Our Country is Disappearing up its own A**e Part III
Now, call me an old kermudgeon but back in the great and glorious day of the empire if you were late renewing your car tax or your MOT, it didn’t really matter in the great scheme of things because there were far more important things going on in the world. There were children starving in the Sudan, there were wars going on …. somewhere and no-doubt pestilence and death were having a bit of a laugh somewhere else as well.
Car tax and MOT, or the lack of renewal of such, turned into a bit of a game. If you managed to go three weeks to a month before biting the bullet, then you felt like a bit of a folk hero. Yes, indeed, you managed to evade capture and you swizzed the government out of a whole months’ car tax, harrar!
If on the other hand you got stopped by le plod, well it didn’t really matter; they would slap your wrist, say “you naughty boy” and tell you also to sort it out!!!, in that Sweeney, Dennis Waterman voice they all did so well.
They were great times weren’t they? Well they’ve gone and have been for quite a while. This country now has no sense of fun in local government and even less in Westminster. Le plod are now referred to as HER MAJESTY’S LOCAL POLICE AUTHORITY and they now have to buy tax and MOT information from the DVLA and insurance information from … well, some bloke in a mack down the Red Lion, probably, to facilitate them sitting up a tree with a digital camera to catch you, the wanton criminal, because your tax or MOT is 17 seconds out of date.
Apparently all the digital technology that PC up a tree has at his disposal is all made by Siemens and the system at the DVLA is also made by Siemans as well. My phone is made by Siemens as well; what relevance has that, I hear you ask; well I’ll tell you, absolutely none but you didn’t know that.
This is just another way of using digital information to try and prosecute the normal car driving public. They don’t care about our fun and games; they don’t care about the psychological boost we would get from feeling like a government swizzing plod evading folk hero.
All they want is to make it absolutely impossible to avoid paying taxes. The Dta Potection Act means nothing to them because they invented that with the loopholes made by the finest craftsmen so as to be able to be ignored at any time it became inconvenient.
The mere fact that the tax, MOT and insurance info on PC up a tree’s disc could be up to 2 months’ out of date, doesn’t phase them either. “They’re out to get us because we is scum!”. I suspect that with only a minor tweek by the Home Secretary, car tax dodgers could be referred to as terrorists and locked up for 28 days without charge, enquiry or insinuation.
Well, it’s the way of this anally-retentive country of ours; we’re not allowed to have any hint of fun at the government’s expense. So keep everything current dear listeners or they’ll get you!
Happy Saabing
Matt
25 November 2005
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