Ok, so this one is going to sound rather selfish to a lot of people but bear with me here, this is a rant about ME versus the world after all, and I’m sure a lot of people are feeling similar things so let’s all group together and be depressed as one.

So this rant begins like this: why is it that the government are such complete assholes?

I ask this question based upon two recent events. Event number one was my just watching of the television. The BBC put together a video package of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and their rise to power in 1997, and several dozen times since where they swore that we wouldn’t return to a system of “boom and bust”, i.e. that the economy would grow steadily and we wouldn’t be experiencing a high followed by a low followed by a high followed by a low followed by a… well, you get the idea.

The presenter then immediately turned to the chancellor and asked him to explain why it was that we were in economic crisis if there would be no boom and bust, and the chancellor, having just watched the video, claimed that they never said there wouldn’t be a downturn. I think the presenter had a more toned down reaction than the one I had in my head, and this is why I’m not on television: I would have laughed and then hit him in the jaw, which is to be fair exactly what that idiot deserves. They promised there’d be no “boom and bust”, and when there’s a bust they claim that they never said there wouldn’t be one?!

Is it just me or are politicians better at keeping a straight face and blatantly lying to the camera than they are at actually doing their jobs? I seriously think that we should take this guy and just kick him out of his job, take away his pension and tell him go queue at the job centre every Friday for his £45 a week just because he’s apparently too stupid to be left in charge of our money. And I mean this with every fibre of my being.

They cocked up, and then they tell us they never said they wouldn’t? WE PAY THEM NOT TO COCK UP!! That’s like paying somebody to fix your car and it breaking down with the exact same problem a few days later and the repair guy telling you “well I never said it wouldn’t break”. In that case of course you can go to court and sue the mechanic for being inept so tell me, can we get together as a country and sue our politicians for the same thing? Of course not, because if we did much like in the “Cash For Honours” scandal, the courts would mysteriously find that even though the government acted wrongly they didn’t actually do anything wrong. Wouldn’t you love to be a politician?

I seriously want to start my own political party. I’ll call it “The Common Sense Party” and will only allow people to join who can look in to the camera and NOT LIE! People would love it and we’d secure 95% of the votes, because not being lied to ALL THE TIME is such a lovely concept.

So is giving money to people for them to spend.

This is my second major gripe with the world at the moment. Every month people are forced to pay taxes to the government, which we assume is spent on things like school teachers, doctors, hospitals, cops, firemen, road works, unemployed people and all the other happy things that keep our worlds ticking over. Right? And I have no problem with that. Hell it’s a great idea, when it works. And every month we’re also forced to pay money to the local councils, which we assume goes to pay for garbage collection and… um… well, they must do something else for us. Those annoying leaflets perhaps? Adverts telling other places how awesome our place is maybe? I’m sure they do something with the money…

The point is however that when we give the councils money in the form of council tax we expect that it goes to make our lives better. We think that by giving the councils this money it helps the world around us tick on. What we don’t expect is to find out that the Kent County Council reportedly have more than ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY MILLION POUNDS saved up in foreign banks.

Let me put that in numbers for you: £170,000,000.

If they have THAT much money saved up, exactly what is it for? Can somebody please email me with a breakdown of what that money is being saved for, and indeed email me with a breakdown of exactly what people who pay their council tax are paying for, because I’m assuming big chunks of the money they get in goes to pay them, and another big chunk goes to Iceland to boost the saving accounts that now no longer exist due to the banks going bankrupt.

Most importantly of all answer me one more thing: WHY IS NOBODY FURIOUS ABOUT THIS BUT ME!? Why is nobody fuming that these people have taken our money and invested it abroad and we’re seeing precisely NOTHING happening because of it? I have a good mind to go and make an appointment at the council tomorrow and ask for a breakdown of what they get in and what they spend out, because I seriously want to know what this money is for. If they have THAT much money saved up, why are we still giving them more? Isn’t that enough for them to give us all a nice break on our council tax, or a refund of some kind in time for Christmas? Wouldn’t that be lovely? But no, somebody somewhere decided that it’s a good idea to have A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY MILLION POUNDS saved up. Thank you whoever you are, I want you in the queue behind the chancellor tomorrow morning at the job centre.

