Merry Christmas From HMG

Most intelligent people I meet in my new life as a City chancer, are quite sanguine about what governments are for. I'll paraphrase, but the general theme goes like this: "Governments are in it for themselves, and I never trust them an inch, because all the money they steal from me is just used to feather their own nests". Which is refreshing. However, back out in the "real" world where ordinary people live, the general opinion is a lot more benign, along the lines of this: "There's lots of problems with government and I'll admit they aren't always the most efficient group of people, but in the end we need them, primarily for security and protection."

Well, we could argue long and hard about whether British soldiers killing Iraqis and Afghanis, with bullets paid for by taxes extracted from my wallet, are actually improving my personal security and not actually making it more likely that I'll get blown up one day on a Tube train or melted in a suitcase nuke attack, but people need to come to Austrianism of their own accord through self-education, and the most we can do as Austrians is help them find their way.

But what I find really morally repugnant is the thought of those millions of people in Britain making good livings from the state, and stuffing themselves with turkey and mince pies this Christmas, while some of the poor schlepps who've spent their entire lives funding this cornucopia of government waste, have been left out in the cold, eking out a miserable life on "benefits" after this lifetime of heavy taxation paying for all of these legions of mince pies to fill the maws of the bureaucrats.

Witness the recent scandal with the government's Financial Assistance Scheme only handing out £9 million pounds of largesse, while keeping £10 million for its own running costs, and holding back £750 million so Gordon can keep it in his pot to buy the next election. Disgusting. I simply don't know how Gordon Brown and his New Labour orcs can sleep at night, all tucked up and cosy in Whitehall, with tax-paid central heating keeping them warm.

So whose financial assistance is the Financial Assistance Scheme coming to? Well, all the miserable state-loving government parasites working for it, of course, no doubt several of whom are in the £150k a year cachet, plus a bit more on top for the really slimy ones.

And no, I'm no fan of government pension schemes and associated regulation. But if the raison d'etre of government is the protection of people, and they demand 50% of your income for your entire life to pay for such protection, then the damn least they can do is actually provide you with some protection when you need it, rather than seeing this extracted pelf wasted on yet more government scams to reward government-loving "intellectuals" and other whining supporters, from the coercively stolen lifeblood of the industrious.

Government sickens me. The sooner we get rid of it, the better for us all.