GAS used to be for cooking and heating at an affordable price. Now it’s about sucking as much cash as possible out of the public. And it’s not the only everyday activity that’s become a mild form of extortion.
Going to university
The university system is far from perfect – we probably don’t need all those Beowulf experts – but the general idea is to educate people to benefit them and society. So let’s hit them with a £27K loan. It’s the equivalent of an insane credit card binge, but instead of loads of Armani shirts you just get to stay up till 3am finishing a tedious essay about Whigs and Tories.
Getting a train
It used to be assumed that trains were for transporting goods, getting people to work, and adding value to their leisure time. What a f**king stupid idea. The obvious purpose of trains is to bilk commuters for as much of their income as possible without actually making them go ‘F**k this’ and become a hippy traveller selling bags of magic mushrooms for income.
Parking
No reasonable person objects to paying a fee for the upkeep of municipal car parks. They do, however, object to innocently parking somewhere then paying 200 quid to neanderthal thugs for the backbreaking labour of unlocking a wheel clamp. Hospital parking charges seem particularly unfair, because bypass surgery isn’t exactly a fun day out like Alton Towers.
Renting a flat
In semi-autobiographical novels, the hero is always renting a cheap apartment in which to write his novel. This now seems as fanciful a work of fiction as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Renting an average, or indeed slum-quality, flat currently costs more than a mortgage. British landlords’ idea of a utopian society is probably one in which everyone rents and it costs 95 per cent of your income. For Christ’s sake no one mention that to the Tories.
Using your phone abroad
Roaming charges were a rip-off and so universally hated the EU banned them. Naturally they’re back thanks to the Brexit lemmings, despite phone companies saying they had no plans to reintroduce them. Which is like a horror movie serial killer saying ‘I have no plans to murder you’ then coming after you with an axe 15 minutes later shouting: ‘I’VE GOT A PLAN NOW!’
Gas and electricity
How mankind has advanced since the Dark Ages, with light and heat at the touch of a… oh. You can’t afford to put the lights or central heating on. If it was the Dark Ages with no gas or electricity to privatise, the government would be legislating to allow Ye Olde Rivers & Wells Companie to earn record amounts of gold coins selling cups of filthy water.
