No light at the end of the tunnel

Okay, a quick summary.

I've just been quoted a huge amount of money for urgent medical treatment which I can't afford to pay because all my savings and every penny I can save in the next few months is going to pay my tax bill so some benefit scrounging scum can have the same treatment for free.

That's the reality of live in Brown's Britain. And it will be the same in Cameron's Britain or Clegg's Britain.

I really haven't been so scared and desolate in a long time. I can't afford £800 for specialist root canal treatment to remove an infection which is eating away at my jawbone. Because it's the second time around it only has a 60-70% chance of success so there's another huge risk that should that not work I'll have to fork our thousands of pounds to have a replacement tooth fitted, should I choose not to have a large gap in my mouth like some extra in Eastenders.

I've written to the Health Secretary and copied in the Prime Minister and my MP (who is a good bloke who actually cares about his constituents which is probably why the Tory party were allegedly trying to replace him) because they really should know what a fucking mess they've made of this country and our health services. They have provided a breeding ground for lazy, stupid gangs of knuckle scrapping fools who are, day by day, proving Darwin wrong.

I had a look at the Dept of Health website to find out about NHS dentists and stumbled across this rather interesting, and yet rather unsurprising, list of people who don't have to pay for their dental treatment:

You also do not have to pay if – when the treatment starts or when you are asked to pay – you:
• are getting, or your partner is getting, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance or Pension Credit guarantee credit
• have, or your name is on, a valid NHS tax credit exemption certificate
• have the right to full help under the NHS Low Income Scheme (i.e. you are named on a valid HC2 certificate).

Needless to say, because I have a job and work hard I am none of these things. I don't claim any benefits, I don't have children who use the state school system, I didn't use it myself because the schools in my area were terrible. The only medical treatment I've been getting recently I've had to pay for myself because the NHS doesn't cover it and my medical insurance doesn't cover it because hardly any medical policies do, what with the cost of private dental treatment being so expensive it's not financially viable for insurance companies to offer it. In fact, it's over two years worth of my premium for just the first part of my necessary treatment.

But if I didn't have a job, or had a child I would be laughing because people like me would pay for the treatment. Chances are, I'd also have a house.

How have things been allowed to get so bad? To the stage when someone who pays thousands and thousands in tax every year is sitting, sobbing, wondering how they are going to pay to ensure their jaw doesn't get eaten up?

The state of finances in this country is a mess: my loan could get called in at any time and yet my savings can vanish and from banks which I'm bankrolling through my taxes which don't really provide me with anything. I'm all in favour of a strong armed forces but even they are being sent to Iraq for a war which is illegal and unnecessary. I have never had a chance to vote on whether I want to be part of the EU and yet that costs tax payers in this country billions of pounds in direct payments without even counting the costs in loss of efficiency through excessive regulations and downright dumb laws and rulings. My food prices are higher than they should be because of the Common Agricultural Policy, my money is being wasted on an energy policy which will have the country flooded with darkness in a few years time and every nice part of the countryside covered in fucking windmills whilst the people who own the land are paid for these monstrosities sitting on their land. Council workers are being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to oversee failing services which allow children to be tortured and murdered, every time you move you're at risk of breaking a law and yet people who commit the worst crimes are getting sentences which in no way seem to compensate for the awful crimes they've committed and the danger to society that they are.

It seems to me that the harder you work, the more the government hates you. And I'm terrified and, more so, I'm in an awful lot of pain and in a predicament which I can't see any way out of besides not paying the rest of my tax and spending it on something I really need.

Of course, if I did that, if I spent the money I earn ensuring my physical wellbeing, then I'd be taken to court.

What a cataclysmic mess.

And what am I going to do?