#EndAusterityNow

I see there's some ghastly gathering of unwashed fucknuggets making Westminster smell even worse than usual today. Owen Jones, Russell Brand, Charlotte Church and various other shroud waving shitgoblins and taking time out from their celebrity lifestyles to boost their street cred with the lower ranks.

Apparently, because the actual overall majority of voters didn't vote for the Tories, so the Tories don't have a mandate for their agenda.

76% didn't vote for this Govt - Osborne has no mandate for austerity.  He wants to shrink state not cut deficit #EndAusterityNow #JuneDemo - Caroline Mucus

That's lovely, Cazza, but as was immediately pointed out to her, 71% of the people in Brighton Pavilion didn't vote for her, so is she going to resign out of principle?

Furthermore, as I recall (and I may be wrong, but it's definitely that order of magnitude) something like 61% didn't vote for Blair in his "landslide" and I don't remember this concern for the unrepresented from unwashed lefties back then.

There have been dozens of variations of democracy implemented all over the world, and none of them ever meets with universal approval. But the British state has gradually been centralising control powers over decades, meaning that the blatant disparity between what people want and what they get is becoming more and more overt.

The same thing happened with the Scottish Independence referendum - despite a very clear win, there was a sufficiently large minority who lost out that feel that they haven't been heard.

Yet when I point out that this is always the case in a democracy, that there is always a large chunk of the populace who get fucked over, whatever the result, I always get told that I should join the system and change it from within. I'm told that my sniping from the sidelines does nothing useful.

So today my message to the earnest, the thuggish and the hypocritical who want someone else to pay for everything is this: go become a politician, go change the system from the inside. Your protest marches are no more effective than my blog posts.

Or alternatively, consider the possibility that I may be right: democracy is merely a fig leaf that allows evil Tories to fuck over the poor or kind-hearted Labour to fuck over the poor in a different way.

Tax is theft

This is a guest post from @VendettaBeretta

Tax is theft.

Don't believe me? Read on....

The following is taken from an email sent to me by a poster on Twitter.

I first took an interest due to a tweet that read

"grrrrr now I will go for a cold shower, as the Inland Revenue have taken my bathtub (really)"

Now, you can probably see what caught my attention. The Inland Revenue wouldn't actually remove someone's bathtub, surely? Guess again. And her underwear. Not sure what the resale value is in worn pants these days, but I'm sure there's probably a market for it in the office of HMRC anyway.

Anyway, to the email.

"they suddenly gave me a tax bill of £125.000.00 - yes £125k and it was outrageous given that I mormally paid about £10-12k a year. my accountant told me to ignore it as it was wrong - so I did but I telephoned them to say so. they changed the bill from 125k down to 88k then 55k then 35k but all the while they had my bank accounts frozen and they had out liens on my property - i had 2 properties, they took one property and i went ballistic - then 18 months later they took my mnain business property - I owned both these buildings with no mortgage. I am now living in a flat with a mortgage but since they bankrupted me I have been on the dole and now the mortgage company are repossesing this flat - and they have kindly agreed to wait till after I have had 2 knee operations. but my time is running out I will be evicted soon - god help me - I have lived here for 10 years. the main reason why they took all my property is that they kept me bankrupt for over 3 years and (you might not know this but) every single week the IR keep you bankrupt they charge you (or me) £1000.00 administration costs - so I didnt have a leg to stand on. every time I filled in forms or went for an interview - they told me they would have to look into in it - it took them 6 months to get my bank statements (they would not asccept them off my accountant or me) so in that 6 months - I was billed for 26k in admin costs - thats the way trhey play and its DIRTY and very very unfair - i fought like hell but i had no credit cards and no cheque books and - after 3 years they had accunilated almost £200k in administration costs -thats when the bill was brought down to 33k but with the admin costs - they seized my property and contents - and left me with nothing - not even any clothes - its a bad story. I NEVER thought my country could do this to me."

