A fresh rant about the sad state of Britain
It’s been a goodly while since I had a proper rant. Talk of programming and websites can grate upon one occasionally, and I have found my website a rather effective form of stress relief, and somewhat less migraine inducing than my other stress relief technique of banging my head rhythmically upon a hard surface. The burning question du jour is of course what in fact I should rant about. No-one has really upset me this past week. Well, no-one that I can rant about here without it getting back to them anyway.
I don’t have to look far to find something to moan about though. If, like me, you have a pre-disposition to being something of a grumpy old fart, then we are at least living in the right place. Britain is a hole isn’t it? What a dump. So, so many things to have a good rant about that it seems a shame to pick only one. So I won’t.
Let’s start with tax shall we? We’ve all got to pay it. Death and taxes and all that. What I would be particularly keen to know is, what extra am I getting from Ilminster Town Council to justify the 12% hike in their share of my council tax this year? In fact, since I have been married (almost 8 years now), which is about as long as I can remember, council tax has risen significantly above inflation each year, whereas the level of service we receive has dropped similarly significantly.
The one thing I do care about is that the council picks up my rubbish on time, but clearly that is far too difficult a task. The recycling collection is a joke. They won’t take cardboard, or plastic. They won’t even take your paper if you put it in a plastic bag in an effort to prevent it from turning into pulp in the rain and blowing around the estate. What they will do instead, is leave a plasticky tag on your bin telling you that they basically can’t be arsed to do any real recycling. They probably won’t even recycle the tag if I leave it for them. What they will do is park their stupid truck in the worst possible place, a place carefully chosen to cause as much disruption and inconvenience to everyone else as they possibly can.
These self-obsessed do-gooders (doing very little good) sre more interested in pushing their environmental agenda down our throats, rather than actually taking our recycling and doing something about it. Yeah, we get it. We want to recycle - you just make it awkward for us. So instead, we hugely increase our carbon footprint by lugging all our card and plastic packaging to the recycling centre ourselves every week.
Speaking of carbon footprints and driving cars, what the heck is going on with petrol? Price of oil going up my ass. Here’s what’s really happening: all the garages whack on an extra penny per litre every fortnight, and we carry on buying petrol. Then because the government sees the petrol companies turning healthy profits, they think they will dip their filthy fingers into the pot as well, and whack another 2 pence per litre in fuel duty onto the price we pay. Are these people so stupid as to think this is a sensible policy for reducing congestion on our roads? Come on! You’ve got to be kidding?!
We all have to drive our cars, and there will come a point when people simply won’t pay the price any more. Gangs of wild middle aged businessmen will roam the motorways looking for tankers of fuel to rob and sell on the black market. A whole industry of illegal biofuels will spring up, and the government will have absolutely no control.
Ignore the fact that cars amount to less than 5% of carbon pollution in this country. We, the drivers, are the soft target. Nobody likes to complain in Britain. What are we so scared of? Tax, tax and more tax.
I sold a part of my company recently, and received a payment for my shares. I have paid tax on my income through the company. The company has paid tax on all the employee’s incomes, including mine. The company has paid tax on its own income. Whereas the government has done absolutely nothing to support our small business, which makes a valuable contribution to the local economy along with all the other small businesses. The tax breaks promised for filing returns online have never materialised. What a surprise. So, I have earned some extra cash for all my hard work - all those late nights and 70 hour weeks. Will I get to keep all this money? Of course not, Mr Greedy Taxman has his fingers poised over my pocket ready to take his “share”.
I did a calculation the other day that if I lived in America and earned the same money that I do now, converted at today’s exchange rate, I would be over $600 better off per month. That’s more than £300. And that’s before I go and fill up the car…
Americans are moaning and bitching about paying $3.79 per gallon. I filled up yesterday at £1.14 per litre, which equates to $8.45 per US gallon. Americans waste huge amounts of fuel with their crappy high displacement engines that manage less HP per CC than the average European lawnmower, and yet they still get to pay petrol prices that we haven’t seen in the UK for upwards of 15 years.
It’s not like my rant has a purpose either. I have no political inclinations. No man-made government will ever cure the world’s ills, and Britain has not just been flushed down the toilet - it’s been through the sewage works and is floating out to sea like the turd it is. A crap country governed by small minded idiots who couldn’t organise a fart in a lift.
So, it doesn’t matter to me which mentally deficient retard is in power - just so long as someone can hook me up with some cheap petrol.
