Let's start the riot right here
AN ELDERLY couple who live in Barnet are withholding the £33 levy imposed on Londoners in the form of council tax to pay for the 2012 Olympics.
Tom and Rita Glenister say the charge is unfair and have withheld a portion of their £2,320 council tax bill, saying that they’ll go to jail rather than pay it. They argue that all Britons should contributing to the £9.3billion budget, not just Londoners.
They’ve got a point, although I’m sure we’ll all find ourselves coughing up one way or another. But whatever the rights and wrongs of their argument, I’m just glad to see someone putting up a fight against our increasingly authoritarian rulers, even if they are a pair of pensioners in their 70s.
Because what we need is more civil disobedience. We’re being bullied, harried and taxed to death. We’ve got a Home Secretary who thinks it’s OK to give car park attendants and park-keepers the right to hand out spot fines, demand our names and addresses and take our photographs. We’ve got health and safety legislation that says builders can’t use ladders unless they keep three parts of their body in contact with the ladder – so tell me this, Mr Hi-Visibility Jacket: how on earth do you hammer in a nail while keeping one hand on the top rung? Do you bang it in with your forehead in a fit of frustration with officialdom?
If you do, then please don’t make any noise while you do it. Even musicians performing in the Proms have been told to quieten it down a bit in case someone’s ears are offended. Oh, and you can now get fined two grand for deliberately discarding a cigarette end or accidentally dropping a crisp.
It really is getting beyond a joke. The residents of China must look at us and think: “Phew, but for the grace of God …” Or Mao. Or whatever.
It’s time we rose up against this Turkey Army of clipboard-carriers. Remember the Poll Tax Riots? Well, I’m quite looking forward to next year’s Wheelie Bin Riots – the event that will go down in history as the day that the belittled, belaboured, white, middle-aged, middle classes of this country threw off the yoke of Joe Jobsworth and burned traffic wardens outside the town hall – in memory of Joan of Park, perhaps.
AND IF you’re not already angry enough, try getting poorly. Not only will you be denied the life-saving drugs freely available to patients in Scotland and Wales, but you’ll also have to pay through the nose for the privilege of dying a premature death. And that’s because while our Celtic brethren have banished car park charges from their impressively funded hospitals, NHS Trusts in this country continue to leech off the vulnerable and infirm to the tune of £100million a year.
And why can they afford to do this while we poor English must suffer? Well it’s because they receive more central funding per capita than God’s own people. Not only that, they also take more out of the system than we do. I could spend a lot of time getting the figures together, but frankly I can’t be arsed, but trust me: all the Welsh are on the sick and all the Jocks – at least those who have jobs – work in the public sector. And meanwhile you’re getting wheel-clamped while visiting your dying mother. What a disgraceful state of affairs.
OF COURSE, when the Powers That Be aren’t bullying us or fining us, they’re busy losing computers and memory sticks containing our personal financial details which then inevitably end up in the hands of Nigerian internet scammers.
Now it’s a funny thing, but I don’t recall Captain Mainwaring ever losing all the account details of his customers while visiting the tea shop, and he had more to worry about than a supposed credit crunch. For all he knew, Fritz was going to come storming up the beach of Warmington-on-Sea at any minute.
Actually, that analogy holds firm across many other situation comedies. Who amongst us would doubt that our jails wouldn’t be better off if Senior Prison Officer Mackay was in charge? Who doesn’t think that Blakey could run our buses properly? John Alderton, aka Mr Hedges, would make sure that the Fenn Street Gang would at least know how to read and write before leaving school, foot and mouth wouldn’t dare break out on Siegfried Farnon’s patch, and I’m certain the bushy-bearded James Robertson Justice would have little time for MRSA outbreaks or car park charges at hospitals.
In fact, the only point at which this argument breaks down is when we come to the wrongly-sexed Vicar of Dibley. Still, you can’t have everything.
I’M CONFUSED. I bought a DVD from Tesco the other day – the best of Love Your Neighbour, since you ask – and before I could get to the hilarious jokes I had to sit through hours of tedious warnings about video piracy.
