It’s the end of the world as we know it.
I’d actually like to point out this is an incoherent rant based on everything wrong in the world. I apologise for its sloppiness and lack of structure and lucidity.
But I don’t feel fine. There’s a lot to this point where numerous amount of different topics could fit in. Change is inevitable, it’s healthy and usually good but what if we’re being misdirected? Led astray by our own stupidity? That’s what seems to be happening in a whole manner of things at the moment. The whole way society thinks is being manipulated in this growth of change but we don’t even realise it.
First off, is the change in politics. You may not care but you really should when it comes to effecting your life and that your knowledge and vote does make a difference. The change in politics at the moment is the constant increase in taxes, the constant decline in the public sector and the general load of bullshit we are spoon fed in a patronising manner, as if we’re all idiots. The sad truth is, we aren’t ALL idiots but the majority of idiocy is ever grasping its hold on society. A society which proudly boasts a film for the anti-Christ of music; Justin “cunting” Bieber. Of course, cunting isn’t his middle-name but you get the picture. He’s just a big prick in a prepubescent and pig-faced body of stupidity. I’ll get back to him later though.
The constant increase in taxes of main items is making life more and more miserable for everyone. The pleasure fund goes down. The quality of life goes down. The happiness level of the country goes down. A lot of things which you wish wouldn’t go down, go down and take you with them. Then the things you want to remain steady or decrease, expand and increase in gigantic manners leaving you weeping into a glass so you can collect the tears to bathe as you can’t afford to pay your water bill. We all need to recycle anyway so that’s a plus side to all those wasted tears.
Petrol remains the soaring complaint of most people, including me. People tell me to sell my car and a lot of other poor suggestions but I’m not going to argue with them, I’ll just simply say “no” rudely. The massive problem with all of these hike ups in prices and taxes means the economy will suffer which I already discussed here. Now businesses will struggle and cripple underneath the debt they’re making because of the lack of customers because of too much tax leaving them with only enough to survive because of the right-winged plan which won’t work because they didn’t think it through or listen to anyone because they’re Eton educated perfection but they’re actually just ignorant idiots. I just don’t understand how an eighteen year-old, third year sixth form student can figure this out but a privately educated Oxbridge graduate cannot. State schools prevail in the promotion of common sense? Probably not actually. Schools are shit for the most part and education makes learning and being knowledgeable a loathsome chore.
A change that is necessary is finding an alternative fuel. I don’t want to become all hippy about this issue but it’s becoming increasingly important and I’m starting to get slightly worried. Oil is being used as if it was in abundance but it’s really not. Hypocritically, I’m typing this on my laptop which is being powered by electricity which is harnessed from oil but what can I do to stop it? I can’t just build a wind turbine in my back garden. It’ll be ineffective, it’d just be one of those garden ones. You know, the ones which sparkle because of the glittery paper? No? Just me?
I’m trying to make light of a dire situation really and maybe I shouldn’t, maybe I should press you with some rather depressing and frightening facts. I was informed about a month ago but “peak oil”. This means the peak, the high-point, the maximum amount of oil and oil consumption we have before it goes into decline. The scary part about this is that we’ve already peaked - we’re now in a decline. We need to find an alternative fuel before it runs out and we all just stop. There’d be no electricity, no heating, no gas to cook, no refrigeration for food, no transportation for food and so on. We’d all be left to our own devices and our own life survival skills which we don’t have. No more going shopping for food because you’d have to grow and hunt your own food. After that, you’d have to prepare the food yourself and you’d have to cook it in a makeshift stove because your oven in the kitchen would be powerless. It’s all up to you.
How scary is that? The human race has become so dependent on this energy that a high majority of us would starve to death. We need to use the energy we currently have to invest in a new energy because we all know solar panels, wind turbines and other makeshift things aren’t very viable. Nuclear power is possible but not without its massive disadvantages and possible mass destruction. Is that what you want? A mutating power plant? There is only one fuel which I know is perfect for an engine but I have no idea about anything else and that is hydrogen.
Hydrogen is abundant and we literally can’t run out. The only problem is that it’s so needy that it’s always stuck to something so we need to purify it then condense it into a liquid which doesn’t come at a price, but that’ll come down. That is the only draw back. It emits water instead of carbon dioxide so the “we’re all going to die because of global warming” panic will be over because we will no longer be ruining our atmosphere. The best part is that Honda have already made a hydrogen car and they can mass-produce it and it’s the same price as a brand new Honda anyway. Honda can sit back and take all the credit for saving the world but it’s been three years and I don’t think there are any more hydrogen pumps in the world bar in Los Angeles. Why has this not been rectified? Where’s the scrappage scheme when you need it?
Change happens and change can happen quickly but why isn’t it happening now? We’re usually quick to change everything even to protests but this is a positive change which is being restrained. Yes, people will still have petrol and diesel cars and yes we’ll still use the oil but they’ll slowly be phased out and they’ll never NOT exist but they won’t need that much so they probably wouldn’t run out of oil. We’d all be frolicking in the clean air because no cars would be polluting our faces. Personally, I don’t care about the pollution of my senses or air. It’s air, it doesn’t feel different anywhere so I don’t care.