Rant over. For now.
There are thousands of us who would like to rant about council tax: a tax that is charged by local government, but generated by Central Government. The leader of our council will, quite openly, tell you that he has complete freedom to spend only 6% of his budget. He thought it was 8% but the County Treasurer corrected him. Yes, just 6% and the rest of the pie has the finger of Government in it and indirectly that of the European Union (Land fill taxes etc).
The Government tells us that they will cap any council or authority that puts up ikts precept by more than 5%. Rubbish! It seems that they have again moved the goal posts. Our Police Authority precept went up by more than 8% this year and there are many other with amounts much higher than this. So what happened to the capping? This wretched Government now says they will cap when the combination of the precepts goes up beyond 5%. So my county council, the second most frugal in the country, can fight to hold its share down, and the police can claim the difference?
We must also not forget that the parish councils are not affected by the 5% cap. They can put their precept up by as much as they want to, and do. Many council tax payers find their council tax up by 6%, 7% and even more. Crafty councils are pushing services off on to the parish to keep themselves under the cap and the Government says that it has no intention to cap the parishes. And so it goes on. Services once provided by the Government, services once provided by the Police, services onces provided by the County Council, services once provided by the district councils and being pushed down inexorably to the final and uncapped council.
Government grants have become politicised. Some councils receive as little as £111 per head of population and some as much as £900 per head. How can that be fair. The more frugal your council the lower the grant goes.
So, it is, at the end of it all, the Government that controls your council tax, but they will, of course, deny it.
Visit www.isitfair.co.uk and see our suggestions for the replacement of the present system. Isitfair is strictly a non party political campaign. It is run by volunteers, no one receives any payment for their ceaseless work. The campaign survives on small donations from supporters and gifts of stamps
Isitfair has no other agenga than the reform of the council tax system
Nice one Christine. Very informative - I’ll check out your website.
I would just like to say that, as far as the government is concerned, i have know faith in them what so ever,
labour and the concervitives, have brought down what used to be such a beutiful country a proud nation, stood tall next to its giants, Now, has david said, its a turd floating out to see, so many ethnic minorities on its shore’s that even they are having trouble remembering which country this is.
I have lived here all my life my farther has and his dad, faught for this country to keep it safe from the germans, and for what?
The brave soilders that went to war and died, spilt their blood on foriegn soil, and choked there last breath in foriegn air, and why? because they belived in there country, and they belived they were doing right. But if they could see england ( I dare not give it a capital letter, because it does not warrant it ) Now full of the rest of the world,and why not because its a great country anymore but because we are soft SOFT. S.O.F.T. ( come in and have a house, need a car? want a phone?, we’ll pay your Bills ) SOFT.
if i were there in power the answer would be F***K Off, if you think your getting a ride out of my citerzens they work hard and dont need to pay your bills as well as there own, but if you want to work for a living then sure our sewers need sweeping, come in.
See where im going, we need to start looking after our selfs, our steets that were once paved with gold, are now coverd in shit, and its not mine, and it probably not yours, it belongs to a foriengner.
and hence why all your taxes have gone sky hight, petrol and oil my arse, its the fat cats getting fatter to feed their pets they are bringing in to england.
we need to say no to immagrants and in special cases where we may have to say yes, make em work down the pit or sewers or somthing to make a wage. if they dont work they dont eat.
and while im at it, do the same for the lazy f***kers that wont work as well, because im fed up of paying for them all the time.
and also pissing traffic wardens should either be shot or trained properly and given F****king eye tests one a week. i prefer the shot one lol
also bring back the death penelty, so we can get rid of a back log of filthy dirty scum and be prepaired for the next wave of filthy dirty scum bag murdering pedo’s, I my self been a victim of one said filthy bastard. If a dog bites they put it down, but it bites to defend it’s self, but yet when a filthy raping bastard murders an inocent woman or child, he get sky F*****cking TV, 3 meals and a bath, what the f****k is going on in the world, we all read the pissing bile in the papers every day prisons over filling murders,murders and more murders.
well i say Bring back hanging or even leathal injection, trust me in five years crime would be down by alot, and why because no-one wants to die, bring back public flogging , flog the chavs to bits with and electric whip car theifs give them electroshock treatment, they wont f*cking forget that in a hurry. STOP BEEN SOFT AND START USING A HEAVY HEAVY HAND and BRing this country into line before i move out, becase at the moment it Stinks of shite and curry.