With the sop to the Lib Dems for their partnership in the woeful coalition coming on the 5th May, we’ve seen lots of celebrities coming out to endorse the Yes camp – big deal. You know the Yes vote is in trouble when it asks celebrities for help, can’t their argument stand on its own? I assume they’re going for the people who recognise them from X Factor, Heat, Closer and the like, and hope they’ll be easily swayed (probably).

Although this has been known for a while, the Yes vote group has received a substantial amount of financial sponsorship / backing / bribe from the Electoral Reform Commission, who just so happen to be in charge of running elections in the UK. They also just so happen to make £millions if we move to an AV system; as usual Guido Fawkes has the story. It is a grubby little band, and if people vote for AV, more and more grubby coalitions will be formed for years, with the chance that there will never be an outright winner again.

There are two things you should know about AV:

1. It is only used in three countries, and of those, two want to get rid of it
2. Nick Clegg wants it

The second point is enough to convince me to vote No.

Anyhoo, here’s my good friend Alan B’Stard to explain why AV is a terrible, terrible idea:

Please note that you’ll need to watch it all the way through…

VOTE NO TO AV.

Just a quick pointer that the Rally Against Debt blog is up:

Rally Against Debt

This is certainly a great cause – anything to show the State-addicted that the private sector is no longer willing to support them is A Good Thing

Finally, a rally for normal, working people to protest in:

Rally Against Debt

Any visits to Fortnum and Mason’s by protestors will only be to marvel at their selection of quality goods and perhaps make the occasional purchase.

I think this is a great idea – it should not be hijacked by any left-wing anarchic idiots as the UK Uncut march on the 26th was. Mind you, the majority of the people in the march were just left-wing idiots, scared at seeing their State-supplied lifestyle being cut off. I firmly believe that more, deeper cuts will be required, preferably diversity co-ordinators instead of front-line services.

I work for a living, I have a private pension, will be losing Child Benefit in a couple of years, and can’t even get a required operation on the NHS despite barely using the NHS over the years. I require nothing from the State, and as such, the State should require nothing from me – it even takes taxes under threat of violence.

Perhaps this is what I should point the remainder of my life at – the shrinking / rolling back of the intrusive State…

Just a thought: I’ve read that Ireland, if they “dip into” the EU bail-out, may lose their economic and political independence as a consequence. Given all the talk about the possibility of Ireland needing the bail-out is leading to other countries to withdraw money, is it possible that the talk is being engineered by the Franco-German facet?

Not that my opinion counts for anything (apart from at the ballot box), but here’s how I see things at the moment:

• George Osborne is right to target benefits, it is not right that they are seen as a “lifestyle choice”. At my pervious job, I would go to the gym, walking past several pubs full of people – what were they doing all day? Why am I working, so that someone else can choose not to? Lord Tebbit’s recent post on the public sector contained a wonderful quote from the architect of the modern welfare state, William Beveridge: ‘unemployment benefits should be limited “lest men become habituated to idleness”.’
• Speaking of the public sector, the news that 9,000 public sector employees are paid more than the Prime Minister is shocking, but not surprising. The public sector badly needs cutting, and the ever-excellent Burning Our Money blog has a chart that ably demonstrates where to start, go have a look.
• Vince Cable at the Lib Dem conference: he’s not spoken yet (it’s 5am or so on 22/9/2010), but you can’t have the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills bashing capitalism. Or saying that a cap on immigration is bad. Or perhaps we just can’t have Vince Cable in the coalition. Lord Tebbit’s post linked above has some ire for him. Worringly, the more I hear from Nick Clegg, the more I like his style
• More Lib Dem madness: why is a eco-nut (Chris Huhne) in charge of energy policy? Not only is he talking up 70′s-style oil prices, but he is also advocating (in the time of recession) a green (bleurgh!) tax rise of £800 a year for motorists and holidaymakers. I thought the war on motorists was meant to have ended? Incidentally, our energy bills have gone up 15 – 20% thanks to the green taxes imposed by the last useless Labour government, thanks a bunch.
• Finally, the best for last: remember the HMRC? The HMRC that lost the child benefit details of 25 million individuals? The HMRC that sent personal details of 19,000 tax credit claimants to wrong people? They now want to calculate your tax for you, not your employer, and let you have whatever’s left. You really couldn’t make it up…

I’m a bit dismayed that the coalition is acting like the last Government, but I believe this is down to the LibDem influence. Never mind, a quick email to my MP via WriteToThem may garner a response

The news that the HMRC has totally ballsed up millions of people’s tax should come as no surprise. Briefly, 4.3 million people have overpaid their tax and are due a refund, and 1.4 million people have not paid enough.

