Death & Taxes

Bloody Hell! I've just done my V.A.T. return to discover that I owe them. I know that might be the normal expectation, but because I mostly sell zero-rated goods (comics) and pay V.A.T. on certain overheads (storage costs and stationery, mostly), I've become used to paying no more and even a small rebate every quarter. Not this time. It all comes of trying to rid myself of some of the vatable residue still hanging about from the shop and the years thereafter when I was still "doing" models. No, not that kind of model, unfortunately. Up to a point, this is actually good news, as I can't afford to hang on to them for the rest of my life and on average I'm probably getting back most of what they cost me. Still, paying more tax....

Of course someone needs to be paying tax, indeed we'd better all start paying more soon, however much we'll moan about it, as government borrowing seems just about stretched to breaking point.

A recent feature on The Daily Show demonstrated an American's mock outrage at the tax rates in Scandinavia and confusion at the population's contentment with their higher levies. It illustrated a point which I think the LibDems have been trying (and clearly failing) to make over the past few years. People will accept taxation if they are happy with the corresponding expenditure. In this country we are not.

Everything - transport, defence, healthcare, education to a lesser extent, is done on the cheap i.e. not as well as it could be. Then we moan about how much it cost to deliver mediocrity. If we spent more and had the standards that would satisfy the majority, we would have to pay more tax. We might resent it less than paying what we do for transport that's clogged, worn out armour and understaffed hospitals. But who's going to risk putting that in a budget?

It's exactly the policy Obama claims to be following and for which the right are labelling him a socialist. Sticks and stones. He'd rather be mis-labelled and get the desired result. I doubt that we have any politicians this side of the pond ready to stick their necks out, so it's mediocrity or worse for the forseeable future....

Stoutness Exercises

I've been going to the gym for nearly six months. I joined in early December, partly because I didn't want to get caught up in the post-Xmas rush, and partly because my conspicuous and depressing lack of fitness required urgent attention. Never thought I'd see the day, but I have Tim Wilton to blame/thank for putting me up to it. It had so clearly done him good that I went for it almost spontaneously.

I'm about to set off for my first visit in over a week, though, which is Not Good Enough. There have been a few such interludes, but this is probably the first that has been extended by straightforward laziness. It started off with having toothache and being concerned that writhing about clutching my jaw every ten minutes might be bad form, but once that recovered I just couldn't be bothered. The previous breaks have all had more genuine reasons associated with them - minor injuries and being away, but while I could have made it twice earlier in the week I didn't.

It's not just laziness, although that's certainly a component. It's also boredom. They do their best to make it "fun" by piping up-tempo pop everywhere and providing televisions to watch - usually Sky News in my case. But this does not detract sufficiently from the sheer tedium of plodding away on a cross-trainer or tugging at a few weight plates. The staff are almost worryingly cheerful, which is fine when you're "up" too, but slightly irritating if not. The showers are O.K. but someone seems to wander through with muddy feet every now and again (how? why?) so that despite constant cleaning they never quite make the grade.

It's got to be done though. Type 2 Diabetes, "dangerously high" triglycerides and barely controlled blood pressure suggest that without it I can look forward to a heart attack or stroke pretty soon otherwise. Just don't ask me to enjoy it. I do wonder how honest the people who say they do enjoy it are, to themselves as much as to other people. It's uncomfortable at best, mildly painful at worst, and a lot less fun than watching a DVD with a glass of wine. So don't give me all that "warm glow" guff. It's a necessary evil.

Breaking The Mould

Following on from News addiction, whilst The Telegraph may have done us all a favour by showing us who our elected representatives really are, the original story is running out of steam. There may be new "revelations" on a daily basis, but the message that our M.P.s have been engaged in wholesale misbehaviour got through a week ago. There are a couple of points here.

First, the M.P.s who say they have done nothing wrong by claiming, as those claims were approved as being within the rules, may be legally right but are morally wrong. A plasma T.V. is not essential to the conduct of parliamentary business. It is not, therefore, a morally justified business expense, even if the "watchdog" approves it. These M.P.s either lack a moral compass or choose to ignore it and are therefore unfit to govern and should be summarily dismissed.

Second are those, like our own in Gloucester (so far anyway) who not only seem to be doing their job, but have not abused the system. This is where further enquiry would be justified. Didn't they know what the others were up to, and by turning a blind eye to it, weren't they tacitly condoning it? If so, you might argue, they have failed in their duty and also deserve to be slung out of office. Without inside knowledge of the day-to-day running of the "Westminster Village", it is difficult to guess how genuinely innocent this second group, or individuals within it, are.

For instance, can we believe that none of this group knew that some of their colleagues claimed second home expenses for property barely closer to Westminster than their "main" homes? Didn't some of them wonder how their colleagues could afford to finance lavish lifestyles both in London and at their country mansions? They may say not, and as they haven't worked the system to their advantage we may have to give them the benefit of the doubt. But that doubt remains.

Here Is The News

This has been far too introspective for its own good so far, so let's see what we can do to bring the rest of the world down to the same level.

I am addicted to The News in most of its various forms. T.V. is simplest, with no effort or imagination required, but I seem to be spending more and more time on the BBC web pages, and then there's Facebook. It's still news, but much of it dreary minutiae. This is redeemed by the first opportunity to see the latest additions to people's families and assess just how drunk the youth of today were last weekend. And some of it is funny, like conversation can be in a pub - not worth remembering but a pleasure as it happens.

Physical print may be threatened by the opportunity to read from the web, but the words still spill forth by the bucket-load. A recent trend is for BBC reporters to use their blogs as scripts; their commentary on the days events appears mid-afternoon and they regurgitate it at six and ten for the computer illiterate.
Yet I still buy a paper (The Guardian) several times a week, not for the stuff I already know about, because it happened yesterday and I've seen/heard the news ten times since, but for the peripheral, obscure content for which there's never time on the airwaves. Increasingly this, too is being provided on the web, but so far it lacks the cohesive house style that you get from a paper. Guardian readers, with our beards and love of real ale, are members of a gentleman's club and more legitimately than our Members of Parliament, for we pay to join!