Column 88 whether he is taxed, although that was his implication. If that is genuinely the case, I suggest that the register is a bureaucratic apparatus that should be obliterated. However, let me deal with the more charitable hypothesis that, despite the Financial Secretary's unguarded remarks, the register has a purpose and is not being introduced merely to create an extra clause. If that is the case, we must speculate on its purpose. I do not know about that, although I take it that the point of including people on a register is to get them into the Weberian grip of bureaucracy.
Bureaucracies are about information, and that is what registers provide.
Once people are on the register, they are in the hands of the bureaucracy. In other words, one is a datum on the bureaucracy's data sheets. It knows about us. It comes to visit them. It inspects and looks into them.