Taxation and Reality

Still, as she said at the time, you can't make it up, which is a bit of a bugger as I would much rather do that. That is the trouble with reality these days, it seems to have lost a sense of itself, a sense of responsibility. There was a time when we knew where we stood, mostly on top of reality. It was there and we were there too.

However, since the science was brought into disrepute by the government taxing both the air we breathe and the gravity we use each day in order to get out of the mess it had made of public finances, there have been a few changes.

Of course, one of the first things the government did was outlaw anti-gravity devices and made artificial breathing apparatus taxable too. At first, it seemed they'd closed every loophole.

However, as they are wont to do, high-energy tax physicists soon found a number of loopholes. Consequently, a number of once-multinational businesses moved their financial centres to the Moon to take advantage of the lower gravity and the lack of a breathable atmosphere.

Of course, the grandstanding politicians knowing when they have an easy target, wasted no time in pontificating about the 'immoral and irresponsible' companies that were doing their utmost to keep the money out of the hands of the politicians, when – as we all know – when it comes to pissing other people's money away there is nothing on Earth, or the Moon these days, that can match the wastefulness of a politician with their hands on tax payer's money.

Of course, it was all done to divert attention away from the politicians while they used this new tax money they'd gathered to bribe voters - with their own money - into thinking that the politicians were somehow the saviours of humanity.

However, once a few loopholes had been found in the laws of physics, the tax physicists soon found many ways around the new laws and soon the tax take from these new taxes had dwindled to almost nothing and the now-discredited laws of physics were mere shadows of what they once were.

Still, that's – what used to be – reality for you.