express surprise at your conclusions.

Whilst I appreciate the fact that this scheme would have to be administered, I fail to see why you consider that a problem - civil
servants exist to administer schemes, do they not? One might have thought they would relish a proposal to create yet more bureaucratic jobs...

If one considers the possibility of having to process the applications of umpteen thousands of home-coming Europeans who have
abandoned life at sea as having become beyond their means and, as former (or current) taxpaying citizens are seeking housing and other assistance, the cost of administrating the Free Sea Pass scheme probably pales into insignificance by comparison, wouldn't you think?

Thanks again for your time. Best regards,

Linnet Woods

We received an  immediate reply, from William Newton Dunn MEP on 8th July 2008, via e-mail, was as follows:

Civil servants do not exist to process shcemes. We in the parliament would have to vote the money first and I doubt that we would be
convinced that the extra taxes would be worth it.
What applications from home-coming Europeans ? Nobody needs to make an application if they are home-coming.
BND

We responded immediately, via e-mail to William Newton Dunn MEP, on 8th July 2008 as follows:

Dear Mr. Newton Dunn,
My apologies for appearing to imply that civil servants only come in one shade. My father was a civil servant and, come to think
of it, he abhorred paperwork as a necessary evil...

Perhaps I should try to explain better? 

Most live-aboard sailors have managed to get seabourne by selling their properties ashore and being prepared to live frugally in exchange for obtaining the freedom to travel and live outside the 'norms' of society. Some are obliged to work, at least some of the time, to continue funding their lifestyle and others can manage on savings or pensions.

Permanent live-aboard sailors include a great many individuals who have moved aboard after a lifetime of working ashore  and who do not tend to use many of the facilities for which they paid their taxes all their working lives. Live-aboard sailors are, for example, generally far less prone to succumb to illnesses than their shore-dwelling counterparts, mainly because of the healthy lifestyle and perhaps also through having less contact with people in enclosed spaces like offices etc. and thus are no burden on national health schemes. Jobless live-aboards are rare, unless voluntarily because they do not need more finances than they have already
accumulated. 

Most of us have always been able to manage because the cost of living is very low if one is not having to pay just to drop the anchor in a bay somewhere and use one's tender (dinghy) to come and go from the land when it is necessary.

If, on the other hand, we are all to be obliged to pay large sums of money for moorings we neither need nor want and to keep moving from bay to bay every few days, the lifestyle becomes untenable. The alternative is to give up living aboard and return to one's country of origin where the cost of housing is beyond one's means and one's meagre finances will not be sufficient for survival, obliging one to ask for financial assistance from the government of the day (or, presumably, resort to begging/crime) in order to
survive. 

Imagine thousands upon thousands of citizens descending upon their home countries under such circumstances! My partner
and I are, for example, in Spanish waters at the moment and, although we have been paying tax here when working, we would return to the UK (where we paid national insurance and taxes for the bulk of our working lives) in the scenario above, as it is our home country.

The scheme would not, surely, be all that difficult or expensive to administer - a database of applicants and issuance of passes could be shared with all authorities for checking at will (anyone who doesn't want their details to be shared in this way can opt not to apply for a pass - those of us with nothing to hide wouldn't mind) and by charging a sensible fee (100 euros, for example) as with passports, the cost of the scheme could be covered, surely?

Best regards,

Linnet


 William Newton Dunn MEP replied, via e-mail on 9th July 2008 as follows:

Your life-style was your own choice, and you must have chosen it consciously and deliberately.
If you decide to give it up now, the population of whichever country you decide to settle in will expect you to pay taxes again - as they and I have to now every-day. Any taxes you paid in the past will have paid for the public services which you enjoyed at the time in the past, and if you want public services again then the land-based residents will expect you to contribute again. Presumably you saved for your pensions.
What I am telling you is that there would be no political will, ie no majority, to do what you propose and therefore in my judgment it will
not happen. Certainly, as you propose it, I will not support it.The land-based taxpayers will not benefit. They will have to pay for the
civil-servants and offices and computers etc and what does the public get in return for these extra taxes ? Apparently nothing but the
pleasure of knowing that you sea-goers pay lower charges at the expense of the land-based people. The land-based taxpayers will not see this as a bargain for them, and so they will not agree to it being done. There is, as Milton Friedman said, "no such thing as a free lunch."
Sorry !

We replied to William Newton Dunn MEP, on 9th July 2008, as follows:

Actually, Mr. Newton Dunn, although I have never had, nor expected, a free lunch, they do exist, but mainly for the raft of politicians for whose choice of 'lifestyle' taxpayers like us have always been expected to pay, whether or not they ever achieved anything worthwhile. 

Our children received private education and BUPA provided health care, funded by us separately from enormous contributions
to the Inland Revenue, VAT department and National Insurance system. In fact, we have probably probably benefited from less than 0.5% of the contributions we have ever made to the UK coffers.

