Rather Taxing

We could have seen it coming. The unemployment levels were rising. The population was rising. The oceans were rising. And all the taxes were rising, accordingly. Although he promised that they wouldn't. Our prime ministers aren't dictators, men who look good on propaganda posters, whose power, whose very voice, leaves the nation prostate in fearful admiration. No. They're bumbling Geography teachers and sheepish fathers, worn down by their job and their obese, nagging wife of a country. It's not that she let herself go. She was like that long before he wed her. He married her, it seems, for the money.

Too bad there wasn't any.

So the taxes have landed. And amongst them, the one that we could have seen coming. But, at the same time, the one that we could never have imagined. Perhaps because we'd joked about it too much.

The Air Tax. Income assessed, of course, and assessed, too, by the purity of the air you're breathing. Londoners get it pretty easy. Most city dwellers, in fact, have gotten off quite lightly. But in the countryside, and on the coastlines, the people have annual taxes that would make a banker wince. It works sort of like the TV licence. A yearly lump sum. Sadly, you can't dodge the Air Tax by hiding the TV in the loft. We all have to pay. It was protested, of course. Something about human rights. Well, air is never mentioned in the bill of human rights, because it is taken for granted. And shouldn't it be? We're in no danger of it running out. None of it is going to waste, and there's enough to go round, even with all the Seychellian immigrants (their country drowned).

How do you protest against an Air Tax?

You stop breathing. A few fools tried it. A couple of deaths; accidental, it was claimed, not suicide, although I'm not quite sure of the legalities involved. Some eccentrics decided to breathe out of oxygen tanks, carting them round on their backs all day like extremely lost SCUBA divers. They refused to pay on the basis that they weren't breathing the government's air. Biting off their nose to spite their face, it seems, because the canisters of oxygen were a lot more expensive than the tax itself.

I don't know. You can't really complain. It's ridiculous, of course, but they needed to tax something. Rather pay for air than healthcare, anyway. No one touches our NHS.