Depending on where you live and how much you earn, so in the last five weeks you have seen a significant seasonal event, un-remarked as usual. This was the day when employees and employers alike have been allowed to earn some money. For until that day, everything you have earned this year has gone to the government by way of taxes. Now, and for the rest of the year, what you earn you can keep. It is odd that in modern times even the poorest members of society must, for at least the first 20 weeks of each year, work whilst all the income from their labour is appropriated by their rulers. Delightfully it's even more backwards than the feudal Middle Ages, because then at least the serfs were fed and housed for free - but apparently, this is progress.
Today's modern feudal treasurers have different problems. For in the small hours of the night, tucked up in their silk covered beds and away from the prying eyes of subservient apparatchiks, chancellors and central bankers writhe in their sleep with recurring night terrors. Occasionally murmuring of forbidden love, their ecstasy is crushed by more frequent groans of utter despair. For their subconscious reminds them that what they most crave they can never have and they are doomed to failure ...
