Happy New Year - now hand over your cash.

I really don't understand what it is the government intend to acheive. The first day was good, we were told about the scrapping of the ID cards and home information packs, the databases connected to the aforementioned ID cards was to be removed, if I remember correctly the databases concerning children and the retention of the DNA of the innocent were supposed to go the same way as well. Day one was good. It has all been rather downhill from there, hasn't it?

Just as the government that went before it, this government seems hell bent on destroying business, small and large and squeezing a huge number of the population even tighter as the spending budget, which they claim to be cutting, grows at an alarming rate.

I am talking about this of course:

Petrol station forecourts were busy across the country yesterday as drivers tried to beat the latest fuel price rises.

Duty rose at midnight and combined with Tuesday's VAT rise the move will add around 3.5p to the cost of a litre of diesel and unleaded.

Many motorists ar unhappy about the rise, but the real anger is coming from the haulage industry.

Simon Chapman, from the Freight Transport Association, said it is now becoming a political issue.

"The Chancellor is treating the road freight sector as a bottomless well from which cash to bolster the public finances can be drawn," he said.

I see where you're coming from Simon, but believe me, it isn't just road freight which is being milked mercilessly here, this is a tax on going to work for anybody who uses a car to commute, which is most of us. I can see the Righteous screwing their faces up at this, but you know what, I'd love to use public transport to get to work. Really I would. However there is a problem, I work shifts that cover a 24 hour period. When I start work at half six in the morning, there are no busses that cover the 20 mile route between my house and place of work. When I work shifts where I can use the bus, it takes well over an hour and means me turning up either very early or very late, the same goes for the end of a shift, there are either no busses or I'd have to leave early or sit around for ages once my shift has finished.

The trains are even worse, there is no direct train service between here and there, in order to go by train I have to get a train to one of two towns, and then wait at one of those stations for an hour in order to get the connecting train. I would then have to catch a bus from the station to the part of town where my office is, or walk for half an hour. Once again that is assuming that there are trains to catch at the time of day I have to start or finish work.

In short I have no option but to drive.

The AA has a diagram which is quite helpful and is based on the assumption that a litre of diesel (what my car runs on) is 120.9p, I wish.

Assuming this diagram does not factor in today's duty increase and the imminent VAT rise, it means that almost 63% of every litre of petrol goes to the government. Is that not enough? You want more? What for?

Then there's the VAT rise. The introduction of VAT on fuel was a nasty, cynical move. In what possible respect is the heating of one's home and getting to work a luxury item?

This is the story which will run. Cut public sector jobs and the public will support it. Let the students spray paint anarchist symbols all over central London whilst they demand more money is taken from us and given to them by a cash thirsty state. The only campaign or demonstration which has had any effect since the poll tax riots was the blockading of the refineries by road freight hauliers, and they really did have the public behind them.

Everyone dislikes taxes, but the duty and VAT on fuel is nothing but banditry. There is no good reason to attack petrol like this, beyond the fact that it is a resource that everybody uses, either directly or indirectly. So important a resource is petrol and diesel, that a tax on it is the equivalent of a tax on life. It puts up the cost of getting around, it puts up the cost of moving livestock, grain and vegetables from farm to plant, and the cost of moving produce from plant to store and from store to home. These fuel tax rises are the rises that will get the people out on the streets, as the rise impacts on all of us and it is deeply unjust.

The hauliers brought the country to a standstill, and I think they can do it again. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they gave it a go.

The problem is that as this rise hits mainly individuals, the politicans don't really care. We are just polling station fodder. It is our job to shut up and file through dutifully once every five years and vote for the same old people who will continue to screw us over in the same old ways.

They will listen to 'charity' though. Hot on the heels of the ridiculous plans announced by the idiot Maude, the 'charities' have decided that they don't want these cuts, and don't trust us to donate willingly, even with a 'nudge' from nanny, so they have drawn up a plan of their own to get more of our cash by force.

Charities are calling for a new tax on bankers' bonuses to help protect their organisations from funding cuts.

Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, which represents 2,000 charity leaders in Britain, said such a levy could help prevent thousands of charities closing or cutting services.

How can government cuts possibly hurt charities? Surely their income comes from donation, bequests, judicious investments. . . oh.

No, you see, Stephen, it doesn't work like that. That isn't charity. A charity is an organisation that people give money to voluntarily because they support the aims and work of that organisation. A charity is not an organisation that demands money from the taxpayer, with the government stood behind them like the gutless little bully's idiotic muscle, to do stuff that they think is important. That is extortion.

The fact that you propose this and start squealing like a stuck pig because the Treasury has ever so slightly reduced the amount of publicly funded swill it pours down your throats suggests to me that the public don't particularly care about the 'good cause' you represent, or don't trust you to actually do any good around your cause. If they did, you wouldn't be bleating about horrible cuts because you would have a regular income stream in the form of donations.

Go take a look at the RNLI, Help for Heroes and the Royal British Legion. They are charities.

And whilst we're on the subject, all you national and local goverment departmental heads, all you CEOs of 'charities', you are ensuring your prophecies are self-fulfilling. You whine that cuts will hit frontline services and those you rely on, and to prove your point you then cut those services whilst ensuring that your equality and diversity community cohesion outreach officers and your six figure salaries, bonuses, company cars (no doubt with fuel cards to protect you against the rise in duty) and other perks are left untouched. You betray the people you have made dependent upon you, the people who work tirelessly for the cause they genuinely believe in (rightly or wrongly) and act in a manner more deceitful and with more venality than any politician. You are a disgrace.

Happy bastarding New fucking Year.