Death and Taxes

So the latest budget has been announced and the main points the papers headlined were an increase on taxes on alcohol and cars. Fairly standard commodities that are easy to tax because they are relatively inelastic.

The taxes are of little concern to me really; I do not drive a car, and I am financially secure enough to afford paying an extra 4p on the pints that I drink. What bothers me really is the bullshit that goes along with tax increases like this.

The supposed reason behind increasing taxes on alcohol is to combat binge drinking. It is utterly ludicrous to suggest that increasing the price of alcohol by little more than 1% is going to curb Britain’s alcohol problem. It is not going to make an ounce of difference; people who drink excessively are going to continue to do so, they are just going to pay another 4p per pint to do it. The government know this and that is why they are imposing a tax. That’s all fine; the government need to raise revenue to run the country. What I can’t stand is that we are expected to swallow the nonsense that goes along with it. You’re not increasing taxes to curb binge drinking; you’re raising revenue in an effective manner. I know it; you know it; stop treating me like a fool by trying to say otherwise.

It’s the same thing with the car tax. A tax imposed on “the highest polluting cars,” which essentially means cars with big engines. What cars do we see most often that have big engines? Range Rovers etc. Who drives Range Rovers? Wealthy people do. Can wealthy people afford to pay an extra tax? Yes of course they can. The problem with this whole carbon emissions rubbish is that it just gives the government an excuse to tax us more and pretend they are trying to help the environment. Rubbish! It’s just an easy way to disguise more taxes.

Death and Taxes are the only 2 sure things in life. So tax us, just stop feeding me so much bullshit. It tastes awful.

Of all the newspapers in print and online; I think that The Guardian has the best coverage for football. Each Wednesday online they have a segment called ‘The Knowledge’ whereby people email in quirky questions about football and readers and Guardian writers themselves attempt to answer them for next week’s edition.

Today’s knowledge had an excerpt form and archived edition where someone had noticed during a match between Wales and Russia, that the letters that made up the abbreviated names of each team in the top corner of the broadcast, spelled WALRUS. He wondered what other names of aquatic mammals could be created from the abbreviations of football teams.

One suggestion was that Belgium and Uganda would produce the name BELUGA; which the writer of the article stated was a species of white whale, famed for its tasty eggs. This is obviously not true and while I am certainly the type of pedant who will point out small mistakes in things; I am not the kind of person who writes to newspapers to point out these mistakes (because that would require effort and I would probably tire of doing it half way through) This time however I just couldn’t resist and sent the following email.

Hello

I just thought I would be a pedant and inform you of an error you made in The Knowledge today 12th March.

You said that the Beluga is a species of white whale best known for its rather tasty eggs. Beluga Caviar eggs actually come from the Beluga Sturgeon which is a large freshwater fish. It is entirely unrelated to the Beluga whale, which is in fact a mammal, and therefore does not lay eggs at all, but gives birth to live young.

Great site though; Guardian Unlimited Football is by far the best football news site around

Cheers

I was rather chuffed to receive a reply shortly afterwards as follows

Hi there

Thanks for your Beluga-based email. It's a pretty shocking error, which slipped through twice as that section of this week's Knowledge is drawnfrom the archive. I've tweaked it to put minds at rest. Not least mine.

Cheers

Where do we go now?

Rolly had another poker tournament at his place on Saturday night; it was a good evening. I won the last one we had there, though I knew the other players would be a little wiser and cleverer this time around.

I decided my drink for the evening was going to be Jack Daniels. I don’t drink lager very much at all these days so a six pack was out and whiskey also seems like a more appropriate drink for playing cards. We also broke out a few Cuban cigars, brought all the way back from Havana by Rolly a couple of months ago.

It seems like a pretty standard stereotype, blokes, poker, cigars and whiskey! But there’s the problem; poker and alcohol don’t mix. Or at least I should say poker and alcohol don’t mix if you have any designs on winning the tournament.

I played very well at the start and was very soon the early chip leader; however as the level of Jack Daniels remaining in the bottle decreased, so did my chip stack. In the end, after 2 of the most ridiculous raises you could expect to see made, my chip stack had gone, and so had all my Jack Daniels. They were bets I wouldn’t have made if I was sober, but I did because I threw caution to the wind and hoped for the best; which is often a symptom of having had a few.

And so I was banished to Playstation land but it wasn’t really a big deal. If the buy in was more than £20 then it might have been a different story and all that matters really is that is was fun.

My hangover on Sunday was not nearly as bad as it should have been given that I had consumed an entire bottle of Jack Daniels the night before. In fact, a fry up managed to sort me out pretty quickly.

Sunday didn’t promise much; that was until Josh swapped his Wii with his brother in law’s Xbox 360. More importantly though was that the Xbox came with Guitar Hero II. There was only one song on here that I was interested in playing: Sweet Child of Mine. So many times have I played air guitar to that song, here was finally a chance to press some buttons on a guitar shaped Xbox controller which will, if done correctly, sound like I am playing the lead guitar on that song! One step closer to reality than air guitar.

I’m hooked!