Misery In The UK

The United Kingdom would fair well in a corruption comparison between countries of the world. However, is this an illusion?

The UK has bureaucratic corruption, held up with lashings of red tape that has most people spinning uncontrollably into debt. It’s corruption in legalised form that is all ‘prim and proper’ but when analysed closely, is just dressed up corruption.

The Stress Of Simply Parking Your Car

Let’s first look at the simple need to park your car in England. The chances are that when you park up there will be a time limit on your stay, which will have you rushing around the supermarket or tourist destination like a mad dog. You’ll notice that most pay machines will have the sign ‘This machine does not give change’. Very odd you might think . . . the local council not making a machine with change giving functionality. Why is that? Did they forget to leave out the specs of the pay machine production when they gave the contract to the company that produced them? No, they want to keep your change, it’s as simple as that. To add insult to injustice, many machines conveniently have a 90p fee, as they know the odds of you having the correct change will be pretty slim. So, you pop in your 1 pound coin and the car park owner or council keeps your 10 pence.

So is this corruption? Yes. Although when corruption is in legal form the authorities can gloss it over as being well . . . ‘legal’ and above board, which of course makes it okay. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realise that it is in fact unfair, greedy and below the belt.

Delegating To The Masses

When you rush around the supermarket, wait in line with other impatient people who also have their car on a time limit and then the cashier says “Do you want a bag with that?” if you have forgotten your bag, people will frown at you and see you as the sole reason for global warming. It’s a good idea of course, but people in the UK are being brainwashed into believing that they are stopping global warming just by bringing their own bag to the supermarket. Every little helps, but each person having their own car and environmental footprints via the truck load of gadgets they have at home far outweighs the ‘bring your own bag’ token gesture. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea, but the country has got to do something better than that.

Separating rubbish into different bins is a good idea on the whole. Although people have conveniently forgotten that there used to be factories that sorted it out for you. Now you are doing a government service job that you were paying taxes for. Now you are paying the same taxes + more and have to do it yourself. In some places they are even charging you to take large items of rubbish to the dump. You will probably have to queue at the dump with the astronomical price you paid for fuel going down the pan as you wait. In fact, if you go around someone’s house in the UK you have to work out what each bin is for. God forbid if you put your wheelie bin at an angle or the lid is slightly up. You will be slapped with more red tape fees or they may even flatly refuse to collect your rubbish that you have painstakingly sorted out yourself.

Half the food you buy at the supermarket is already wrapped in plastic anyhow. If the government brought down the price of organic wholesome foods it would make a difference not only to the environment, but to the increasingly obese population in the UK as a whole.

Let’s face it, most people in the UK are overweight, carrying round an old shopping bag, stressed out, in debt and looking up at rain clouds. Do them a favour and give them a break and they will love a government that helps them, by reducing wholesome food prices and edging out fast foods and stress.

By the way, don’t just raise taxes on cigarettes, ban them as they are a class A+ drug in that they kill more people than any other drug. There’s just so much money to be had by governments and powerful companies around the world and so many votes to be lost if they banned them outright and closed down the tobacco companies that they just can’t bring themselves to do it. If cigarettes were a new drug coming onto the market, they would be banned instantly. It’s just too late now as too many fingers are in too many pies politically, too many people are addicted and there are large sums of money at stake, plus smokers already addicted would rebel as they’ve been railroaded into needing this drug. This is not just in the UK but worldwide.

TV License

What about TV licenses which were initially brought in to ensure the quality of the BBC channel. Now there are many channels, as well as satellite TV options. However, you still have to pay a TV license – funnily enough. TV detector vans and having to have a license, for no reason if you think about it, are absurd and laughed at by many countries. Just mention it to someone from America and they will laugh their socks off. Is a TV a dangerous animal? Is it a firearm? No. The whole thing is ridiculous when viewed with common sense.

Phone Monopolies

Want to buy a phone in England? In Thailand for example you can usually buy a phone number for around 3 pounds and buy a phone card for around 2 pounds and a phone that is unlocked. All separately. It is hard to find a phone on a contract unless you go out of your way to look for one. In the UK however it is a monopoly. You will be tied to a contract or hammered by crazy costs if you select a pay-as-you-go option. In the UK, PAYG options are always options that are tied up with stupidly high costs, as if to penalise you for not falling for having to buy a contract. The phone and communications market has been sewn up into a monopoly. All legally and above board of course.

