Is it time to leave yet?

2011 has not got off to an auspicious start. The rumblings of discontent are starting to increase in volume. Following on from my previous post, I've seen a Facebook group calling for and supporting fuel protests in the form of refinery blockades, it already has thousands of members, if only 20% of those who support it get involved, there could be sport.

With regard to the VAT increase, Miliband Minority has demonstrated a startling about face in calling the increase 'wrong tax, at the wrong time'. Funny, the ramping up of taxes never seemed to be a problem when his party were in power. To give him his due, he is actually right, it is the wrong tax and it is coming at precisely the wrong time. I've a plan to deal with it, and it is very simple; I'm not going to buy anything unless I absolutely need it. I've learned the lesson about consumerism, if I don't need it, I don't get it. There's a saving of not only VAT but also of the untaxed wafer thin sliver of cash I do have. If I do need it, my first stop will be ebay where I will hopefully be able to find it second hand in decent condition, or from an individual trader who is not VAT registered. If I can't find it there, then I'll have to grit my teeth, but that is only if I absolutely need it.

Of course, Miliband is once again ignoring the elephant in the room. The coagulation will also ignore it, even though this particularly huge pachyderm is their best defence against the VAT rise.

You see when the monocular snot gobbler decreed that VAT would be cut to stimulate the economy, his mouth was writing cheques his arse couldn't cash. EU rules prevent us from cutting VAT, we were merely deferring payment. When VAT went back up, some sort of parity was restored, but the outstanding amount from the period of the VAT deferral was still to be collected. Now Brown's largesse has come home to roost, we have to rake in that defecit, or the EU will point at us and shout 'unfair!'. Of course, once that defecit has been collected, VAT will continue to be collected at the increased rate, because this government, just like every other one that has come before, simply cannot stop themselves from taking our cash under threat of prison and pissing it up the wall like a drunken sailor in a knocking shop.

What Miliband is suggesting is that we should extend the period where the VAT remains uncollected, so that our children and grand-children can be left to pick up the tab. That's fine though, because it allows Miliband to make a point. Fuck 'em, they're only kids.

It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Coagulation to turn around and say 'Sorry, EU rules.' They won't though, that would be unthinkable.

More troubling news from the EU, this time from the current holders of the rotating presidency, Hungary. They've announced some frankly shocking plans about private pensions which probably has Brown banging his head off the table in his psych-ward blaming everybody else for his not having the idea first:

Hungary is giving its citizens an ultimatum: move your private-pension fund assets to the state or lose your state pension.

Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy announced the policy yesterday, escalating a government drive to bring 3 trillion forint ($14.6 billion) of privately managed pension assets under state control to reduce the budget deficit and public debt. Workers who opt against returning to the state system stand to lose 70 percent of their pension claim.

What this means is that the State takes 100% of your pension fund which you surrender 'voluntarily', that money is used immediately to pay off some of the debts, although the Hungarian government, like our own, will also keep spending, spending, spending. Come the time when your pension would have matured, you'll then find yourself on a state pension, which will probably be a pittance, which will have to be paid for by your children and grand-children, who will have the cash taken from them under threat of prison, because the money that was taken 20, 30, 40 years ago is long gone. If you don't pay, then they take 70% off you and then refuse to give that pittance of a State pension which you've been paying for anyway.

Sounds like extortion to me.

Just as Miliband suggests is a good idea, this is spending to ensure that individual politicians remain in clover today whilst condemning the following generations to penury.

Even more disturbingly, there was a little rumbling in the press (not too much though, it would mean pointing out that Elephant again, it must make watching the TV bloody impossible in this room), about Hungary introducing very draconian media regulation and laws on the day they took over the presidency.

The European Union has been thrown into turmoil after Hungary approved a Communist-style media gag just weeks before it assumes the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc.

It has left the EU in the unusual position of threatening to blackball the country that is set to inherit the presidency on January 1 for six months.

On Tuesday, Hungary's parliament - led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban - approved a contentious new law that will expand the state's power to monitor and penalize private media.

This is in direct contradiction of the EU's own press freedom laws. The fact that we've heard nothing about the EU nixing this policy in Hungary or pulling Hungary's presidency of the EU can mean only one thing; the EU's laws are important only when they feel like it, and this control and restriction of the press is something the EU supports, or at least will not condemn.

Be very afraid people, the mask is slipping, but still the Elephant remains unindicated by the people who do their very very best to act in our best interests and look after us.

My arse.

Is it time to leave this ridiculous organisation yet, or are we still to believe that we'd be left isolated (the Commonwealth doesn't exist), bankrupt (like Norway and Liechtenstein aren't) and unable to trade (where we export bugger all anyway)?