Birvidik

If you ask him (in truth, even if you don't), the average yottie will happily blether on interminably about the many noble reasons why he chose the cruising lifestyle. These will be many, varied and often internally inconsistent. We have, for example, been solemnly informed on more than one occasion that the speaker had left England for foreign shores because the country was being over-run with bloody foreigners. Other reasons frequently included are: 'experiencing different cultures' and 'meeting like-minded people' (possibly just a tad contradictory), but the overall winner is a burning desire to be free of the overweening bureaucracy and petty restrictions that characterize modern life.

These noble sentiments are, of course, a load of cobblers. In reality they are a psychological re-write to act as justification for a far baser motive, namely the state of the yottie's wallet. A desire to remain below the bureaucratic radar has more to do with avoiding taxes than with reveling in the heady freedoms of self-reliance.

Imagine the reaction, then, when the Greeks, having been lectured by all and sundry (including most of the cruising community) on the virtues of fiscal responsibility, paying their taxes and living within their means, announced that they intended to introduce a tax on all boats using Greek waters. Cue apoplectic outbursts of spluttering rage from the assembled yotties. It became the prime subject of bar-room debating clubs and yottie internet fora throughout the Mediterranean.

This, of course, should come as no surprise to anyone with even a modicum of understanding of the human psyche. I suspect that cognitive dissonance, or the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in the head simultaneously, is the default position for the human mind. It is for mine anyway.

Considerable psychological research has shown that not just Bono but the majority of people would, if given a referendum on such matters, vote for reduced taxes and increased public spending. If it is gently pointed out to them that increased public spending inevitably requires increased taxation then they go down one of two routes: either they suggest that public spending is increased where it would benefit them and decreased where it wouldn't or they employ a similar tactic on taxation whereby it should be decreased if it applies to them and increased on some other demographic. The really clever ones conflate the two approaches and really muddy the waters. These people usually enter politics or own newspapers.

You can instantly gauge the target demographic of a newspaper by the type of tax or spending it demonises. Thus the tax bêtes noir of the Torygraph are the top rate of income tax, corporation tax, any form of tax on unearned income and inheritance tax. Especially inheritance tax. Meanwhile The Grauniad bleats on about the bedroom tax, offshore avoidance schemes & why gay cyclists, especially female ones, should be entitled to tax breaks. The Daily Wail, meanwhile, concentrates on such lofty topics as speed cameras, parking fines and anything that affects the price of gin and tonic.

Similar special pleading applies to public spending.

So, how does our yottie deal with this loss of a fundamental foundation to his equanimity? Current psychological theory predicts he should go through the classic five stages of bereavement - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many yotties, however, seem to get stuck before they even hit the halfway mark.

Denial is easy - Fingers in the ears and shout 'la la la la' very loudly. Many yotties claim it's just a rumour put about by trolls trying to frighten honest cruisers off so that said trolls have a better choice of mooring spots. This belief becomes more difficult to maintain as evidence builds up to the point of official communications from Greek government departments confirming the tax. These usually lead to a change of tactic whereby the yotties accept that the tax is there, but argue that the Greeks will never get organised enough to actually implement it. The history of Greek bureaucracy lends some credence to this belief, even amongst many Greeks.

Anger - ah yes. Yotties can be very good at that. Unfortunately for most of them, especially the green ink brigade that tend to lurk in the shadows of internet fora, this is as far as they get. Raising the subject simultaneously raises blood pressure, indignation and myocardial infarction rates dramatically. These are frequently accompanied by stereotype-riddled, xenophobic outbursts of which even Greece's Golden Dawn thugs would be proud; except that in the yotties' diatribes the vitriol is aimed at the Greeks themselves rather than the Roma, Albanians, Arabs, Pakistanis and all nationalities of sub-saharan Africa as is the case with Golden Dawn.

The arguments proffered by our yotties against their having to pay this tax are a simmering melange of special pleading, reasoning from false premises, straw men. ad hominem attacks, dark threats of fiscal ruin for the Greek holiday industry and shooting the messenger. Bar-room lawyers bring out outrageously unsubstantiated interpretations of half invented provisions of international maritime law relating to the right of innocent passage. The Cruising Association and the RYA are slandered and pilloried for failing to use their supposed mighty international influence to compel a sovereign government to follow their instructions regarding matters of internal taxation. How on earth do these rabid lunatics expect them to do that - they're yachting organisations, not the bloody European Commission or Rupert Murdoch.

In essence though, their reaction boils down to the following beautifully structured line of reasoning: "It's not fair! Don't wanna pay it. Why do I have to pay it? Other countries' yotties don't have to pay it. Someone make them stop making me pay it. I'm gonna take my boat and go home. So there!"

We though, in common with about six other yotties in the whole of Greece, have worked our way through all five stages to acceptance. If they finally work out how to collect it, and they find us, and they make the effort to ask us, then we'll pay it. In our case this works out at 120 euros a month, or 70 euros a month if paid a year in advance.

We can live with that.

Just.

Unless we manage to skip the country before it hits.

* "Nothing is certain in this world except Death and Taxes".
Benjamin Franklin 1705 - 1790