Suppose you are a struggling mother with young kids, on welfare or a minimum-wage job - and a smoker. It is a common practice to find touts on the streets in our inner cities offering branded cigarettes - Marlboro being the most popular brand - at 2/3rds the price of what you'd have to pay in the shops. The price of fags being so expensive the reduction in cost you're being offered is a godsend. The crook is your friend in avoiding horrendous "vice" taxes"! (Polish bootleg vodka is a big seller here in England.)
Now politicians are always bleeding us dry with taxes, levies, VAT. The politicians, and the media luvvies who support them, are *not* on our side. (Our/us being those on the bottom rung of the greasy ladder.) But the cigarette tout *is* on our side (let's put aside the health-hazard debate for now) - struggling mothers will now have more money to spend on their children. But why stop there? Yes, there are alas too many criminal types you cannot but condemn - those violent thugs; the rapists; the muggers; kidnappers; . . . But what about those who illegally squat empty property to provide somewhere to live for the homeless? And what of people who "liberate" food from restaurants and supermarkets to give to the hungry? Let's face it: our politicians are greedy and shamelessly hypocritical. They have no empathy with the poor and have absolutely no idea how to to get us out of the mess they themselves have created. Anyone who seriously imagines they are going to change is deluding himself. POLITICIANS ARE UNABLE TO GET US OUT OF THE MESS WE'RE IN. Criminals (some of them) can at least offer some much-needed relief.
