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Music For 'Disenfranchised Working-Class Youth': The British reggae band Steel Pulse formed in Birmingham in 1975. Mykaell Riley is third from the left.

You could hear it on mainstream radio in 1978, courtesy of The Police, and if you're in Britain, you can hear it on the airwaves today, in the music of Birmingham-born MC Lady Leshurr: reggae's influence on British music.

"As long as there's been reggae, there's been reggae in the U.K., and that influence has played a massive role," says producer and DJ Ras Kwame, who has worked on BBC Radio for more than a decade.

Lately called "bass culture," the wide range of music influenced by reggae in the U.K. is as prominent as the rock that was inspired by R&B and blues half a century ago, says Mykaell Riley, the lead singer of the reggae band Steel Pulse, which formed in Birmingham in 1975.

"We look at the impact of it; we look at how it's changed production; we look at the story of the remix culture, rave culture and the relationship to sound systems; we look at current youth and what they use as a key reference when making popular music in the U.K., and we'll see that the resonance of the black community in the U.K. has a major contribution that has never been fully recognized," Riley says.

The contribution began in the 1950s, when Jamaican immigration to the U.K. spiked. By the early '60s, British sound systems flourished and British ska music by artists like Millie Small topped the Billboard charts.

Where in America, West Indian immigrants could be absorbed into existing African-American communities, in Britain, where there was no real black community to speak of, Caribbean people found themselves isolated. Riley says that reggae became a potent way of dealing with that alienation.

"Disenfranchised working-class youth identified through this music," Riley says, "which was rebellious, it was anti-state, anti-government, it was very politically charged and very militant, so the black youth were very motivated and socially aware at the time. And all of this came through reggae. It was not present in the schools, on television, in the books, in radio."

In the 1970s, reggae exploded in the U.K. Bob Marley lived in London. Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones recorded reggae songs, and a soulful British genre known as Lover's Rock was born. But when U.K. reggae bands like Steel Pulse and Aswad hit the scene, they struggled to be accepted by black audiences who deemed them less authentic than Jamaican-born acts. Instead, these new bands found an unlikely fan base: punks.

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Reggae In The U.K.: A Steady Force

Newspaper publishers in Missouri could have to pay more to buy paper, ink and other supplies under a measure endorsed Wednesday by a House panel.

On a 7-5 vote, the House Tax Reform Committee backed a proposal to eliminate sales tax exemptions on newspaper equipment in order to help fund state medical subsidies for people who are blind. The measure now goes to the full House.

The result is that newspaper companies would have to pay sales tax both on the supplies used to produce their paper and on the retail sale of the paper a double hit not applied to most manufacturers.

The House is debating a budget this week that would eliminate a $30 million program that provides medical care to about 2,800 blind people and instead set aside $6 million for a slimmed-down aid program. Some House members want to use the money saved from those program cuts to reduce cuts to the states public colleges and universities.

A financial estimate included with the newspaper legislation approved Wednesday projects that bill could generate up to $4.2 million of additional money for state aid to the blind.

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, who sponsored the measure, said newspapers should give up their tax exemptions because some editorial boards have called on lawmakers to eliminate tax breaks as a way of balancing the budget.

The fact that they receive this corporate welfare while advocating for the end of it for others is a bit hypocritical, said Silvey, R-Kansas City.

Silvey also said he does not think eliminating the tax exemptions would interfere with a newspapers right to press freedom.

To say your medium is so unique that it needs a tax subsidy or its infringement on First Amendment rights, I think is just illogical, he said. Its not their right to have a sustainable business model.

To calculate how much tax revenue the legislation could generate for aid to the blind, legislative analysts estimated the total annual revenue of the newspaper industry and estimated how much of the revenue is spent on newspaper supplies. The fiscal estimate projects that revenue for newspapers sold in the state totals between about $120 million $208 million each year. The estimate cites an annual report filed by the New York Times Co. for 2011 that said costs for raw materials and other costs are equal to 17 percent to 50 percent of the newspapers revenue.