Another change which is practically the end of the world is how the world of music and film have changed. Look at music now. The people who will be remembered as “greats” of our time. I’m ashamed to even call them that sarcastically and be associated with my generation of “pop” music. The greats will be people like Lady Gaga who stutters in her songs of electro manufactured vomit and they all sound the same. She’s a PR whore and a media driven hype because she’s psychotic. She shouldn’t be idolised and worshipped, she should be committed to the hospital. If I dressed all in meat and went out in the street I would be wrestled to the ground by nay-sayers for being a lunatic whilst being viciously gang-banged by a pack of dogs.
Another atrocity and plague to our society who will forever be known - unfortunately - is Justin Bieber. Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I want to savagely beat this child with his own possessions. He is at the core of everything that is wrong with music. He’s been signed to a label since he was fourteen. Being praised for talents he does not possess as he dances his way around his teen demographic of ignorant and herded morons who will never know better. He parades around telling his irritating fans to “never say never” as if he tried so hard and struggled through thick and thin to be what he is today when really it happened overnight.
Then there’s the X-Factor. This is the brutality of music as people butcher songs which weren’t good anyway in a desperate plea to be overexposed to people who attention spans of gnats. They are talentless people who will go straight back to their menial jobs. They didn’t work for it, they didn’t write their own songs, they didn’t hit every note but they were praised anyway. Why are we falsely praised in society today? Good work, honest work and real work is, apparently, something of the past. The real talented people go to waste while Usher signs on for another tour where he’ll dance and sing a word here or there…out of tune.
Black Eyed Peas. They are the definition of talentless. Their breakthrough song which seemed to make pop music seem like it was actually tackling political subjects wasn’t even written by them. They now go back to their ways of club songs, auto-tune and their need to cover yet change the words so it’s a club song as well; how clever. I direct you to “Dirty Bit” which could stand for the worst song of the century.
The terrible TV programme which features a bad script, bad acting, bad singing, bad writing and pretty much everything bad is praised as a great. It’s actually an award winner: Glee. It’s hypocritically named Glee when it all it does is fill me with such sadness, anger and resentment to everything as I watch it.
Then it goes to films. The real films which have substance, meaning or are just genuinely well acted or well made are ignored. They’re ignored for films which aren’t funny nor are they entertaining. Big Momma’s House 3 proves that films are going downhill. The constant amount of identical RomComs filled with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher butcher the modern film industry and they butcher society as a whole today. Such great actors like John Cusack are poisoned to create filth like 2012 and The Contract after such greats as High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, Pushing Tin and numerous other fantastic films.
The world is poisoned and riddled with the disease of idiocy. The streets are littered with dead brain cells which have been destroyed in this plagued society. I feel that I’m the one of the only sane people in a world of insanity, drivel and literal dribble slopping out of the mouths of slack-jawed, knuckle scraping Neanderthals looking to be entertained quickly and constantly. No one wants to think any more. Thinking is in the past, how dare I speak of such an ancient and archaic concept. Why must I live in such a wronged world?
The world’s taxing debt.
Another boring rant by yours truly. I will use this for other things soon. I don’t know what but something that might interest more people. Broaden my horizons to something more people will take notice of while slipping these ramblings inbetween. Either way, this time I’m going to talk about tax and not just about tax but the excessive amount of tax and current debt owed to us in tax from companies. Did I say tax enough in that sentence? One for luck; tax.
As everyone already knows - or should know - the VAT went up 2.5% again. That means that VAT is now at 20% after being lowered to 15% while Gordon Brown was in charge. We’ve seen it rise 5% in just two years to try and sort out or “crippling debt” so we don’t become the next Ireland or Greece. There are countries in a lot more debt than us. I’m going to explain it using the “Debt-to-GDP Ratio” which is how much debt a country is in and how much products they create and export to pay back those debts. In simple terms; the lower the percentage, the better and more stable the economy is. According to the list in the “CIA’s World Factbook 2010”, Zimbabwe have the worst ratio. It’s at a staggering 282.60%. That’s an insanely high number but they’re a poverty stricken country so that much was obvious. The second in this list is some what a surprise but not at the same time. Japan. Their percentage is 189.30%. That’s almost a 100% less than a poverty ridden country which may seem good but that’s a crippling debt. The UK’s 68.10% is nothing in comparison. Japan are in three times more debt (ratio wise) and still borrowing. For more of these figures, click this.