A Lifetime Tax Charge

What about Council Tax. Ah, good old Council Tax, the tax that means even if you do pay off your house you will still have a lifetime fee for living there. Many other countries, if you pay your house off you are free. This is not the case in England however. You are never free from payments.

A Police State

So what about the ability to do your own DIY around the house that you are paying for? Well, that’s becoming increasingly difficult, as now, to be completely legal you usually have to employ someone to do the work as it will not be legal for you to carry out the work. Then, with a dash of red tape they’ll tell you that the plasterer, builder or electrician must be a member of some body or union that has a high joining fee. These fees are then passed on to you in the form of a big bill for work you could have easily researched and done yourself if it is a simple job in most cases.

One of the best opt-outs when you corner someone endorsing this bureaucratic nonsense is that they’ll quote an accident or fatality that happened when someone didn’t go through the ‘proper’ expensive channels. They will conveniently pass over all of the successful DIY work people have done in their own homes and instead quote a case where someone has come to harm. Perhaps someone dropping a trowel on their head in 1971 or some idiot that blew his house up in 1986 etc.

In the UK you live in fear most of the time, as criminals usually have more rights than victims. If someone hits you in a pub and you hit back, they can take you to court. If you fight with a burglar, he can sue you. In fact, you have to wait for him to go upstairs before you can even tackle him, maybe he will help himself to a pizza you have in the fridge and kick back on your sofa and not even bother going upstairs? Even then, you have to make a citizen’s arrest with minimum force. This is of course not taking notice of the fact that the burglar will no doubt be armed and violent. In other countries you can shoot the burglar. In the UK you have to tickle them with a feather into submission. If he is allergic to feathers he will still be able to sue you of course.

Absurd Tax Laws

In the past, England had a ‘beard tax’, so that if you wanted to grow a beard or forgot to shave, the tax collector would come round. All above board and legal of course. Then there was the ‘window tax’ where if you wanted to avoid this tax you’d have to brick up your windows. ‘View tax’ is being considered, so that if you live in a place with a nice view, the authorities get a legal backhander. ‘Computer Tax’ was once considered and still may come about in the future.

The ridiculous red tape and legal backhanders have put a lot of people in the UK in debt. With the recession, the problem has compounded itself.

Legal Loan Sharks

Short-term loans up to 1000 pounds are all the rage now. In the small print it says that there will be a 100 percent interest charge if you don’t pay on time in a lot of cases. Many young people are falling for this, defaulting on a payment and ending up with a 2000 pound loan instead of a 1000 pound loan which may compound even more. This enables legal loan shark companies to really dig in and take full advantage of people suffering in the recession. All legal in a proper British way of course. If it’s legal it can’t be corruption right?

In fact, what if third world countries just drafted up a load of legal documents to make corruption in their countries legal? Then they’d be on par with the UK and fair very well on a list of countries least affected by corruption. Sorted.

Vote Buying

Vote buying can’t be happening in the UK right? Many immigrants in the past have flooded into the UK illegally and the government has been very careful on not cracking down too much. Even though the UK is known worldwide for being soft on illegal immigrants. If they cracked down on the ability to easily settle in the UK the government would lose votes from minority groups. They then give justification for not setting up rigid immigration laws with the phrase ‘political correctness’ and try to slap people concerned with weak immigration laws as being ‘racist.’

Having strong immigration laws is essential for a country’s survival. If you go to Asia for example, in many countries it is almost impossible to become a resident. Just because countries have strong immigration rules does not make them ‘racist’. Common sense would be to look after the minority groups in England, do away with racism, but keep rigid immigration rules in line with the immigration rules set down by that person’s home country/government. Of course it isn’t fair to accept immigrants from countries that don’t offer the same freedoms to UK settlers abroad.

Benefit fraud is rife and the government knows this, however they’ve been very careful when it comes to cracking down on benefit fraud too much until now, when the recession kicked in and gave them no choice. People living off benefits and avoiding employment is a huge voting pool that if the apple cart were to be upset it would cause millions of votes to be lost.