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House panel backs end to newspaper tax breaks

Mar 21 2012

More than 300 staff at the BBC avoid paying income tax, an MP has revealed.

Tory MP David Mowat, who represents Warrington South, said he discovered 320 "non-talent based" employees earning more than 50,000 avoided income tax.

Mr Mowat said it was "not acceptable", adding it was the BBC's Newsnight programme which had sparked the row about senior civil servants avoiding tax when it revealed head of the Student Loans Company Ed Lester had been paid via a company.

He told the Commons: "Tax avoidance matters are at the heart of this thing about us all being in this together.

"I sent a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to ask them how many employees they had who were not having tax deducted at source.

"The answer is that they have 320 non-talent based (staff), so this is administration employees, earning more than 50,000 a year but (for whom) PAYE and National Insurance is not deducted at source.

"I would ask my own frontbench, who are conducting a review across the whole of Government in terms of making sure this isn't happening but which explicitly excludes the BBC, to reconsider that."

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UK & World News: 300 BBC staff 'avoid income tax'

More than 300 staff at the BBC avoid paying income tax, an MP has revealed.

Tory MP David Mowat, who represents Warrington South, said he discovered 320 "non-talent based" employees earning more than 50,000 avoided income tax.

Mr Mowat said it was "not acceptable", adding it was the BBC's Newsnight programme which had sparked the row about senior civil servants avoiding tax when it revealed head of the Student Loans Company Ed Lester had been paid via a company.

He told the Commons: "Tax avoidance matters are at the heart of this thing about us all being in this together.

"I sent a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to ask them how many employees they had who were not having tax deducted at source.

"The answer is that they have 320 non-talent based (staff), so this is administration employees, earning more than 50,000 a year but (for whom) PAYE and National Insurance is not deducted at source.

"I would ask my own frontbench, who are conducting a review across the whole of Government in terms of making sure this isn't happening but which explicitly excludes the BBC, to reconsider that."

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300 BBC staff 'avoid income tax'

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Newspaper publishers in Missouri could have to pay more to buy paper, ink and other supplies under a measure endorsed Wednesday by a House panel.

On a 7-5 vote, the House Tax Reform Committee backed a proposal to eliminate sales tax exemptions on newspaper equipment in order to help fund state medical subsidies for people who are blind. The measure now goes to the full House.

The House is debating a budget this week that would eliminate a $30 million program that provides medical care to about 2,800 blind people and instead set aside $6 million for a slimmed-down aid program. Some House members want to use the money saved from those program cuts to reduce cuts to the state's public colleges and universities.

A financial estimate included with the legislation approved Wednesday projects that bill could generate up to $4.2 million of additional money for state aid to the blind.

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, who sponsored the measure, said newspapers should give up their tax exemptions because some editorial boards have called on lawmakers to eliminate tax breaks as a way of balancing the budget.

"The fact that they receive this corporate welfare while advocating for the end of it for others is a bit hypocritical," said Silvey, R-Kansas City.

Silvey also said he does not think eliminating the tax exemptions would interfere with a newspaper's right to press freedom.

"To say your medium is so unique that it needs a tax subsidy or it's infringement on First Amendment rights, I think is just illogical," he said. "It's not their right to have a sustainable business model."

To calculate how much tax revenue the legislation could generate for aid to the blind, legislative analysts estimated the total annual revenue of the newspaper industry and estimated how much of the revenue is spent on newspaper supplies. The fiscal estimate projects that revenue for newspapers sold in the state totals between about $120 million $208 million each year. The estimate cites an annual report filed by the New York Times Co. for 2011 that said costs for "raw materials" and "other costs" are equal to 17 percent to 50 percent of the newspaper's revenue.

Missouri lawmakers codified the sales tax exemption for newspaper supplies in 1998, two years after the state Supreme Court ruled that computers used for newspaper pagination could not be taxed because pagination is part of the manufacturing a newspaper.

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Mo. House panel backs end to newspaper tax breaks