The highlights are mine.

The point I'm raising is not just against the clearly incompetent accountant, who should have advised against ignoring HMRC demands, but of the conduct of HMRC throughout this affair.

How does a demand for £125 grand turn into £35 grand? On what formula is this based? Does this sound like a professional government agency, or gangsters demanding protection money? The taking of two properties? The admin charges of £1000 per week would make Wonga blush.

Tax is theft. You can keep your bullshit about fair shares and tax avoidance. You can claim it to be part of a social contract if you like that sort of statist newspeak. You try not paying the tax man, and he'll be riflling through your knicker drawer like your babysitters 15 year old boyfriend.

Here's a little addition to this story.

The lady in question employed 21 members of staff. All of whom lost their jobs. She is about to be evicted from her flat. She's also now unemployed. The irony in the state stealing from her, and making her reliant upon the welfare system hasn't been lost on me. This is the new way comrades. Turnips for all.

Well, I'm fucking stunned

According to this piece of genius journalism, Europe's carmakers are yearning for the Obama touch.

As bailed-out US manufacturers recover their poise and markets at the Detroit motor show, jobs and plants across the EU are vanishing due to falling demand

O RLY?

Just guess* which of the lines above represents the company that got the biggest bailout?

All the bailout has done is postponed the inevitable. In much the same way as Gordon Brown's desperate reinflation of our bubble led to a massive economic collapse, in much the same way as QE has failed completely to fix anything, Obama's "touch" is just another politician's "Reverse Midas".

Government wealth transfer from bottom-of-the-pile taxpayers to failing multi-billion dollar corporations: how does this make sense? What can possibly go wrong? Why do lefties shout for more tax on companies while simultaneously demanding that the same useless fuckers who can't actually make stuff that people want to buy MUST be propped up by people who can't afford to feed their kids?

Is there some kind of special medication that these people take or what?

Cunts.

Shock! Horror!

I'm afraid my appalling lack of British modern history has once again let me down. However, Andy Bolton has come to the rescue:

It was recently the 70th anniversary of William Beveridge’s famous report on the welfare of the UK people (‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services’).

In it he identified five ‘Giant Evils’ in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. After seven decades the United Kingdom now has a ‘welfare state’ based loosely on the recommendations within this report. On all sides of political debate, from ‘left’ to ‘right’, from statist to libertarian, the welfare state can be seen to have fallen short of the ideals for which it was established. This article focuses on the changes to the welfare ‘benefits’ system that were proposed, implemented and subsequently evolved in the interim period.

Right, so this is the Beveridge report, that lefties always wibble on about as the source of the infinite kindness of the state in Britain.

The report’s initial objective was to “survey … the existing national schemes of social insurance” that were available at the time and “to make recommendations”. Existing schemes, surely not? Weren’t people left to die in the streets before the founding of the welfare state, that’s what I was taught at school? Well, surprisingly not; the survey documents considerable legislation. Over the preceding 45 years, beginning with the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1897, there was a plethora of legislation designed to make certain insurances compulsory. The above act was initially limited to a small number of occupations but was extended in 1906 to cover all, with compulsory health insurance beginning in 1912. Similarly unemployment insurance began for a small number of industries in 1912 but extended in 1920. The Pensions Act came into force in 1908 giving a non-contributory pension to all over 70; this was added to in 1925 by contributory pensions, which also covered widows and orphans. The Unemployment Act of 1934 replaced several earlier unemployment insurance schemes and introduced a national Unemployment Assistance service. Adding to this huge growth in social insurance were medical services, disability assistance, child welfare services (including pre-school), death and ‘other contingencies’. These services were mainly funded by life assurance companies, friendly societies and trade unions.

