This year you may go about increasing your household debt to
buy stuff for your loved ones that they didn’t want, won’t like and never
needed. Perhaps you will try to enjoy the winter break without being freaked
out by people scrabbling round trying to buy stuff for their loved ones that
they didn’t want, won’t like and never needed. Whatever your inclination, a
fuzzy feel-good chwistmas will permeate like rotten egg-nog thanks to Dave
Dickens.
We can all indulge in a flaky, fakey, festive, candles-by-firelight,
fun, fantasy festive season. There will be authentic rich people smiling and
clutching champagne flutes while ornamental poor people peer in through
prettily frosted windows. Dirty but decorative urchins will look up wistfully
to the starry winter sky as if to say “I
hope mummy comes home from the local food bank with some turkey drumsticks in place
of the dried milk, tea, cheap sugar and tinned soup she usually gets.”
It’s too good to be true.
Last week in a single news slot – the jolly sounding
reporter let us know that certain energy companies were blaming the wicked
‘green’ taxes for their price hike – rather than the amount of profits required
to keep the shareholders happy. There followed a piece about some rich oiks
spending £130K in one night on a bar tab. In case that isn’t clear - ONE
HUDNRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS - on alcohol in one night in one bar.
I thought the people (I use that term loosely) at the top of
the economic pile were just a bunch of nasty selfish gits who spent their
entire energies and focus on keeping hold of inherited wealth whilst skewing
the economy to ensure they get more and pay as little tax as possible, grabbing
anything of value that previously belonged to all of us. Fool fool fool that I
am. One union rep opined on the government’s passion for nationalising debt and
privatising profit. He also must be a fool. All along, those we have begun to
think of as gutless self-serving shits actually just had a misty Dickensian
vision in mind for Britain. In that Britain – rather than equality and proper
opportunities for all and fair distribution – very very rich people will
occasionally drop a few crumbs from the table while the smiling poor scrabble
round gratefully and gaze wonderingly at the safe secure warm healthy lives
they will never have. Bob Cratchit eat your heart out (it may come to that!)
Thus have the railways, water, energy, communications been
hiked off to the private sector. If anyone was in doubt as to the criminal
insipient level of moral corruption involved here – remember one fact only. The
public now pay far more in subsidy to the rail companies than we did when the
railways were owned by THE COUNTRY. Yet fares are to go up yet again by more
than inflation.
To complete the descent into Dickensian Dystopia – the Post
Office has now been flogged off. Yes a few ordinary folk got some shares. But
that’s like watching hired thugs trashing your neighbour’s house and then
standing by and saying – well – the place is trashed anyway – I may as well
have a couple of teacups. The Emir of Kuwait reportedly made £20million profit
in around 20 minutes by buying the undervalued shares. And this same government
is bellyaching about ‘foreigners’ using the NHS. What could the NHS do with a
free £20 million? How many cancer treatments would that buy? How many midwives
would that pay for? How many dialysis treatments?
But we have food banks! Food banks are now being talked
about as if they are here to stay and that says EVERYTHING. They are being
formalised. That’s because the British people and the government can see that
they are going to be part of British life for a while.
Look out for Workhouses re-opening in Britain any time soon,
young girls selling matches on street corners and little boys working up
chimneys.
Please sir – we
don’t want any more!