If I had wanted to live in a libertarian dystopia, I would have moved to America c. 2002
The government are arseholes. But I say this like it's news, or in some way surprising. It's not. I'm just appalled on a daily basis about how far they will go. Now they're going to abolish speed cameras - a piece of technology which is proven to decrease the number of serious road accidents - because they interfere with the lives of "law abiding citizens" on those days when they decide to put two fingers up to authority and break the law.
And this is on top of the business where they're going to make the unemployed do community service. Sorry, "unpaid work placements", because they haven't quite made it illegal to be unemployed yet (but only because prisons are expensive). It'll be bloody workhouses next, since the poor won't have anywhere to live when their housing benefits have been cut. And of course lots of the people who do work will be mired in debt before they get their first pay packet, after tuition fees go up to nine grand a year. Then on top of your job you'll have to go out and do some almost-compulsory volunteering, running the your local community centre, or giving your elderly neighbours a bath and getting their shopping, because the people who used to have a job doing that are now on the dole, and the only work they do is to go out and pick up litter for their £65 a week in benefits, neatly doing away with the need for those other public sector parasites from the council's streetcleaning department.
But hey, you can drive your car as fast as you like, and if you're married you'll get a £3 a week tax break - to share between the two of you; the government aren't made of money, you know - so we're living the good life here.
It all just makes me want to put my fists through the nearest wall and then shout in the street until somebody comes to take me away. I have some acquaintances who voted Tory, and part of me never wants to have to see them again, because I would only feel compelled to give them a shake and scream Look What You Did into their smug, aspirational faces until something cracks. The vast majority of people in this country voted for parties who didn't want these cuts, and even those who voted Lib Dem were tricked into thinking they were voting for a different agenda. I'm increasingly drawn to the conclusion that the only thing left to do is start a riots, occupy government buildings, and force them to take notice, but in reality I know that all this would do is get me locked up, either in prison or a psychiatric hospital. It hurts to watch society collapse in on itself, but there's nothing else to do.
And this is on top of the business where they're going to make the unemployed do community service. Sorry, "unpaid work placements", because they haven't quite made it illegal to be unemployed yet (but only because prisons are expensive). It'll be bloody workhouses next, since the poor won't have anywhere to live when their housing benefits have been cut. And of course lots of the people who do work will be mired in debt before they get their first pay packet, after tuition fees go up to nine grand a year. Then on top of your job you'll have to go out and do some almost-compulsory volunteering, running the your local community centre, or giving your elderly neighbours a bath and getting their shopping, because the people who used to have a job doing that are now on the dole, and the only work they do is to go out and pick up litter for their £65 a week in benefits, neatly doing away with the need for those other public sector parasites from the council's streetcleaning department.
But hey, you can drive your car as fast as you like, and if you're married you'll get a £3 a week tax break - to share between the two of you; the government aren't made of money, you know - so we're living the good life here.
It all just makes me want to put my fists through the nearest wall and then shout in the street until somebody comes to take me away. I have some acquaintances who voted Tory, and part of me never wants to have to see them again, because I would only feel compelled to give them a shake and scream Look What You Did into their smug, aspirational faces until something cracks. The vast majority of people in this country voted for parties who didn't want these cuts, and even those who voted Lib Dem were tricked into thinking they were voting for a different agenda. I'm increasingly drawn to the conclusion that the only thing left to do is start a riots, occupy government buildings, and force them to take notice, but in reality I know that all this would do is get me locked up, either in prison or a psychiatric hospital. It hurts to watch society collapse in on itself, but there's nothing else to do.