It is difficult to think of anything more depressing than the recent photographs of a smirking Lord Mandy in his ermine drag flanked by two of yesterday’s major groupies, Lord Falconer and Baroness Jay, she who gleefully masterminded the removal of the hereditary peers, but couldn’t resist a title for herself. At the very moment the PM was berating the bonus culture, his new friend, Lord Mandy, was looking forward to trousering some serious dosh from Brussels, and senior executives of our self-congratulatory, ratings-obsessed BBC were awarding themselves £318,000 extra for doing nothing discernibly advantageous for the licence payers. A gravy train still leaves every hour for the fortunate few. Meanwhile not a hint of mea culpa from our blessed Prudence of the Manse and New/Old Labour is still peopled with the offspring of that pretty straight sort of guy who courted the very wealthy and in return gave us the Dome, all-night binge-drinking, Alastair Campbell, Ken Livingstone, the death of Dr Kelly, two wars and a lethal decline in our civil liberties.
I have recently been reading a book which I commend to anybody who still cares about our soon-to-be-bankrupt country — The Bumper Book of Government Waste 2008, published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which could have been sub-titled How We Are Continuously Being Taken to the Cleaners. It lists in sickening detail how the many indigenous porkers running our lives have their noses firmly in the trough. When the going is tough for most of us, how uplifting it is to know that Margaret Beckett was able to claim £52,000 for new kitchen cabinets, £46 million was the cost of ‘supporting the Prime Minister’ and £95 million was spent on ‘supporting the Cabinet’. From the sublime to the ridiculous, the Forestry Commission offered £30,000 a year for the post of Diversity Chief to tackle the shortage of homosexual lumberjacks, suggesting a Monty Python sketch crossed with a new CD from the Village People.
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