A Day To Forget ...

Yesterday was the sort of day you'd just as soon forget. It seems that no sooner do you get your head above water than along comes Dame Fortune in her Size 9s and pushes you right back under again. On Tuesday evening, I couldn't get my computer to close down, so I did what you should NEVER do and switched it off manually. Come Wednesday morning when I tried to boot her up again – Zilch!! Absolutely as dead as the proverbial Dodo. Apparently, the 'mother board' had died and, like the aforementioned Dodo, is now obsolete and therefore couldn't be replaced.

To cut a long story short, the deceased was carted off on a stretcher with a cloth over it and today I took delivery of a nice, shiny, refurbished PC which seems [at present] to be a huge improvement. However, it cost us an eye-watering £200.00 which we could ill afford and has reduced the size of our dwindling financial buffer yet further. (Not to mention the fact that although all my files were rescued, my programs all have to be reinstalled or re-downloaded and I've lost all my bookmarks and saved web pages etc.) And then the car will have to be taxed at the end of this month which will just about wipe us out. Heigh-Ho – the life of a benefit scrounger is just SO much fun!

I read 'Peter, Freeman of the Land's comment on Tuesday's blog with much interest, especially in light of the yesterday's call by some senior economists for George Osborne to scrap the 50p tax band for high earners. Even if it is true that this higher rate tax band drives talented individuals and successful entrepreneurs away from our shores, (which I don't entirely believe) it is inconceivable that any right-thinking Government could so openly take from the poorest people in Society, as they are currently doing, and at the same time give such a huge break to the already wealthy few! Even the supreme arrogance of the present coalition would surely baulk at such an obvious 'Robin-Hood-in-reverse' scenario?

And then I read the headline on the front page of today's Daily Express. A VERY small bone is apparently going to be thrown to ”millions” of low and middle-income earners, in the form of a tax cut worth up to a princely £400 per annum! The ConDems want us to think that they are actually going to do something for the less well off. Now, if we were privy to the incomes of the few people affected by the 50p tax band, and we calculated how much better off each of them would be if that band were removed, I think we can safely say that it would amount to a darned sight more than £400 per annum, don't you?

Once again, the well-to-do, middle-and-upper class côterie from which all our politicians are now drawn, is throwing a sop to the hard-working but low-earning majority while at the same time giving more than a passing thought to repealing the “never more than temporary” legislation which levies a slightly higher rate of tax on their own earnings. And they expect us to believe that they have our interests at heart?

As I mentioned before, I have major problems with the big, wide world out there. Until recently, one of the ways I coped with this was to do my weekly shopping online, rather than going out to the supermarket. Nowadays I have to screw up my courage to the sticking place and venture out of my bubble into the ultra-cheap, non-branded places, which don't do home delivery. We no longer have such things as life or house insurance because we can no longer afford the premiums. We have reduced our visits to my elderly parents from once a week to once a fortnight because we can no longer afford the petrol for the 70 mile round trip. So go ahead, George, and take away the 50p in the £ tax band. Boost the income of the few at the expense of the many. After all, life as a “welfare junkie” is just one long breeze ...