Death and taxes

The old saying, by now a cliche, states that the only certain things in this life are death and taxes.

Romania, once again, has found a way to transform old sayings into surreal versions of reality... The Government, whilst struggling with the economic crisis (which doesn't seem to affect the vast corruption it creates, promotes and benefits from), invents newer and newer ways to generate income.

The most recent wonderful idea is to have taxes introduced for motorways. Of course, this is perfectly normal in any country, but then again, Romania and its 'motorways' or even 'motorway system' is far from normal.

The hilarity and surrealism of this proposed tax comes from the number, length and satte of Romania's motorway 'system'. Let's not forget, it is the country where, due to unimaginable corruption, the most expensive roads have been built in the whole of the EU.

And the roads that were built, were puny in terms of length and the projects ran vastly overtime and over buget, best example is the Transylvanian section of mere 10% of the planned motorway, has taken by now 20 years and it has seen 6 transport ministers changing seats, 7 directors of the company contracted to make the road... but that 10% of the planned motorway has consumed more than 50% of the buget.

Imagine you would pay airport tax to get on a flight operated by the penguins of the film Madagascar, with 'facilities' that are comical (unless you are actually on the plane, rather than just watching the animation and laugh at it...) and you stand a certain minimal mathematical chance of surviving (if you don't get lost).

It is a somewhat far-fetched analogy, but a country that is truly at the rock bottom of the list of EU contries in terms of infrastructure (combined with surreal levels of corruption, whereby any infrastructure project actually uses about 10% of the allocated buget, the rest simply vanishes into thin air only to be found at the very heights of the Carpathian mountains...), well, is in need of quite a reality check when it tries to introduce a motorway tax system.

Also, it is truly characteristic... in terms of looking to the 'West' and copying things mindlessly, without the basic foundations being there.

There is no difference between this latest delusion and the nouveau riche family that built a veritable palace in southern Romania, filled the many bathrooms' tubs with handmade persian rugs, as 'overflow' storage rooms as they had no use for bathrooms...

The same greed, combined with the same fundamental lack of intelligence, the downright stupidity combined with the laughably schizophrenic attempts to look 'Western' and modern when it comes to discussions with the IMF, is the perhaps most dominant and most characteristic feature of this and all previous Romanian so-called Governments.