I used to have a despicable little shit of a bank manager.

This was back in the early Eighties when I had a massive mortgage and money was tight.  Despite having a full time job and an owner-occupied house the little cunt refused to give me an overdraft unless I had an equal amount in savings.  Wonderful logic!

I wrote a cheque for the milkman one day for around £6.  Little cunt up in the bank bounced the cheque and fined me £10 for the privilege,  meaning I now owed £16.  This was my first real introduction to the insane world of using fines to try to bend my will.

There is a grander example of the above within our health service.  If a hospital exceeds its budget, they levy a financial penalty on the hospital.  Does anyone see the absurdity of this?  A hospital grinds to a halt because of lack of funds, and instead of giving more money to keep it going they levy a fine from a budget it doesn't have.

This concept of robbing cash is growing at an alarming rate.  Everywhere you look now, they are taking fines and taxes to try to get you do either do something, or not do something.  In most cases it fails to achieve its objective but does return a handy cash stream.  Is your local town congested from lack of parking?  Stickup parking meters.  It won't stop the congestion, but just think of the cash!  Want to stop people from smoking?  Whack a massive tax on and again it won't achieve its intended results but brings in the billions.

The latest absurdity to hit the news is the M50 – that beloved ring road around Dublin.

The M50 has been a fiasco from the very start.  It was very badly planned from the outset and they have been spending billions trying [unsuccessfully] to modify it ever since.  The only thing its good for is creating massive traffic jams at any rush-hour, usually exacerbated by road works where they are trying to add an extra lane or something.

Their latest idea to "reduce congestion" is not extra lanes or fewer intersections.   Oh no.  Introduce extra tolling.

So here we go again.  Hit people in the pocket.  Extra tolling will hardly reduce traffic that significantly but will produce a massive bonanza for someone's bank account.  They overlook the obvious – if people find the congestion too much, they will simply take an alternative route. 

It has reached a stage where no matter where you turn, someone is trying to dip their grubby little hands in your pocket.  Our precious gubmint is of course the worst.  Their latest idea is to take any money they think they are owed from the source.  So by the time I get my pension the gubmint will have already dipped their filthy fingers in and will have stolen whatever they want under whatever excuse they dream up.  It will literally be a case of my pension being paid to the gubmint and they then decide what small change to pass on to me.

This fucking world has become obsessed with money.

Usually my money.