Medieval style tax!

How big or small should an offence have to be to get a criminal record......you know the sort of thing that will hinder you getting a job, visiting the USA or indeed standing for local government?
Stealing? Fiddling your income support....... seem reasonable? Well then what about jumping a ditch or not having a little blue plastic tag on your reins when you ride your horse?
Well the City of London.....not perhaps the most in touch with the modern world authority......seems to think that the last two mentioned are heinous crimes, and its own private police force of Attested Constables: the forest wardens, are there to see that the general public are protected from such evil villains.
Four years ago the sober and generally law abiding people who ride their horses in Epping Forest (and whose predecessors have done so from historical times) were slapped with a medieval style ‘horse tax’ that left them being charged £40.00 per year per horse (not per rider) to do what they had always done: namely ride freely in the beautiful surroundings of Epping Forest. No if one should be such a wild desperado as to forget, or for that matter refuse to may this charge you could be liable to a heavy fine and a criminal record.
There was no other legitimate reason for introducing this tax than greed: the regime then incumbent at City Hall had it on ‘good’ advice that there were a couple of thousand horses using the Forest and they would be into a ‘sound earner’ at a ‘couple of score a pop! Indeed eighty grand would have been ‘sound’ , but sadly the City’s advice was a bit ‘pony’ and there were fewer than five hundred........Twenty grand rather than eighty seems less ‘sweet’ when you have to administer the tax.....and although for the first couple of years after introduction wardens patrolled vainly looking for the other fifteen hundred tax evaders, they soon lost interest and seemed to give it up as a bad job. Would that their masters at Guild Hall had done similar, but they continue to pump out the demands for payment every April, still threatening everything short of flogging and being transported to the colonies to those who might be shy of payment.
Arguments were put forward and trumpeted in the press that horse riders were a unruly lot that thrashed about the forest scaring the peaceable folk and damaging the environment....and no doubt turning the milk sour and causing cows to prematurely deliver two headed offspring. Everyone knew this was rubbish riders are in general a peaceable environmentally aware bunch, the scary and environmentally damaging force around the forest is the motor car....full stop!
Isn’t it time to get real? Cyclists are not charged for access to the forest, and may ride practically anywhere they want (riders are restricted both seasonally and to specific areas) walkers and joggers neither are dog owners and orienters and........well just about anyone except horse riders really. Even the so called ‘doggers’ who engage in mini sexual orgies in many of the Forest car parks late at night are to receive more lenient treatment in future from the Police according to new draft guidelines........ So the city treats it’s horse riders worse than the police want to treat the decidedly pervy? Yes....in a nutshell.
Now to cap it all the City are rail roading through plans to fence, cattle grid and gate large stretches of the Forest, making horse riding less safe, more restricted and more at the mercy of the high speed traffic that hurtles around the Forest roads. The riders are bitter and feel that the City of London has victimised them as they are safe targets........and let’s face it, to protest by the most obvious means, that is not paying the tax would automatically make us criminals!