Thing is, if you did have kids you'd get all the breeder bonuses, Working Parent and Child Tax Credit and all that crap (which they'd still fuck up and still wouldn't give you enough to live on).

I'm probably the last person who should be talking about this because you know my political and financial philosophies and I won't get started on one other than to say I think everyone should throw their televisions in the street, use the Daily Mail as kindling to set fire to them and their front doors then sit around the bonfire to call a national strike; people would cooperate with each other over any government because they're coming to resent that far more than each other.

This financial situation is essentially state control just as the net and travel monitoring, under the guise of terrorism they tell you what you need because as ever, they know best. Eliminate child poverty? Minimum income guarantee? Horseshit, they've trapped people and that's how they like it, make them think they've got free will and choices by extending cheap credit to those they know can't afford it then reap the benefit when the hammer falls, in five years time those nationalised bank shares will be back to their privatised levels and the poor won't see any of it. I'm no idealist (and I acknowledge I got it easy because I'm foreign so I didn't play by the same rules) but Marxism does work to a point, it's only when the bureaucrats abuse their power that communism goes tits up and whilst they won't admit it you're already half way to Eastern Germany, you're just not getting the benefit of feeling secure. Beyond that sometimes, free speech is now a figure of speech when you have thoughtcrime, abhorrent as it is Jihadist poetry gets people put away and do you think Orwell would have been allowed to publish in this day and age?

It's said "our lot" - for want of a better expression - have chosen the hardest way to make an easy living but it's not true any more, being a straight is even harder and more previously honest people are finding the black economy the only way to survive, a friend of mine is in the same situation as you so she took a second job on a checkout just to keep the (rented) roof over her head and they automatically put that part of her wage into the 40% tax bracket, not because she'd gone over the threshold but purely because it was another income. She still couldn't afford to live and after questioning her ethics became a tobacco smuggler, tax on that is something else you're getting screwed for so she pays her bills and feels she's got her own control because she's screwing them back double. Criminality doesn't always equate to greed, the Fuck You rationale keeps people afloat and more are buying under the counter which in turn lessens tax revenues, it's a self perpetuating cycle and the state still doesn't see they're the ones destroying the country.

Ineptitude, billion pound databases to hold all that data they want to keep on you until it's left on a train, more prisons because everything is becoming an offence now, I'd say it was a joke but it's too serious for that, you need change. November 5th is near...

I did get started, oops. I think I'd better stop now.
 

That's too tempting a thought (Nov 5th!) I'm not generally a violent human being but I'm not Saint Sadie either and to be honest something as simple as watching Newsnight drives me into a rage these days. I know there are people worse off than I am, and I shouldn't complain but a lot of people worse off than I am aren't in a situation where they even know how to begin complaining and therein lies madness and violence and the fucking rest.

Yep, I know about the tax breaks for breeders, that's another thing that makes my blood boil. You get the benefits for being too stupid to make him wear a rubber, or remembering to take your bloody pill. And I know it's not all stupidity, I know that there are some women genuinely trapped in situations where they're the sole breadwinner and they DO deserve some kind of a hand up but it's too easily exploited. I'm the only breadwinner in my household and I'm not entitled to tax credits because I'm not working more than 30 hours! Do the single mummies work more than 30 hours? I bet most of them don't!

Gawd, just let me find a decent barge for a reasonable amount of money and I'm off back under the radar again. It's all too tempting right now.