The reasons I am cross today are multiple.

I see that kids are now being paid to stay on at school and do their A Levels/AS Levels/YTS bollocks, or whatever the fuck it is these days. This is to the tune of 30 quid a week. Thirty smackers a week?! If the little bleeders don’t want to stay at school, then let them bugger off and earn a living doing something else. The older I get, the more I realise that the whole point of life’s rich pattern is we’re not all supposed to head for Oxbridge and take the medical/legal/literary world by storm. Therefore what is the point of bribing slack-arsed teenagers into education if they’re not up for it? If they can’t make their way in the big bad world because they didn’t do the appropriate course or take the correct exam, the majority will soon learn and go back to college. And they will do so all the better for having learned a lesson the hard way for themselves and taking the correct steps to rectify the situation, willingly and with a smile on their mugs.

The corruption of this government doesn’t stop with children it seems. Now certain elements of Parliament are proposing to bribe obese people into reducing. For the love of fuck, it won’t work. That cash would be better spent on getting to the root of the emotional problems that make these pitiable people stuff their faces. Where do you suppose the bribe money will go if you incentivise people via their bank accounts? Straight to Ronald McDonald, that’s who. Gordon Brown might as well cut out the middle men and head straight down to the nearest golden arches with the security codes to the nation’s coffers.

What I would like to know is, when am I going to be led donkey-and-carrot style into doing what the bureaucrats want me to? Are they going to pay me to not drink anymore wine, so I don’t strain the already overburdened NHS when I require a new liver? Am I going to see my bank account fattening up when I sell my car and resign myself to the purgatory of the British public transport system, once and for all? Is Big Gordie going to send me a case of Champagne when I hike to my next holiday destination, instead of clogging up the skies on the most convenient charter?

I think not.