Do you ever bother looking at your payslip these days?

I don't. The last time I did I got one of those awful shocks when I realised that almost half of it is going straight to the coffers of the state. And that is just what I notice. I never stop to think of how much (18% actually) VAT I am paying, sometimes on top of tax. Although in Hong Kong there is a 10% - 12% flat rate, encouraging everybody to work and spend, I have no doubt that even with a change in government we will still be paying more and more taxes. Which is why I think it's fine to have a good old moan. Feel free to add yours!

 

1.     Ministers and parliamentary secretaries, their consultants, their cars, their mobile phones, their landlines, their travel, their entourage, their drivers and salary hikes: I thought one only got a raise if one really proved to be effective in their job. More fool me.

2.     The national television station TVM, its skewed news, its religious broadcasts and its myriad awful programmes especially those which include shouting as a national communication method and religious dogma parading as discussion.

3.     Campus FM and all its presenters when it is not broadcasting the BBC

4.     The tiler/painter/decorator/builder/unemployed who ‘cannot afford’ private insurance and clogs Mater Dei waiting rooms while his wife gets Botox and a manicure

5.     Vat and Tax employees working overtime: irony at its best

6.     Thick brochures printed on glossy paper and mailed to my home, issued by the Office of the Prime minister telling me how wonderful the Office of the Prime Minister is.

7.     Interest on tax refunds: in other words – the government owes you money, doesn’t pay you yet, and will take more money from you so that it can pay you interest on the money it owes you.

8.     Contractors who build awful roads which break up just past their guarantee date who are then given more contracts to fix the roads which had broken up

9.     Committees and quangos the only existence of which seems to be centred on their own existence and who never actually do anything

10. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority: any idea how much it has cost the country since the Planning Authority was set up?