The report’s authors found the existing landscape “impressive”: it showed “that provision for most of the many varieties of need through interruption of earnings and other causes that may arise in modern industrial communities has already been made in Britain on a scale not surpassed and hardly rivalled in any other country of the world“. The only areas of social care that the committee could fault were healthcare, funerals and maternity. However where they did rail against the existing array of systems was its organisation: “a complex of disconnected administrative organs, proceeding on different principles, found invaluable service but at a cost in money and trouble and anomalous treatment of identical problems for which there is no justification” (as if voluntary interaction needs ‘justification’). They concluded: “It is not open to question that, by closer co-ordination, the existing social services could be made at once more beneficial and more intelligible to those whom they serve and more economical in their administration.” Anyone who has dealt with the Department for Work and Pensions, with its lack of communication and coordination, would question that we’ve made that much progress under a state-centralised system in 70 years. The claim of improved efficiency by providing insurance services through the state is laughable; you don’t need to know about Friedman’s Law to recognise this.

So, in essence, the state saw a thriving area where the market was providing everyone with all the cover they needed and decided they could do it better and more cost-effectively than the market could. Much like British Rail. Or British Airways. Or British Leyland. (The latter not technically nationalised, but utterly fucked by Tony fucking Benn coercing a functioning business to absorb one that should have gone under but was deemed to big to fail. Why does that fucking ring bells?)

If you look back at anything that the British state has done, it has inevitably taken functioning, competing businesses that delivered good services, nationalised them, let them become an overgrown complicated bureaucratic mess with utterly shitty service and a jobsworth corporate culture and then outsourced it equally badly.

Why the bastarding cunting fuck do lefties always think that the state is the only way to provide anything? British Rail was a nationalised industry, it didn't spring out fully formed. British Airways was a nationalised industry, it didn't spring out fully formed. The welfare state was a nationalised industry, it didn't spring out fully formed.

Get to fuck, lefties, with your crazy fucking idea that the state ever does anything useful. Just get to fuck.

Benefit reform

I see everyone is up in arms about "benefit reform". The latest numbers show that apparently, 97% of benefits don't go to people who don't contribute to benefits, whether they be severely disabled, orphans, third-generation benefit scroungers or whatever.

So actually, most benefits go to people who work.

Just think about that for a moment. You work to stay alive, you're a productive member of society, but you're still not earning enough to make ends meet. And what is the government's answer? A massively complicated and unreliable system of tax credits to give you some of your money back if you jump through a bazillion hoops.

Surely, SURELY, no-one can dispute that it would be much easier for all concerned if the the worse-off were simply taxed less in the first place?

Why exactly is it that we can't just stop tax credits and replace them with lower taxes for poorer people?

And why exactly was that great hero of the people, Gordon Brown, not vilified for the monster he created?

Could it be the blindness of statists to the many failings of state?

Lower taxes mean more money in pocket without the stress of proving you need it to some interfering busybody who is sponging off your work.

Everybody thinks about "good taxes", where rich, arrogant bankers pay for the upkeep of the needy. Nobody thinks about the fact that minimum wage workers help to subsidise train fares for Surrey stockbrokers or pay for overloaded European vehicles to destroy our roads, etc. Nobody worries unduly about people struggling to clothe and feed their kids when they demand that we subsidise EU boondoggles.

Tax ISN'T just a "good thing". Think about that the next time you demand more of it.

Funny

So I see from the Grauniad that Jimmy Carr, unfunnyman and banker-basher has been outed as paying large sums of money into an off-shore scheme to avoid tax. I can scarcely face the irony of a newspaper that is based off-shore to avoid paying tax ragging on a lefty wibbler doing the same thing, while that lefty wibbler bangs on about other people avoiding tax. The thing is, all these tax avoidance schemes are legal. They are morally equivalent to putting money into an ISA, something that I don't think even the Graun has had the hypocrisy to attack. And the reason they exist and are legal is precisely because the laws have closed so many loopholes. Every time they close a loophole, they introduce dozens more ways for tax lawyers to dance angels on the head of a pin. The funniest thing of all was the amoral, unprincipled, dishfaced, bandwagon-jumping twat that is our Prime Minister, standing in judgment of Jimmy Carr's amorality. Do none of these people ever look at themselves in the mirror?

