Another Meme-Based Statement...

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the driving instruction companies and the DVLA were in it together. The DVLA makes the test so insanely pedantic that you can't pass without heaps of instruction. (Remember how I said that the national pass-rate is 42% for the first time you take the practical?) Then, the driving companies have cay-razy hourly rates that they charge if you want to be taught by someone certified, and not the stubbly guy driving a Cinquacento who can "hook you up" for £10 an hour...if you stick to the back roads where there are no cops. Perhaps a percentage of these heinous fees subsidize some underground scheme the DVLA have going on, like euthanizing people with a certain number of points on their licence, or engineering a race of humans with arms so short they must steer the car by shuffling the wheel around in their tiny hands. (No crossed hands or pimping it out with one hand at 12 o'clock on the wheel any more when this selective breeding program goes public!)

Anyway, now that I'm faced with another nickle-and-dime campaign by the British government (remember the extortionate visa fees?) and the UK's various and sundry companies, I have only one question for the AA (who lured me in with promises of cheap driving lessons...scoundrels!); and that question is this:

Perhaps to restore balance to the universe I should build a shelter for starving, disease-ridden, orphaned child-soldiers...who are amputees...from Somalia...with terminal cancer...who always wanted to visit Disneyland...and ride unicorns...

I should stop there. If my list of qualifications for my orphan friends gets any longer, I'll have to balance the universe again by training a puppy to shoot a kitten in the face. Or by letting a Tea Party vitriolist into the White House. Those sorts of abominable evils might just weight the scales against my wonderful unicorn riding school for Somali orphans...which was initially meant to counter the rape-and-pillage mentality of the secret AA/DVLA driving tuition fees cabal. A little sardonic and irreverent humour is always just what the doctor ordered. (And of course, by a little, I mean a homeopathic amount. Which, as we all know, increases in effectiveness the less of it you have. Which is really why I'll quit while I'm ahead.)