Lying Bastards

Not content with being a general shower of bastards (as mentioned below) the Government have endeared themselves to me even more by this splendid bit of double-speak with regard to the current truckers' protest.

A Treasury spokesman said the government understood business and families were "feeling the pressure from high fuel prices". But they said the "immediate priority" was to encourage oil-producing countries to increase output, that a 2p-per-litre fuel duty increase had been put back from April to October and fuel duty was "still 11% below its 1999 level, in real terms".

Hmm. Really? Do you have, you know, figures to back that up? And what difference exactly would increasing output actually achieve? The majority of the cost of petrol and diesel at the pumps is Duty. And the Government sets the level of Duty. Instead of hand-wringing to OPEC, how about doing something constructive that would benefit the country?

Justice Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC he "fully understood" the hauliers' concerns, but "government revenues have to come from somewhere".

Ah, and that would be the real reason why the Government are more than happy to keep Duty at the present levels. Rather than doing what they're forcing the entire fucking country to do - cut expenditure because income is low - the Government are insisting that they can't control their spending, so we have to keep bailing the bastards out.

The Tories propose anyone under 21 who is unemployed for three months would be sent for an intensive programme of work-related activity. If they were still jobless after a year they would be moved to a full-time 12-month community work programme, with those who turn down a job losing their benefits. Which would be a start, eh?

Or maybe cutting down on profligacy in Government, as more than £325m a year is being wasted by government departments through inefficient use of office space, MPs have said. The Commons public accounts committee (as in MPs themselves, never the harshest critics of their own white elephants) recommended more civil servants should be relocated from London to cut costs. Amusingly, the committee said the Treasury was spending the most on employees' workspace and urged it to "set a better example".

Yet the Government take the "we need more money, so fuck you all" approach instead. And by doing this, show the short termist mentality you'd normally find in investment banks. By not reducing fuel duty for hauliers, the Government risks losing all tax income from that industry. Foreign hauliers, buying fuel on mainland Europe, can come over to the UK and offer their services at a greatly reduced price. No income tax, no VAT, as the theme tune to Only Fools & Horses says, failing to add, no fuel duty, no vehicle excise duty etc, etc, etc.

Fuck the Government, before they fuck you. Join the Revolution.

I am the Revolution, and I want my fucking country back.