Paying for wars with libraries, and rail rage: pissed off in two parts (warning: contains sweary rants)

What’s this, another post? That’s right reader I don’t go back to work until Wednesday and I’m bored. I’m also pissed off.

Now lots of things annoy me, from hipsters to bad grammar (oh yes I am the life of any party) but few things make me genuinely angry.

The first thing that makes me genuinely angry is the coalition lie that public spending under the New Labour government is the reason the UK has such a large deficit. This is not true, not even a little bit. EMA, Academies, nurses and teacher pensions did not put this country into the red. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars did.

Now I am not going to make a moralistic stand on whether or not we were right to join America in it’s terrorist hunt in the middle east although I might point out that Iraq is over a 1000 miles from Pakistan (where I am sure you will remember Osama bin Laden was found and ‘eliminated’). Indeed I might also put out there that the Iraq war was nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with settling old scores, which does sort of bear the question why Tony Blair felt the need to get involved. Nevermind, Saddam Hussain is dead and he was an arsehole so that’s as far as I’ll delve into the matter.

Afghanistan, oh dear. The Afghanistan war is one that has dragged on in the same way Vietnam dragged on. And for that matter how Afghanistan dragged on for both the Soviets in 80’s and the British in the C19th. Any conflict in Afghanistan is quite simply the Oxford English Dictionary’s favourite new word… an Omnishambles. The attempt to succeed as an invasive occupationary ground force in Afghanistan at any period in modern history is to invite such a huge omnishambles that Malcolm Tucker’s head would explode before he found the right amount and combination of profanities to even acceptably describe it. For 10 years the UK and the US have plunged trillions of resources and thousands of lives into an invasion that quite simply will never work, that even now we can’t quite tear ourselves away from despite pledges to withdraw. In order to explain the futility of a ground invasion of Afghanistan I would direct you to the incredibly clear documentary by Rory Stewart The Great Game (2012) which does a better job than I ever could.

Now I’m not saying the Taliban are better people, they’re not. But this is a war the US and UK could never win and so should never have fought and it is the single biggest factor in the huge deficits that have decimated our public services.

Politicians won’t admit it because they don’t want to offend the armed forces that have sacrificed so much but it was a pointless war with an obvious outcome and had it not been waged hundreds of thousands would still be alive and you’re local library would still be open.

Now all of that cannot be blamed squarely at the coalition, merely the lie that public services led to their own downfall.

The second thing that really pisses me off can, however, be levelled squarely at the coalition (and probably also Thatcher), and although it will seem slightly petty after the previous rant it really, really pisses me off.

Trains.

That’s right, Trains. And Train Companies. First (train company) I’m mostly looking at you but pretty much all other train companies as well. Fucking scumbags all of you. David Cameron and Simon Burns, you too, fucking scumbags for letting those fucking scumbags force the public to spend what little money they have left on your shit fucking trains. Boris Johnson you bumbling, sinister PR butplugged twat you get off your bike and come in for this too. All of you should be sentenced to having 20% of your earnings taken away and forced to get the First Capital Connect train at 8am and 6pm everyday from and to Slough. How the fuck are train companies getting subsidised by public money and then allowed to raise train fares above inflation every year and still do absolutely nothing to improve the service or pay its employees more? You, David Cameron, George Osbourne, Simon Burns and Boris Johnson, are allowing train companies to mug everyone, yourselves included. What the fuck? Everytime I get the bus and tube, everytime some poor sap from the sticks gets up a 6am to get some overcrowded and irrepressibly shit train into the city you fuckers are allowing train companies to hold us up and take our wallets. It is no bloody wonder Richard Branson wants to get his hands on that train line. The whole goddamn system is a fucking goldmine. How is it costing commuters £2500 a year to get to work? You can buy the most expensive season ticket at the most expensive football stadium in the world for less than the cost of getting to and from work for a year.

Thanks David Cameron, Simon Burns, George Osbourne, Boris Johnson and Nick Clegg. Thanks a bunch you fucking scumbags.

That is all.