Your right to shut up and pay the bill

'The European Union has declared travelling a human right, and is launching a scheme to subsidize vacations with taxpayers' dollars for those too poor to afford their own trips.

Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, proposed a strategy that could cost European taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros a year, The Times of London reports.'

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/travel/news/Vacationing+human+right+chief+says/2924330/story.html

Ever have that nightmare where you are running along the train tracks, pursued by a train that you know will in just a few seconds run you down and squash you like a bug?

Just me then.

Those few remaining satirists in the world today must feel very much like my dreaming self. I mean, no matter how deranged and nutty your latest wizard bit of satire, reality quickly overtakes it, nullifying your brilliant work.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!

I remember back in the '70s when mocking the whole human rights lark was in its infancy. Many a comic did a bit about some hilarious 'right' which would be granted in the future- the right to an eight-bedroomed council house for you four wives and 16 children, or the right to porn in your prison cell.

Of course, because the whole 'rights' game is a semantic trick, there is never an endpoint to their relentlessly expanding scope. Anything which any socialist believes some 'greedy rich bastard' can be extorted to pay for becomes a 'right'. Even things which nature will not allow become 'theoretical rights'.

It's all very tiresome really. And the jokes fall flat because these people aren't kidding.