Dissonance

I heard a thing on the radio this morning, about a transgendered person (I think) who was 60. Very interesting, poor thing. Anyway, the interviewer mentioned cognitive dissonance and, as I like big words, I looked it up.

It is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously.

Anyway, I had just bought a can of faux-red-bull, which is 35p, from the local shop. Eric, who runs the shop, is not really very well, he's getting on a bit. His counter is covered in post in brown envelopes.  At least one is from The VAT Hounds.

The 35p includes VAT at 20% so Eric has to enter the sale of goods somewhere and HMRC (spits) get 6p. At the end of the month all this has to be added up, and no doubt an accountant is paid handsomely to look at it, and the total amount has to be paid to the governments coffers.

I understand why there needs to be 6p given to the coffers. It's because there are people who, through no fault of their own, need financial support. Disabled people, for instance. I probably can't think of any others. And we probably need some sort of NHS and some sort of roads. So I have that idea in my head.

I have another idea in my head. That idea is that a bunch of lunatics decided that there should be a continent in which a pile of disparate economies should have two presidents and the same currency. Both of these ideas are stupid and I don't let them affect me. But then, as the idea slips quietly into the chasm of stupidity, the Supreme Rulers of this paradigm decide that in one last-ditch attempt at keep their bizarre creation alive with a life-support machine of which Frankenstein would have been proud, they decide to throw 1,450,000,000 of these silly Euros at it. It broke the fall for a couple of days, but it's now on its course to oblivion.

Some poor sod has to sell 24,000,000,000 cans of faux-red-bull for these bastards to do this. That's a whole lot of fun someone could have had instead of filling in a line on a ledger or keying in a stupid number on a computer.

This isn't the way the world should be.

Poor Eric.

Someone's taking the fucking piss, that's all I can say.