Dick Murphy falls straight in

Oh, how I laughed:

£1.8bn is to be spent on monitoring Facebook and Twitter. That’s exactly the same as is being taken out of care for the elderly and disabled
-- Dick "The Weapons-Grade Cock End" Murphy

Well, that's the thing, Dick: there's always going to be some disagreement about how our taxes are spent. You're quite happy with pissing it away on Diversity Outreach Co-ordinators and so on, I'm not. On the other hand, some people are quite happy with the government pissing it away on Protecting The Cheeeeeldren, and you're not.

But you're the fucking idiot telling us we should happily render unto Caesar so that he can piss it away on whatever he deems important.

The truth is, there isn't one person in the whole country who can honestly proclaim himself or herself 100% happy with the way every single penny of tax money is spent. The only way to achieve happiness in that respect is to not tax anyone and let everyone decide for themselves how their money should be spent.

Thanks for proving me right and yourself wrong.

Dick.

Ballsy!

A valid argument? (for @Fusty_Luggs and @legalaware)

Taxpayers pick up Tesco wage bill! We are investing in Tesco, where are our share holdings? - Fusty Luggs

@Fusty_Luggs @legalaware Thank redistributive taxes for that - me

@obotheclown @legalaware MM I bow down every day to the great god of trickle up; my taxes redistubuted to the top 1%. I feel so very 'umble! - Fusty Luggs

Well, there's a couple of things wrong with this argument from my point of view. Firstly, this 1% bollocks - Tesco's profits and dividends, are like most companies in the UK largely owned by pension funds and as such, are not for the benefit of the alleged 1%, but regular people whose pensions do not depend on the extortion of the state and its massive Ponzi scheme.

Secondly, it's bollocks to say that taxes only trickle up. The state has a massive vested interest in building a client state at both ends of the wealth spectrum, with voters being bought with the lowest possible rates (but on aggregate consuming huge amounts of money) while at the top end, financial backing for the political parties is bought with lazy, non-commercial negotiations leading to egregious profits and other pork barrel deals. The increase in various allowances over the years means that any rational employer would consider workfare perfectly justified. Plus, in my experience, British workers on benefits have very little rational incentive to get off the dole and work for the same or less effective money every month. And then, of course, there is the monstrous behemoth that is the civil service and quango machine. All of these people are beholden to the state, of whatever flavour it happens to be at the time.

But even if my first point is true, I still disagree entirely with the idea of redistributive taxes anyway, because the companies who benefit from either workfare or pork barrel deals are indulging in rent-seeking, not creating wealth. Making it viable for large swathes of people to get by, have fancy TVs and live in houses that taxpayers can't afford is equally wrong and insults the people who are working.

So whether you regard redistributive taxes as trickle up or trickle down or both, in all cases the taxes are extorting wealth from people who are are actually involved in creating it and giving it to people who are not.

Unintended Consequences

So, folks, it's time to ask that awkward question again: if tax is such a benefit to society, and if business is not taxed "enough" according to "the left", how do we explain this complaint from the fantastic RaspberryPi project:

I’d like to draw attention to one cost in particular that really created problems for us in Britain. Simply put, if we build the Raspberry Pi in Britain, we have to pay a lot more tax. If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all. This means that it’s really, really tax inefficient for an electronics company to do its manufacturing in Britain, and it’s one of the reasons that so much of our manufacturing goes overseas. Right now, the way things stand means that a company doing its manufacturing abroad, depriving the UK economy, gets a tax break. It’s an absolutely mad way for the Inland Revenue to be running things, and it’s an issue we’ve taken up with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

So, if this project to bring low-cost computing to the masses, to provide disruptive and innovative technology to the world, to generate a remarkable potential manufacturing opportunity in Britain, creating jobs, bringing money in to the country from around the world, and yet the stupidity of the tax code is denying all this from happening.