Now forgive me if I’m being stupid here, but why am I being menaced by the authorities on a legitimate, paid-for official DVD? They know I’ve paid full whack for it; why do they feel the need to put the frighteners on me? Wouldn’t they be better off insisting that the video pirates stick the warning on the front of their shaky, hand-shot, cinema seat-based productions?
Tom and Rita Glenister say the charge is unfair and have withheld a portion of their £2,320 council tax bill, saying that they’ll go to jail rather than pay it. They argue that all Britons should contributing to the £9.3billion budget, not just Londoners.
They’ve got a point, although I’m sure we’ll all find ourselves coughing up one way or another. But whatever the rights and wrongs of their argument, I’m just glad to see someone putting up a fight against our increasingly authoritarian rulers, even if they are a pair of pensioners in their 70s.
Because what we need is more civil disobedience. We’re being bullied, harried and taxed to death. We’ve got a Home Secretary who thinks it’s OK to give car park attendants and park-keepers the right to hand out spot fines, demand our names and addresses and take our photographs. We’ve got health and safety legislation that says builders can’t use ladders unless they keep three parts of their body in contact with the ladder – so tell me this, Mr Hi-Visibility Jacket: how on earth do you hammer in a nail while keeping one hand on the top rung? Do you bang it in with your forehead in a fit of frustration with officialdom?
If you do, then please don’t make any noise while you do it. Even musicians performing in the Proms have been told to quieten it down a bit in case someone’s ears are offended. Oh, and you can now get fined two grand for deliberately discarding a cigarette end or accidentally dropping a crisp.
It really is getting beyond a joke. The residents of China must look at us and think: “Phew, but for the grace of God …” Or Mao. Or whatever.
It’s time we rose up against this Turkey Army of clipboard-carriers. Remember the Poll Tax Riots? Well, I’m quite looking forward to next year’s Wheelie Bin Riots – the event that will go down in history as the day that the belittled, belaboured, white, middle-aged, middle classes of this country threw off the yoke of Joe Jobsworth and burned traffic wardens outside the town hall – in memory of Joan of Park, perhaps.
AND IF you’re not already angry enough, try getting poorly. Not only will you be denied the life-saving drugs freely available to patients in Scotland and Wales, but you’ll also have to pay through the nose for the privilege of dying a premature death. And that’s because while our Celtic brethren have banished car park charges from their impressively funded hospitals, NHS Trusts in this country continue to leech off the vulnerable and infirm to the tune of £100million a year.
And why can they afford to do this while we poor English must suffer? Well it’s because they receive more central funding per capita than God’s own people. Not only that, they also take more out of the system than we do. I could spend a lot of time getting the figures together, but frankly I can’t be arsed, but trust me: all the Welsh are on the sick and all the Jocks – at least those who have jobs – work in the public sector. And meanwhile you’re getting wheel-clamped while visiting your dying mother. What a disgraceful state of affairs.
OF COURSE, when the Powers That Be aren’t bullying us or fining us, they’re busy losing computers and memory sticks containing our personal financial details which then inevitably end up in the hands of Nigerian internet scammers.
Now it’s a funny thing, but I don’t recall Captain Mainwaring ever losing all the account details of his customers while visiting the tea shop, and he had more to worry about than a supposed credit crunch. For all he knew, Fritz was going to come storming up the beach of Warmington-on-Sea at any minute.
Actually, that analogy holds firm across many other situation comedies. Who amongst us would doubt that our jails wouldn’t be better off if Senior Prison Officer Mackay was in charge? Who doesn’t think that Blakey could run our buses properly? John Alderton, aka Mr Hedges, would make sure that the Fenn Street Gang would at least know how to read and write before leaving school, foot and mouth wouldn’t dare break out on Siegfried Farnon’s patch, and I’m certain the bushy-bearded James Robertson Justice would have little time for MRSA outbreaks or car park charges at hospitals.
In fact, the only point at which this argument breaks down is when we come to the wrongly-sexed Vicar of Dibley. Still, you can’t have everything.
I’M CONFUSED. I bought a DVD from Tesco the other day – the best of Love Your Neighbour, since you ask – and before I could get to the hilarious jokes I had to sit through hours of tedious warnings about video piracy.
