Should We Fix It?

I spend enough time banging on about how broken the system is.

I never stopped to wonder if it was all just peachy.

What is wrong with giving the government over 80% of your wages every year? If they didn't need it they wouldn't take it. We would probably just spend the money on something daft like our energy bills or our mortgages, or paying off our loans, or worse, we might waste it on shiny things. Utter madness.

Charity is a good thing, right? So why not just say nothing when the government gives a portion of that tax money to their favourite charities? Even if some of those charities use the money to campaign against your freedoms? It's for your own good.

So what if some of your money pays for bombs and bullets and men of violence to wage war in countries that never actually attacked us on our home soil? Yes, there are laws that say they shouldn't, the Nuremberg Principles for example, but hell, they are only guidelines, surely?

Who cares if road tax generates an income of £32 billion a year and only £11 billion is spent on the upkeep of the roads? That money is needed elsewhere. Who cares if £15 billion is collected from tobacco every year and less than £2 billion is used to treat those nasty smokers? That money is needed elsewhere.

In India, where they are spending their own money on space exploration, for instance. Who would deny a third world country the opportunity to explore space even if 800 million of their people live on a few rupees a day? I'm almost sure those 800 million are intensely proud that they are ferreting around in space. Who needs food, sanitation or shelter when you can send rockets to Rigel 7?

In Brazil, where they cannot seem to stop finding oil & gas? This is one of the wealthiest nations in South America but you know, they need a leg up too. The hundreds of millions we send them in aid is probably spent on something lovely. Like new guns for the coppers to shoot the street boys with. (These boys are classed as vermin anyway, and who likes vermin?). Perhaps it's used to pay for the big carnivals these people love so much?

Back home, our own boys in blue need their toys too. Ever since guns and knives were outlawed, every criminal in the country respected the new legislation and stopped carrying them. But just in case one or two did not get the memo, we are making our cops dress as if they were a paramilitary outfit. And why not? They look great! Who cares if they ignore the oath they swore? It's just words, after all. The world is changing and that 80% of your wages doesn't go far you know. It needs to supplemented with a thousand different fines and we are just being silly if we pretend there is no victim. Golly gosh, it's right to lock people up when they fail to pay their council tax. It's surely right to lock people up on a whim, and you know, if some of those people die whilst in police custody (as 50 or so a year do) well, there's no smoke without fire, right? They must be guilty of something.. They are in charge, and by gum, they are doing what we pay them to do. Sure, some criminals get away with fiddling with our kids, or killing the odd person (especially if you are Lord Ahmed and the bloke you killed is a foreigner), I mean, yeah, I would expect to go to gaol for a very long time but hey! Lord Ahmed is one of the good guys! He just needed a wake up call. 16 days in an open prison soon sorted him out.

So what if judges simply shout over you in a court room? They are demi-Gods and they can and should do as they damn well please. Life would be chaotic if they stuck to the letter of the law. No, we should just presume they are right, about everything, all the time, and take our punishment like men.

And that EU thing? Who cares? Who cares that 4062 new pieces of legislation were enacted in 2011? Those sensible chaps at the EU (none of them elected, but what the heck, it's just a pernickety little detail) wouldn't waste their time with all this legislation if it wasn't critical for society to function, now would they? They are paid enormous sums of our money but they probably deserve it. I know for a fact that some of them travel hundreds of kilometre's each day just to sign in so that they can collect their expenses for the day. It takes them hours to get there, they sign in, then head off home. That's dedication for you. The Green Party in Germany have one really dedicated wifey, she makes the trip five days a week, bless her. Never mind that "environmental impact", that stuff is only for us. Our betters can ignore carbon emissions and what-not. They have helicopters and private jets to run. And since we pay for them all it would be wasteful if they didn't get used, right?

No sense going on about the government being wasteful. We all make mistakes, right? They are only human after all.

Who really cares that the queen abdicated in 1972 when she gave Assent to the European Communities Act? She's a dear sweet old lady with brown teeth, and we love her to bits, we do. It doesn't matter that the constitution was violated for goodness sake! It's just words on a bit of old vellum. No biggie.

All in all, we are bloody lucky to live in a country that cares so much about us that they invested in 5 million CCTV cameras. It's pretty nice knowing that some fat bloke is sat munching on wholesome meat pies while he watches us do our shopping, drive down the motorway, or collect some cash from the hole in the wall. The statistics are mind-blowing: did you know it only takes an average of 1,000 cameras to catch a criminal? Pretty bloody good, that. I would be jolly annoyed if they had wasted our money on a system that didn't work.

I'm all turned around on this thing. We should count our blessings, not the remaining cash after we have given 80% of it to the saintly government. They must need it, so we should just stop moaning.

God Bless 'Em!

CR.