Why does this happen if tax is such a boon to society?

A random thought

Someone on twitter said:

2011 Award for most selfless protest : #rallyagainstdebt .. thinking about future generations, not yourself

This got me thinking: one of the biggest selling points about the alarmism around man-made global warming (or whatever shit they're calling it this week) is that it's based on caring for the unborn generations, despite the enormous uncertainties implicit in the MMGW issue.

Yet the same people who call for more "green" money to be spent to protect unborn generations are exactly the same people who mocked the Rally Against Debt which has a much clearer and more demonstrable case for saddling unborn generations with something they don't need.

Why should this be the case?

TEA Party this, TEA Party that...

I am increasingly fucking irritated by the habit of socialist twats to ascribe everything to the American TEA Party.

The Taxed Enough Already Party, let's just remind ourselves, is a grassroots movement of American citizens who feel that the federal government takes enough tax from them, thank you very much, and that maybe the government should stop pissing taxpayers' money away on corporatist "bailouts" (transfers of wealth from the poor to the very rich), vanity projects and pork-barrel politics (where a bill gets passed as long as the congressmen who support it get some money passed back to their sponsors and mates.)

The TEA Party is also a reference to the Boston Tea Party, the start of the American Revolution, which was about taxation without representation above all else. Currently, a significant number of American citizens feel that their government spending is out of control and that their votes are not sufficient to counteract what government is doing in their name.

Here in the UK we feel the same, nobody actually feels like government is acting for the people, but rather than do something about it, it's much easier for us to sneer at our lunatic colonial cousins.

I don't know about you, but I don't think any half-way sane person could object to the motives of the TEA Party. It is a direct expression of the will of the people, and it's a direct objection to the way government actually works: government does what it thinks is best, not what the people want it to do.

It is unsurprising that bandwagon-jumping loonies would be keen to rail-road such visible popular politics into their particular brand of statist politics, but that is not what the TEA Party is about.

The latest fucking stupidity I heard was that the TEA Party was being blamed for the downgrading of America's credit rating. Well, that's fucking bollocks:

S&P cut the long-term US rating by one notch to AA+ with a negative outlook, citing concerns about budget deficits.

The agency said the deficit reduction plan passed by the US Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough.

In other words, S&P cut the long-term rating precisely because the TEA Party did not get what they wanted.

People in the UK need to stop venerating the government.

The government takes your money, spends it very badly on delivering things because it's just a way of hiding transfers of wealth from you to multi-national businesses. The government takes us to wars that we have no business fighting, leading us to be responsible for the deaths of thousands or millions of innocent people on the other side of the planet. The government sticks its nose in to things which are none of its business.

All these people who seem to equate society with the government are leading us down a very dangerous path.

Lazy journalists who attack businesses for being tax efficient because that starves the government implicitly seem to feel that the government deserves to have our money for whatever fucking nonsense they want to do next.

Cheerleaders for government spending ignore the fact that most government spending is simply transferring money from you and me into the hands of Accenture, Capita, ATOS, Cap Gemini, Capita, etc.

Stop being cunts and fucking think about what you're saying for a change.

Why Tory economic policy is doomed to fail

It's a conundrum for everyone who cries out that a smaller government inevitably leads to economic growth.

Hence, libertarians and "small-c conservatives" are all calling for cuts, yet despite all the evidence of cuts being trumpeted left, right and centre, economic growth is flaccid, limp and in desperate need of economic Viagra.

The cuts are smoke and mirrors. Inflation is kicking in, services are being cut, especially at the frontline, and yet growth isn't happening. "Progressives" and tribal Labour supporters are jeering that this is proof that government spending is vital.

But the truth is that we're not seeing the whole truth.