Whilst it’s nice to be owed a refund, spare a thought for the 1.4 million who are being asked, nay, demanded to repay an average of £1,400 or so. It’s not really up to them to decide whether to repay it or not, as HMRC will be taking it directly from their salary. This is, of course, only affecting the middle classes who actually work for a living instead of sponging off the state.

There was some talk about HMRC taking control of tax collection directly, i.e. bypassing the employer, but this total cock-up clearly demonstrates their incompetence and reason why they shouldn’t be even left to run a whelk stall.

Add to that the news that 1 in 5 tax records could be incorrect, and the HMRC look even more “not fit for purpose” (a rare link to The Independent there )

The Telegraph View on the matter gets right to the heart of the question: “The crisis raises a wider point about the degradation of institutions of which this country was once justifiably proud”. Or, in plainer terms, when did we all go to pot? What happened to pride in a job well done? Or even just a job done? The gross incompetence of the HMRC lays bare the UK’s lacksadaisical approach to work, which is shocking.

The coalition government has taken the wrong stance by blaming the previous Labour government, which is a complete cop-out. The money should not be reclaimed from those who owe, as it was HMRC at fault. The new computer system will no doubt be blamed, but as some chap on Sky News said, people operate computers. Perhaps that’s where the problem lies: people rely too much on computers these days to do their thinking for them, and don’t bother to check what they’re actually doing.

Needless to say, the overbearing, big-brother style bullying tactics of the HMRC (“pay up or else”) will make a lot of people nervous, but there is some good news: As Anna Raccoon details in her take on this, the information in this Daily Mail article shows that it might be possible to tell the taxman where to go, so have a read.

It really is hard to be surprised any more about how truly awful the public sector is these days, but this slow-building story has finally hit the front pages and people’s doormats, requesting monies when we’re still in a recession and probably heading for another one. It is just wrong for the HMRC to be demanding money at a time like this when it was their cock-up. The HMRC really need to have the auditors sent in, the head should be sacked, the tax system vastly simplified (no more tax credits, simple bands, nice and easy) and the hundreds (thousands?) of incompetents (not a spelling mistake) be placed in jobs where their skills are more apt, like staring out of a window.

It’s the ramblings of a c**t.

That is all.

Holy crap. Just when you thought Labour could do no more harm, sink no lower, surprise you at their sheer awfulness:

Lord Mandelson to become Minister of Information

I mean, wow… But… I…

Seriously, I need to have a lie down now. Am I really living in a 1984 world?

My philosophy:

No one’s gonna take me alive,
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive

Whilst the rest of the country is sitting on its arse, claiming benefits, not working, not being productive, watching X Factor / Jeremy Kyle, terrorising the streets, those of us who do work – and I mean proper work, not some jobsworth crap in the council, suckling at the teat of the state – are taxed more and more, penalised more and more, and just basically screwed over more and more.

Well, no more. I vow to always rail against big government, to always question pogroms, to always question, to always fight for my rights (and not the Yooman Rights that Blair foisted upon us) – even when there may be no chance of winning:

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves” – Winston Churchill

Labour have absolutely ruined the Great Britain I loved. They have systematically destroyed the goodwill they inherited in 1997, pissed away all the money that came their way, allowed unfettered immigration to radically alter the look of the land (with no benefit whatsoever), screwed us over on Europe, ruined education, massively increased the surveillance state (no surprise given that the Left were friends with the KGB until the early 80s), turned us all into wishy-washy people who can’t think for themselves, launched unjust wars – ah, generally they’ve just f’d up the entire country.

I sincerely hope that the new Government (please don’t let it be Labour) will begin to rectify what Labour have done; they can start by having an “in or out” referendum on the EU, if we’re still in they can repatriate our powers, MASSIVELY cut the state in all areas (including those godawful quangos), sort out immigration, and for Pete’s sake, sort out the police, i.e. get them arresting criminals as opposed to members of the public. Oh, and they can drop that ID card AND the databases that will support it.

This rant is over, but there’s more, lot’s more. I read somewhere that Labour may become insolvent after the next election – I sincerely hope so. Anything that will keep them from EVER coming back and screwing us over again would be great.

And I do not believe that all politicians are the same. Thanks to the expenses scandal, there is going to be a considerable changing of the guard at the next General Election, with young blood should come change.

If not, I’m starting a civil war.