Currently, Britain owes about £952.80bn in September 2010. Those were the published figures but according to some statistics it’ll rise even further. They’re predicting that by April 2011 it’ll rise to £1043bn and then £1.2trillion the next year. Wow. Maybe it is worse than we thought. Let’s compare us to some other countries. Depending on where you look online, you find different statistics so it’s a bit hard to actually have a definitive answer on who owes what. All I can find is the Debt-to-GDP ratio which is a shame. If the CIA online figures are correct then the USA owe the most with $13,450,000,000,000 being their external debt. Shamefully, the UK is trailing in second with $9,088,000,000,000 but I don’t understand enough to actually guarantee these figures are accurate. They seem to be hiding behind the debt-to-GDP ratio instead of giving a real figure. We all know the government don’t like us knowing everything about their constant short-comings. For more official CIA statistics on all external debt, click here.
Thanks to the ambiguity of the information released by the government, I can’t find any real numbers bar the public sector debt which is £952.80bn but surely has increased since September 2010. For now, I’ll compare ratios. We’re the country with the 22nd highest ratio which is a bad thing. That means there are 21 countries which are worse than us and, yet, we’re the ones taking the most extreme and bizarre methods. For example, the VAT rise. This rise has been judged by economists to “hit the poorest the worst” but that was bound to happen as it was a idea coined by the Tories. Now, what they don’t realise that there’s probably more money to be spent by the working class than the others. It means that if you’re the working class, be prepared to be miserable and never enjoy anything because you now can’t afford comforts. A 2.5% rise seems very minor but considering VAT is on almost everything, it will add up and it will start to show. It’s already shown on stuff like petrol prices (which are at their highest price ever).
Let’s carry on with this VAT rise. Gordon Brown - a heavily criticised prime minister who was condemned for his lack of charisma even though he’s an economic genius - lowered the VAT to 15% during a recession to make sure there’d still be spending and the economy growth didn’t shrivel up and die in a drought filled manner. I must add though that he did raise it back to 17.5%. David Cameron - a ‘charismatic’ liar who screamed ‘new Tory’ and criticised Labour for Tory mistakes that were still being rectified from John Major and Maggie Thatcher - raises the VAT to 20% so that he can watch the poor writhe in pain in an inhumane fashion as they slowly lose possessions and any enjoyment in life. Maybe an exaggeration and a bit excessive but you see what I mean. Cameron has made it more expensive to eat, travel and even clothe yourself. He says we need to pay back our crippling debt quickly or we’ll end up like Ireland or Greece but if he was so concerned on paying debt then why have Vodafone and Topshop gotten away with their ludicrous debt to the government?
This has been a fairly undisclosed and had very little media hype apart from a few journalists who actually care. One of those journalists, Johann Hari, brought this to my attention and I was appalled. Vodafone currently owe about £6bn to the government. Shocking, isn’t it? It gets worse. Not only was this debt not paid, it’s very doubtful it will ever get paid because George Osborne has apparently ‘written it off’. That’s £6bn that could’ve plugged one of the holes in our ever drowning economy. That £6bn (which sounds like an insane amount of money to me) could have helped pay off the interest to our debt at least. That £6bn will never be seen, in my opinion. This is because George Osborne didn’t only ‘write it off’ but he then travelled to India - on government expenses - to help Vodafone promote their service and if that wasn’t enough he hired a worker from Vodafone to be a financial advisor! They hike up the cost for the poor and hit them harder than a giant corporation who could spare that without a sweat? How is that just? According to UKUncut they’ve tired to to dodge another £1.6bn which was owed to India, but unlike Britain, they made sure they got that money.
Now to move on to the tax dodging Topshop. It’s not really Topshop but the owner of Topshop, Philip Green. He is a businessman who makes all the decisions of Topshop and effectively rules the business. Although, it’s not his name as the head of the company. It’s Mrs Philip Green, his wife. His wife also lives in the tax haven, Monaco; how convenient. That means that the £5bn they rake in doesn’t get taxed. If that wasn’t bad enough, according to UKUncut; he built his business, his empire, his mass fortune on the blood, sweat and tears of sweatshop labour in Mauritius where his workers work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for minimal wage. This man - who is famous for giving himself the biggest bonus in UK corporate history, £1.2bn - avoided £285m tax on that £1.2bn because it was done through offshore accounts and his glorious Monaco wife. That’s only the £285m on his bonus as well, not including his other tax dodges.
A massive corporation and greedy tycoon dodging taxes. Shameful. Unfortunately, there’s more to this tax-dodging tale. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is an infamous tax-dodger himself. The man who rules our economy and has publicly and famously criticised the national debt and said “we simply cannot afford to increase public debt at the rate of £3bn each week” has now shamefully increased our debt with his own corruption. To me, this is sickening and unjust. Why should the poor suffer even more than they already do just because massive businesses want to maximise their investments from stockholders? Why should one man’s greed be allowed considering he makes his money in the UK and even lives here? Why is it that the government hired a tax-dodger to chase up tax-dodgers, control our economy and decide on public spending? Why are people who have not come near a financial struggle in their entire, privileged and sheltered lives, decide on our funding of the public sector?
Quite simply, why is Britain so unjust?
Twenty year-old wannabe writer. I love films, music and other random things. Aberystwyth university student. Not enough time to do everything that I want to do. 