The previous government spent money it didn't have like a drunken sailor in port for the first time in 18 months. Banks were bailed out, vanity projects were finances, PFI skullduggery was rampant.

And when governments do cut spending, they always cut at the frontline first, because that way it hurts people the most so they start screaming for services to be reinstated.

In a business, you cut the frontline as late as possible, because those are the people bringing the money in. It's always possible to make managers manage more people or combine functions so that you can get shot of people in the back office.

But the motivations are different in the two cases. Businesses want to make a profit and retain customers. Governments want to build empires and fuck people around.

So while there may be small cuts happening in government service provision, there aren't cuts in taxes from the savings made. And because there are no cuts in taxes, it's impossible for individual spending to make up for the cuts in government spending.

Taxes are still sky-high, and that's because of the massive debt. The debt isn't even being attacked, all that the government is trying to do is clear the deficit, which is the gap between current income and expenditure. When they've done this, they will still be left with the legacy of debt that needs to be paid off. But at least then they'll be able to start paying off historical debt.

And the other side of the government spending issue is that government spending isn't actually going down. By the time the Tories get kicked out of power again, government will have spent more every year than even that insane Scottish spendthrift maniac could spunk out in his desperate attempts to buy votes. It's just being spent on paying for debt.

So if the currently fuckwit Lib Dem and "Red Tory" hold on taxing the people who actually work to death, while spunking money out on their pointless vanity projects continues, the best that we can hope for is that some miniscule growth will happen and that somehow Gideon will pay off some of the debt so that the next lot of delusional cuntwanks can start the whole "pissing other people's money away" lark again.

Personally, I can't wait. I'm fucking off to Lichtenstein.

Words fail me

Twitter is full of mongitude today:

I really dislike the Gates-sponsored brand of voluntary philanthropy. Poverty should be fought by mandatory taxation #newsnight

I scarcely know where to begin with this insanity. Voluntarily caring for people is to be discouraged. Only money extorted via the state is sufficiently holy to actually do anything with.

What a massive insult to anyone who gives of their time or money to help the needy. And if the state was that fucking pious, why have they not already solved all these problems despite having even more money than fucking Bill Gates?

Jesus. I wonder if this stupid cunt can actually breathe without Labour Party approval.

Update: The bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes.

Won't somebody think of the children?

All this talk about cuts really makes me laugh. Last week it was all about the children and the fact that Osborne's plan for means-testing appears to have been drafted by an innumerate, illiterate, demented fuckwit with the common sense of a rabid vole.

This week, it's been all about the spazzers, flids, spackers, crips and mongtards. Apparently, they're going to be savaged and people are up in arms.

But as usual, the discussions with the clitterati have been an exercise in futility. "The state should provide more!" "Tax the bankers more!" "Why should the disabled suffer while the bankers get bailed out?"

And everyone's talking about the "savagery" of the cuts. And who knows, they may actually be savage -- as far as the ostensible beneficiaries are concerned.

But the reality of it is that the state's spending on non-jobs, on quangos, on other absolute cuntery grows apace. The nett effect of these "cuts" will not actually be to reduce the state in any way, shape or form, all that will happen is that the rate of growth of the state will not be quite as much under the Tories, it will still be growing all the time.

Quite often I get chastised as "uncaring" by asking for the state to be starved. "Think of the children / crips / flids / whatever! They'll all be left to die on the street without tax! British people are proud to be a caring society."

The last statement really did make me laugh. If British people are so caring, why do you believe that they need to have the threat of prison levelled against them before they'll actually fund all this care? If I am so uncaring, why do I believe that people will not need to be threatened with prison to take care of the needy?

Anyway: the government may be cutting what it gives us back in exchange for the money it extorts with menaces, but it's not actually cutting back on the money it spends. So it's taking more and giving less back, which can only mean that either the state is growing despite delivering less or that it's pissing away money with even less care than usual.