The choice of 'lifestyle' we made was based on the extant conditions which did not include this new system of commandeering bays and turning them into tourist traps. Given that most of the anchor signs on navigational charts had been there since 1650 or so, we could hardly have been expected to predict this. 

Do you honestly think the UK (the only country we have the right to expect to take us in under the reduced circumstances that would result from having to abandon our 'lifestyle', as you call it) would have jobs for a 62-year-old and a 54-year old who had
been so long out of the system?  As it happens, I am a freelance writer via the Internet and can work from anywhere, but very
much doubt that I earn enough to fund a shore-based existence and would have to seek financial assistance, apart from which, I don't want to 'enjoy' what you describe as 'services' and which I view, in the main, as shambolic wastes of taxpayer contributions, past and present.

We would not be paying lower fees 'at the expense of land-based people'. No human being created the bays in which we anchor - they are being sequestered by local authorities in order to fleece the owners of  yachts - the vast majority of which are
either being purchased through bank credit by individuals or acquired as tax-deductible assets by corporations whose directors would rather have a mega-yacht than contribute to the Inland Revenue. 

Those yachts are used as toys for amusement from time to time and their owners are already paying such high marina fees to keep their vessels all year round that many live-aboard yacht-owners cannot afford to stay in marinas even for a few days a year any more, either - prices have risen several hundred percent since the credit boom started. That we accepted as modern commercial progress but this buoying off of natural havens is another matter. What those authorities who charge for use of the buoys
they have installed (presumably paid for out of the public purse in the first place) are doing with the resulting new income, I have no
idea, but it is unlikely that the taxpayers are seeing any benefit from it, frankly, any more than they do from the selling off of their natural gas reserves etc.

Is one to understand that you are only a part-time politician? You speak of having to pay taxes yourself, as though you are contributing to the tax coffers from income that was not derived from taxpayer contributions in the first place. You are, surely, not
comparing your own situation with that of people paid on results, or in low-paid and gruelling jobs? 

I'm sorry you do not see fit to add your support to our proposal - perhaps we will be better served by those who see this as a human rights issue, apart from any other consideration. One might say that land gypsies have chosen their 'lifestyle' but it is not permitted to discriminate against them and I do not see any reason why sea-dwellers should be crushed out of existence without a backward glance just because some of those who are supposed to represent minorities as well as majorities can't work up the interest to
do so. 

Let's hope that, amongst MEPs, you turn out to be in the minority for, as Samuel Pepys once remarked "A man who likes to live at sea is not fit to live on land". Perhaps the land-based taxpayers would be relieved to know that something was being done to prevent an influx of such people to their back yard :-) although, clearly, not by you...

Best regards,

Linnet

We received the following e-mail from William Newton Dunn MEP, on 10th July 2008:

Well, issuing stupid insults as you did is not the way to persuade anybody : did you never learn that ?.
I have read through all you wrote, though I now wonder why. You just want to save some money and you want shore-based tax-payers to bear the cost of that. On behalf of shore-based tax-payers, "no deal.".
I would vote against such a proposal - but it is so one-sided in favour of you, that there is no chance at all that you would get sufficient support to gte it up and running.
Over and out.
BND

We replied to William Newton Dunn MEP, on 10th July 2008, via e-mail, as follows:

Excuse me? I merely responded to your manner in kind, sir. Your tone has been sneering and obnoxious from the start and I had given up considering you capable of sensible discussion, let alone trying to persuade you of anything whatsoever, by the time I sent the last email.

As it happens, my partner and I are amongst the fortunate few who can anchor in less safe areas, having been fortunate enough to be able to invest, twenty years ago, in a 21m ocean-going schooner with far longer and heavier chains and anchors than most live-aboards. We are not proposing the Free Sea Pass on our own behalf but on behalf of all those who have normal, smaller yachts and ground tackle, and are not in a position to stop just anywhere. It is not about 'saving' money - this is a new expenditure being foisted on people whose budgets will not stretch to it and also, (which I would have thought you would know if you had read our proposals intelligently) about not being permitted to stay in any one place more than three to five days.

Perhaps my use of the singular was misleading - neither my partner nor I would dream of returning to the UK to live. Like 300,000 other Britons per annum, we have voted with our feet (or, in our case, our keel) and emigrated.
Perhaps less like most of our fellow live-aboard sailors, we'd rather starve to death out at sea than allow ourselves to be hounded ashore. Many others do not have the luxury of being able to make that decision and will eventually be obliged to capitulate.

You mention one-sided proposals - I have no doubt that you have more expertise in those than I.
You have, throughout, simply reiterated your first impression in a boorish manner. No wonder the taxpayers' faith in politicians is at it's lowest ebb ever, according to the media.

Thank you, anyway, for providing me with what will, no doubt, be considered some reasonably entertaining material by readers of our monthly newsletter.

Incidentally, use of the term 'over and out' on the VHF radio is incorrect, except, perhaps, in TV soaps The correct expression is simply 'out'. 'Over' implies that you expect the respondent to speak again. So I did :-)

Best regards,

Linnet