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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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Well now, folks, here's a first! We've received this contribution from, of all people, a Tax Man. And believe me, he's REALLY grumpy - there's more where this came from, and frankly by comparison the GOS is just an amateur ....
 

 
A moan from the Grumpy Old Tax Man

 
Benefit Scroungers. What is it with these people?
 
Do they not have the self-respect to earn a living for themselves when they are perfectly capable?
 
I watch Little Britain not because it is funny (It isn't - GOS) but because it is sad to think that this is the most accurate representation of Britain to be seen on TV today. Where I live there are two estates that are full of little Vicki Pollards and people like the bloke in the wheel chair in Little Britain.
 
Some girls have made a profession of breeding to get a new home. If they don't have a home, they have a sprog and get a flat for free. They want a bigger place? They have another sprog and get themselves a 3-bedroom house. Want more cash? Have another sprog. Of course they all have different fathers - that maximises maintenance payments.
 
One thing that made me laugh (or should I say made my blood boil) is my local council. They spent £2 million revamping a multi-storey car park in one of these estates. What for? The average age of the tenants in the area is 15 and virtually no one is old enough to drive - not legally, anyway.
 
And to do it, they used our hard-earned taxes - the revenue I and my colleagues collect in the face of the abuse we receive from the public and the media - courtesy, apparently, of our Gold Plated Pensions and Ground Breaking Pay. In fact it's the Senior Civil Service and Ministers the media should be focusing on - they're the ones who get the Gold Plated Pensions and Ground Breaking Pay, not me and my colleagues.
 
We are among the lowest paid in the country. If I went to work in the private sector doing what I do now, I could earn 3 or 4 times my present salary. But then there's the question of morality: would it be right for me to abuse my knowledge and help people avoid tax? From a moral standpoint I couldn't do it. So I put up with the low pay and try to catch the tax-evaders and tax-avoiders - they are little more than thieves in my eyes.
 

 
The GOS says: There's a big difference between benefit scroungers and tax-avoiders, though, isn't there? Benefits are money given to people who need it because they're ill, or injured, or very poor. Anyone who takes it when they're not ill or injured or very poor is stealing.
 
Tax, on the other hand, is a rip off. The idea of tax is fair enough. If the government said "It's going to cost umpteen £billion to run the country next year and we've all got to chip in, so send us your three-and-twopence please", one wouldn't mind. But instead they've built up an immensely complex system that we can't understand, in which every single thing we do in our lives is penalised. Going shopping for food, using money you've already paid tax on? Pay a tax. Getting there by car, on which you paid tax when you bought it? Pay some more tax. Going on holiday, using money you've already ..... (you know the rest!)? Pay a tax. Dying? That's taxed too. In the past they taxed silly things like windows and the right to sleep with your bride on your wedding night (yes, really - it was called "lex primae noctis"). And not a lot's changed - there's been some publicity lately about a proposal to tax the view from your bedroom window, by increasing the council tax on houses in pretty places. And the only people who can consistently escape these burdens are the wealthy.
 
Sorry, GOTM, but by enforcing this ridiculous system, you're doing the Devil's work. So hie you off to the private sector, earn yourself a decent wage and stop worrying about morality. The GOS spent most of his working life as a teacher, and paid 6% of his wages into a fund so that he could have a small pension when he retired. When he dies, Mrs.GOS will only get half of it - the government will rub its hands gleefully and keep the rest. And she'll probably have to sell the house to pay the Inheritance Tax, too, and live out her days in a caravan somewhere. Where's the morality in that?
 
Oh, by the way, local councils always make your blood boil. I think that's what they're for. I can't see they have any other purpose, for God's sake ...

 

 

 
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