Welcome to the UK

Nation of Shopkeepers has a great piece explaining the UK to a new born baby, here are some extracts, but do go and read the whole article:

"Your body will belong to the state, perhaps even in death. The state will use huge resources and violence to ensure that you comply with this dictat. Your thoughts and speech will be policed, and you may well be screened for crimes they think you may commit in future ~ perhaps ones you have not even thought of yet. Don’t worry, they only have your best interests at heart."

"We will take a good proportion of the fruits of your labour to provide you with sub standard heath care, education, retirement provision and housing. We will also take a poll tax to enable us to provide you with the highest quality propaganda ~ it’s what we do. Should you wish to top up your health care with your own money, perhaps to provide a drug we don’t, you will be excluded from our health care scheme entirely. This is ideologically important, even if you have terminal cancer (but not if you have bad teeth)."

"In order to keep you on your toes, and to provide some excitement in your life, we will bring in thousands of new laws every year. Don’t worry, though, these are special laws just for you ~ we will often ignore them. We promise to undertake to build an ever growing band of armed police, fluorescent jacket wearing jobs worth’s and government spies to assist you stay on the right side of the law. Don’t worry too much about voting ~ all the major brands are all but identical, and anyway, we have a special club in another country where we make up most of these laws. It’s a pretty exclusive establishment ~ so special, in fact, that we don’t have our accounts of how we spend your money signed off! What a jolly jape. Don’t think this means you can avoid filling in your tax return, however.

If you feel this a little harsh, and decide to demonstrate against any of the above, take photo’s, or be stupid enough to think you can walk around minding your own business ~ don’t. There are anti terror laws against this sort of thing, you know, and if there aren’t, one of our chaps will make them up as they go along."