Osbourne "shocked"

Apparently George Osbourne claimed to be "shocked" at how little tax the richest people in the country pay. And many people were legitimately cross that he couldn't plausibly claim to be surprised. But I think that's a little unfair. It's common, if not entirely accurate, to use "shocked" to mean "I always knew this was going on, but when I saw a fresh example of it, I was outraged all over again, and I'm going to go ON being outraged until its fixed, even if people get a bit weary of it".

If he'd been a left-wing campaigner, everyone would have understood him to mean primarily "outraged", not "surprised" per se. I mean, I think he's probably lying about that too -- at this point in the government, a chancellor proposing something new seems more likely to be acting from public opinion than from a previously-concealed conviction. But that's just a guess, I may be unfair in either direction.

Parking Violation

On Monday, I had my first parking violation :( I parked outside Liv's house on Sunday, and forgot that the resident's restrictions were "Monday to Friday" not "Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays". (Liv did too, but I never park somewhere based on a passenger's opinion, I always decide for myself if it's ok. So there's not much blame to go around, but none of it goes to Liv, except for happening to be there :))

On the one hand, I feel really stupid. The little voice in my head says "Bad citizen! You're an entitled elitist jerk who thinks laws are for other people. This is the first step on the road to careering down the wrong side of the motorway drunk off your head". On the other hand, the little voice in my head is always complaining about something, and it complains much louder about things that are embarrassing than things that are actually bad.

I tend to lump together "things I shouldn't do", but that means I blur the distinctions between "minor indiscretion" and "really bad things", and then have to work out from scratch whether it really matters or not. Because honestly, it turns out, they don't tow your car away or give you points on your license for a first offence, nor is anyone hurt. In fact, it seems that doesn't happen on ANY offence, if you keep paying the fines, so if you're rich enough, you can just park wherever you want. I could have hurt someone, I could have damaged my car or someone else's, I could have got points on my license. But actually, I just got a small fine that's basically inconsequential to me.

And I'm actually rather glad that my first fuck-up came at a time when I was fairly relaxed, I had a comforting Liv in the car to reassure me, and I could forget about it. Now I needn't really worry about it. And as atriec pointed out once, money given to the government isn't wasted, but is spent on useful things, so so much the better.

PS. Although I'm not sure if it's sorted. I paid the fine on the stoke.gov.uk website. Experimentation says there's an error if you enter a made-up reference number instead of the correct one, which suggests I entered it correctly. But they're not competent enough to offer either (a) any advice which of the three letter acronyms on the ticket corresponds to the "reference number" field on the webform or (b) any confirmation of the details of the ticket when you enter the reference number, so you're sure it's recorded correctly. So I _think_ I've paid, but it's also possible the stoke website just eats any money you send it but doesn't actually pay off the fines..?