In their efforts to be ‘politically correct’ to ensure votes they even allowed immigrants to burn a union jack and parade it through London. If you did this in the immigrants’ home countries with their own country’s flag, you’d be stoned to death or put into prison for life. But hey, don’t crack down and lose votes, just label anyone questioning the UKs weakness as being ‘politically incorrect’ or, if they persist, label them as ‘racist’ if worse comes to worst.

Of course, having said that, if immigrants come to the UK and are prepared to respect the country and bring something of value to the country, immigrants should be welcomed with open arms. Just eject the ones burning Union Jack flags and blowing stuff up. End of story.

Stress At Work

Computerised style employment is all the rage now. You will be input into a computer system and your activities monitored. They’ll maybe even hook you up to a bar coding system or some other time/productivity set up and maximise the workload to stretch you beyond your human limits.

The mass media really controls the mood in the UK now. There now is about 95% bad news with a little 5% of good news added on at the end of news broadcasts now, just for contrast and to highlight the misery. Victims that recover are not reported upon. War torn countries that recover are not reported on. If it snows, the reports will be about miserable horrific accidents, not about the joy children are having making snowmen etc. It’s gotten so bad, that if you are seen as positive, you will be seen as being unrealistic until you mention something negative. In fact, most conversations are about bad news between people in the UK, or the bad weather.

EastEnders Culture

The UK is also being brainwashed by EastEnders and miserably dark series, all a knock on effect from the media. Many people even copy the behaviour, with lots of ranting and raving, wearing footballs shirts with shaven heads and tattoos whilst boasting about how hard they are, even though they may have a beer belly and couldn’t outrun a turtle.

School Stress

If you have a child at school and want to go on holiday in school time, you will have to draft a report as to the reason why and maybe even pay a fine. Heck, your child may even be given a mandatory project to complete whilst on holiday, to really stress your family out when you should be relaxing. The handful of bad parents out there have caused the UK to make a ‘one rule fits all’ ruling. What’s the alternative? To go at school holiday times and pay double the price for your holiday and enjoy the stress of booking in somewhere that’s probably already booked or overpriced. Packed holiday destinations with droves of children to really make your holiday that much more relaxing lol The school will also have impossible targets to reach and will in some cases give your child a percentage of how they are fairing against other students. Similar to the computerised approach on employment in the UK, they’ve also lain down this kind of performance related monitoring stress for students and teachers. God forbid if a child has learning problems, the poor mite will have his low percentages waved in front of him before being labelled as a special needs student.

Really, do we need all that stress? What happened to the joy of childhood and just doing the best you can in your school years without being treated like an app on an iPad?

One Rule Fits All

Well, that’s an overview about the misery sweeping the UK. If you go on holiday to the UK however and you are not resident in the UK there are some beautiful places to visit and the history of the UK is fascinating and well documented. There is breathtaking scenery and nature and the UK is unique. If you are considering living in the UK however it can be a very different story . . .

The UK has become almost a police state. Almost communist when it comes to taxing people. If one person does something stupid, a law is brought in to inhibit all the sane people in the UK also, making them pay the penalty of other people’s mistakes. The lashings of red tape and rules probably kills more people with stress, more than the damage the odd idiot would do if there were more freedom. A majority of people are responsible and a lot of rules are well over the top, as well as rules that extort money from you and cause stress, such as car parking –  expensive time limits with machines that don’t give change.

UK Stuck In Bureaucratic Mud

There is so much unneeded red tape that it drives up the prices of electricity and water bills and the cost of living as a whole, stressing people out even more. New emerging countries are competing in the world arena now and there is increased trade competition. If the UK wants to compete with these developing countries and new economic forces it must shed some red tape and start using common sense to push forward. Those emerging countries have got half the red tape that the UK has and will move ahead whilst watching the UK get stuck in expensive bureaucratic mud.

I would like to think that there might be a revolution in the UK, but alas, people who are trapped in debt and struggling have no time to protest and it’s kind of seen to be immature adults in the UK, as Victorian values still linger. Instead, unemployed people selling the ‘Big Issue’, Bob Marley fans or university students with time on their hands are usually the only people to show up at a protest. The rest of the population usually just moans  (in a very British and mature way of course) behind  closed doors. A very popular, but wholly ineffective way to bring about change.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / freedigitalphotos.net