Now forgive me if I’m being stupid here, but why am I being menaced by the authorities on a legitimate, paid-for official DVD? They know I’ve paid full whack for it; why do they feel the need to put the frighteners on me? Wouldn’t they be better off insisting that the video pirates stick the warning on the front of their shaky, hand-shot, cinema seat-based productions?
posted by BarryBeelzebub @ 3:27 PM
5 Comments:
Perhaps the Glenisters should spare a thought for those of us who live within a few miles of the coast in Devon. The water rate for my humble band-c, two-bedroomed 'hice'(as the BBC say) is now close to £1000 a year. I'll help pay for the London Olympics if they will pay towards cleaning Devon's beaches.
I'm ready to riot say's his water bill is nearly £1000 a year.
Let's see now, a good few years ago some Hitler in Government decided to privatise water boards because they were about to become too expensive to run, I believe it was about 49 years after the war this happened!
Up here in Beautiful Scotland we never fell for this one. So we still pay a small percentage of that along with our Council Tax.
Now, I can hear you say that we Jocks are getting off lightly at your expense again but think about this.
During the war they were very short of base metals for water pipes, connectors, valves and etc, so some bright Hubert had the idea that these pipes could be cast in concrete, except when they did so, water being quite abrasive to concrete pipes actually wore them away all too quickly. So "Hubert" had the idea that they could line them with this new grey stuff that was very smooth and solved the abrasion problem - giving the pipes a lifespan of about 50 years before this new wonder lining cracked up.
In case you haven't cottoned on yet - the new wonder lining was something called asbestos.
So you are probably paying to have the bombed out pipes in your area that were replaced with asbestos, to be replaced again with something a tad more healthy. Meanwhile we up here in the land of the pure water, still have asbestos dust floating around our kitchens and bathrooms. Now the HSE SS (State services) Nazis, will tell you on this one, that asbestos is inert whilst in water and therefore cannot cause you any harm. But I have never yet turned on a tap without getting tiny, (presumeably asbestos carrying) droplets splashing around the area, so when the droplets evaporate where does the dust it left behind go to?!
Also in the land of the pure mountain spring water up here, it is a well known fact that almost all water supplies come from surface reservoirs, and that a friendly cloud of radioactve dust blew over from a place called Chernobyl, and very selectively fell on hillside farms that were not on the same side of the hill as the reservoirs. Thus the farmers on this side of the hills had to have their beasts killed for being radioactive,but those on the same side of the hill as the nearby water supply were seemingly ok.
They then realised they had made a bit of a mistake and it was publicised at the time that the radioactive particles were not disappearing quite as fast as they had thought they would. Mainly because the livestock was eating it (Glow in the dark, sheep and cattle in our butchers shops!) But they also deposited radioactive crap on the grass again, which keeps the radioactivity recycling quite nicely thanks!
Now the Nazis are prepared to admit that Scotland, having one of the highest cancer rates in the world, (Which is still on the increase by the way!) is due primarily to the fags that they have made virtually everyone, give up. (Remember that smoking ban they brought out up here, a year or so before you got it!)Seems nicotine must hang about in the atmosphere for decades without dissipating at all!
Now sadly I can't confirm that your thousand pounds or even a penny of it is actually being put to giving you a safer supply, but would you rather pay less by "Upping sticks" and coming up here to enjoy our cheap but fluoride/asbestos thick glow in the dark stuff.
It's worth the risk of buying a copied DVD just so you don't have to sit through 15 minutes of anti-copying warnings every time you play it, as any copier worth his salt removes the stupid warnings first anyway.
I came to this conclusion after finding a DVD that played the anti-piracy messages in every major language on the planet but would not show me the film!
I had a legit copy of "Pirates of the Caribbean" but me ol' dad through it out because he was afraid of having a pirate DVD in the house and he didn't fancy masked agents of the council swinging through the windows in clouds of tear gas.
I think if we should spend all this money on the olympics, then the para olympics then we should seek for a left wing agenda alternative to increase productivity of the event and hence increase the use of each building.
Therefore I suggest after the para-olympics we have the ASBO Olympics. . . . . any other suggestions
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