And yet, the very same people who are bitching about the cuts to "front line services" are the exact same fucking people who want everyone else to give more money to the government so that "front line services" can be "protected".

I have a better idea: fuck the state, fuck the government. Let people spend their own money on what they want. I bet that nobody will fucking starve.

Yes, I do believe you're right!

Timmy, over at the ASI has news of a tax rise "we can all support".

Now, Timmy is a neo-liberal, which is pretty much to say "he never met a tax cut he didn't like." So I was curious and rather skeptical about any such likeable tax rise. But bugger my toe if he isn't right:

For each £10,000 of wages public sector workers are getting an extra £2,000 untaxed compensation. Tax (income and the two NIs) would be about 40% of that extra £2,000, £800, or 8% of the original £10,000 in cash wages.

Thus all public sector workers should have to pay an extra 8% of their wages in tax.

Total public sector wages are in the range of £160 billion a year (that might be a little out of date) and this will raise some £13 billion a year.

As I said, a tax that we can all support. The TUC, unions and Labour Party will, of course, quite naturally support taxing those who currently are not paying their full whack on the compensation they get through working and the rest of us, well, we can just all gurgle in pleasure as we see that petard being hoisted high. Oh, and of course, as we see the tax burden on us reduced as the public sector workers pay what they should have been paying all along. But we'll be nice, eh? No asking for the back taxes from the last 20 years.

Why? Why? Why?

I read this, and I laughed. But then I made the fatal mistake of reading the base article:

HMRC rushed out an apologetic statement from the senior civil servant.

"I am deeply sorry that people are facing an unexpected tax bill," Mr Hartnett said.

"Everyone in HMRC is working hard to make this as painless as possible. I apologise if my remarks came across as insensitive. I am working flat out with my colleagues to ensure everyone's tax is correct and the new computer system will help us do this.

"It was this new system that revealed the extent and size of reconciliations required and will help us be more accurate in future but we do not underestimate the distress caused to taxpayers and once again I apologise."

Just one day earlier, it was completely fucking different:

Dave Hartnett, the country's top tax official, has refused to apologise to 1.4 million people facing demands for extra money – adding that the situation was not "extraordinary".

Asked if he would say sorry to those facing unexpected bills, Mr Hartnett told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme: "I'm not sure I see a need to apologise.

"I've read the papers, listened to the media and heard stories of HMRC blunder and IT failure – neither of those are true.

ONLY 1.4 million people? ONLY?

Why is this MOTHERFUCKING CUNT allowed to get away with a fucking apology? Why is his fucking barefaced arrogance not just kicked the fucking fuck out of his overpaid, clearly fucking unaccountable job? Why am I contributing towards his fucking salary?

Just in case ...

... you haven't seen this yet, please do go and read Timmy's epic fisking of sanctimonious hypocrite and weapons-grade cock end, "Dick" Murphy.

And if you have already read it, go and fucking enjoy it again.

Cunt.

Wow.

Just ... wow.

In which I agree with a Labour supporter

The tribalist cunt:

Meanwhile, Tory Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond blasted ‘superficially attractive thinking about means testing benefits that go to people who apparently don’t need them, but once you start introducing means testing you get perverse incentives’. Anybody fancy a game of ’spot the progressive’?

Less than a year later, coalition thinking is drifting in the opposite direction, with winter fuel allowance and child benefit seen as possible victims of the October spending review.

Labour’s work and pensions spokeswoman Yvette Cooper has been quick to condemn the government’s ‘shocking attack’ on OAPs, and rightly so. But it is a shocking attack that Labour itself was prepared to contemplate less than 12 months ago.

The fact of the matter is this: there is a huge welfare dependency in this country. Means testing is simply a way in which the welfare dependency is increased. I would far rather everyone had a basic citizen's income and a simple tax relief taper, something that could so easily be implemented today.

But of course, that wouldn't keep the fucking DWP in fucking jobs, would it?

Cunts.