So here’s where this little rant gets selfish, because with people throwing hissy fits and not wanting to lose money and selling off all their shares and the world stock markets crashing (which in itself is just retarded, why are they allowed to mass sell all their shares? Shouldn’t there be some kind of rule to STOP this happening because it’s causing a never ending loop where everybody is going to sell everything and nobody will buy and the stock market will never recover all because a group of idiots would rather have a few extra coins in their piggy banks at home than ride the DOWN part of the stock market having enjoyed the UP part for so long, I bet even with the money going down they still have more than they started with) this means that mortgage prices have gone up and here’s me, a poor little student who hasn’t ever gone crazy, who has only ever borrowed what he knows he can pay back and who has been sensible now suffering alongside everybody else. How is that fair?

They say that life isn’t fair, and boy are they right. Hey “they”, whoever you are, want a job as the guy at the council who makes decisions on spending money or the chancellor? Those jobs should be freeing up pretty soon.

Seriously though, somebody tell me how this is fair. My bank royally screwed me over and haven’t even had the decency to respond to my nice letter I wrote them telling them I was upset that they screwed me over and asking what I can do about it. Apparently whoever read that letter probably realised they had screwed me over and decided to shred it so that nobody else would see. Which sounds pretty much like the banks anyway! If they fuck up, just hide the evidence and eventually everything will be ok. Well that’s how we got where we are. And I know people are losing their houses (hell I might be one of those people soon since my mum and stepdad are struggling to pay the goddamn mortgage, even with increasing my rent and screwing me over) and I feel bad for them, and if it happens to someone I know I have a mattress on which you can sleep, but I want to know why just because OTHER people have fucked up I have to be made to suffer for it! It pisses me off.

And I want to know why my whole family expects me to get a job just to help them out (because apparently the times I’ve helped them out by lending them money in the past have been forgotten – although I’ll admit if it were JUST my mum I were helping I’d try my best since she’s helped me as much as I’ve helped her, but still) when I’ve paid £3,500 to do the final year of my degree, I’m about to be buried in assignments and I’m trying my best not to let the fact that if I don’t do well on said assignments the rest of my life will suffer because I’ll get a lower pass on my degree and thus probably not as good a job affect me as it is, the very LAST thing I need right now is to have to get a job just so I can pay EVEN MORE rent.

All I want from life right now really isn’t much. I don’t want to go on holiday to exotic lands (like my sister, who got herself in debt going to Australia for seven months and now plans to pop over to South Africa in January for a few weeks). I don’t want to buy expensive televisions and gaming systems (well ok I do but I know I can’t afford them). I don’t want to gamble thousands of pounds in the hopes of making thousands more. All I want out of life is to go to University and get a good degree (preferably a 2.1 or a 1st just because my best mate only got a 2.2 and I’d love to get higher because it’d be funny (hey Karl!! *waves*)) and have enough money left over to buy a few pretty things, buy some comics, buy some video games and get drunk occasionally.

But I don’t have enough money for the video games, the pretty things or the getting drunk bits. I do, however, have the money for the comics, so let’s be happy about the small things.

Hell the small things are all there is to be happy about. And if not for the idiots who have power and keep fucking it up for the rest of us right now I’d have an extra £250 to my name because I WOULDN’T have had to borrow it off my mother and sister just to survive back in August, and that would mean I’d have more than just one game that I like and be able to afford a few more fun comics to read and a few nights out to celebrate my upcoming birthday. Thanks HSBC; you total cunts for screwing me out of the £250.

And thanks HMV for screwing me out of £15, for which I shall never use you and your evil stores again.

So yeah, I’m poor but then I’m a student, I’m MEANT to be poor. I’m not meant to have to worry about my parents losing the house in which I live. I’m not meant to have to be pissed off about not being able to get the same finances as other people. I’m meant to get drunk, read comics, play video games and go to lectures. Is that really so much to ask?

Apparently so…

To anyone who read this and was upset that it may not have made total sense I’m sorry, but I needed to vent.

That is all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Life Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.