[Sauron the White]

Mith - you do tend to overstate the point.
Trying to get you banned? Invited to try? Absurd. I am simply sick and tired of every once in a while voicing an opinion on some currents events topic and then I get the obligitory slap on the wrist message or post from a moderator saying in no uncertain terms that such discussion is not welcome here and take it elsewhere. If I did bother to take a day or two and educate myself to the history, advantages and disadvantages of the British tax system and then posted factual information to rebutt what you or others posted, there would follow a stern posting from a moderator saying this is not the place for it. So what would be the point of that? But a discussion about film rights becomes a cause for the anti-government crowd to bash taxation policy.

That is not the issue and never has been the issue.

Was this British tax law passed with JRRTolkien as its only target or was this a law which applied to the entire populace of Great Britain who earned those levels of income? Thats all I need to know.

I am not making judgments about how Tolkien spent his money. It was his to spend how he wanted. WCH mentioned his purchase of a more expensive house at the time he owed the tax. Carpenter, in his biography of JRRT, states that Edith wanted a better place to be with people of the class she believed she had attained.

Again, there is a clear undercurrent at work here. People who hate the movies for their own reasons seem to cringe when they are reminded that JRRT freely sold those rights without any artistic control of his own over how they were used. Tolkien was a willingly participant in allowing anyone with that license to make whatever changes to his work they so wanted to make. He knew that when he signed the contract and cashed the check.

But now, its because something of a minor cause here to puff out your Purist chest and flail away at the films and cry to the heavens that poor old JRRT was literally forced to sell those rights by the mean old government and it really is not his fault for doing so. The poor old man was mugged in the alleyway.

Gimmeabreak.