"Ooh look, everyone, it's raining taxpayer money again. Isn't one lucky?"

The Royal Family is to be exempt from any cuts in public spending next year when its civil list funding is settled for the next 10 years, says The Guardian.

MPs will be powerless to reduce the £7.9m a year paid under the civil list because of an obscure deal struck between Buckingham Palace and the Treasury in 1972 when the current legislation governing royal finances was drawn up.  (Under the Tories, by any chance?  Oh yes – it was that old tosser, Edward Heath.)

Palace officials made clear earlier this summer that they are actually seeking a rise in the annual civil list payment to cover “increased costs” despite the fact that they currently have a £21m surplus in the reserves on the civil list account. Wonder what the interest is on that, ma’am…?

What a bunch of spongers.

Time to make them all redundant like a large number of us seem to be at the moment.

We hope they’ll have the good sense to go  before they’re pushed,  Oliver Cromwell-style.

We don’t need them and the morally disgusting values they represent.

Cameron IS a toff in the traditional sense of the term because of his privileged background, and trying to shrug off the image is pointless. It is precisely because Cameron, Osborne and many other Tories have this privileged, upper-class experience of life – and an obvious vested interest in preserving it – that their claim to have the welfare of ordinary citizens at heart is so unconvincing.

Why would the Tories be so sensitive about the ‘toff’ thing if they weren’t desperately embarrassed about it in electoral terms?  They know it will lose them the votes of those who just can’t identify with their upper-class values, so they – and Dave – are trying to kid us that he’s one of us really.  That – in their own words – they’re not the ‘nasty party’ any more.   Trying to kid us that what Conservatives are interested in is mending our ‘broken society’.  Right…

If indeed it is ‘broken’, they will desperately want us to forget – of course – that it was the many years of Tory government and sleaze in the 1970s, 80s and 90s which promoted the philosophy of greed and fat profits at the expense of ordinary working people.  This allowed and encouraged the rise of fat-cat bankers and financial chancers who have finally wrecked our economy and made many thousands of us unemployed.

The Tories are wholly responsible for widening the vast gap between the rich and the rest of us,  laying the foundations for today’s society where young people can’t afford to buy a home any more and where there is nowhere near enough social housing to meet the needs of ordinary British citizens.    And yet they now have the gall to blame the Labour government for all this.

(Labour were stupid enough to get sucked in by pandering to the greedy, just to get elected in 1997 and to stay in office, but they weren’t responsible for the philosophy that created these conditions.  It still tries vainly to ‘square the circle’ of  creating social equality while placating the better-off middle classes who are only interested in tax cuts and big bonuses at the expense of the rest of us. But that’s another issue…)

The reality of a Tory government is one where the rich and privileged look after their own.
IF they manage to fool enough of us to get elected to office, then we’ll see them revert to type:  serving the interests of the rich and powerful, of the big businesses and of their fat-cat political sponsors, while paying lip service to helping ordinary working people.

Just look at the way Cameron’s fellow Eton toff, Boris Johnson, is now handing out planning permissions left right and centre to a host of ugly buildings in London that won’t do anything to improve the  lives of Londoners and which will vulgarise the London skyline.
(Wonder if any of his supporters, sponsors and cronies are involved in property development?  We probably know the answer to that one…).

Tune in to BBC Parliament / City Hall or look at it on the BBC iPlayer and watch how Tory toff Boris deals with the business of being Mayor of London.   He’s certainly funny – but see how he obviously has total contempt for the democratic process and treats the Mayor’s question time meeting like a public school debating society.  He waffles and blunders his way through it all, while those he no doubt sees as his social inferiors try to pin him down on anything without success. It’s all a great joke to him, but a frustrating and sickening sight and a good indication of how his privileged kind behave towards the rest of us.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that people have short memories and there are many people of voting age now who have only ever seen this newly-concocted, almost vomit-inducing Tory sincerity, so they know no better.

Everyone over the age of 35 knows the truth about Tory fat-cat priorities, their contempt for workers, trades unions and the millions of ordinary people like us who serve only to line the pockets of them and their cronies.

Once a toff, always a toff  – and forever a fat-cat Tory – however they dress themselves up or use a nice green tree as a party logo.

Never a rabid protester in the past, and never one to kick up much of a fuss in public…

An ordinary, middle-aged, working-class white male, wanting to try and change things for the better in my own small way.  After all, it’s a democracy we live in, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be good citizens and participate in the decision-making process rather than sit at home in front of the telly, never voting and never taking part as full members of the society in which we live?

When it comes to the next General Election, they’ll be imploring us to vote and take part, maybe even collect us and give us a lift to the polling station to get our vote. They LIKE us to care about our country and get involved, don’t they? Or is that only when it suits them?

I arrived not long after midday, expecting a little bit of pushing and shoving and the odd police helmet knocked off,  and sensed there was a real mood of anticipation and just a little apprehension in the gathering crowd over what might happen if it all kicked off in the way suggested by the media over the past week or two.
Shades of Grosvenor Square in ’68,  Brixton in ’81 and all that – for those of you who remember.

But we’re now living in such a police state that you couldn’t get near the leading small core of marchers (for it was small – nowhere near the thousands I – and probably the cops – had expected).  Hordes of police and their vans, far too many for the numbers of people involved, had divided the crowd into manageable pockets, where they tamely looked on at a distance in each of the streets surrounding the Bank of England.

Some particularly nasty and aggressive constables got the nod from someone and immediately started shouting loudly and moving in a line towards us, forcing us back.  I had no idea why, as we were all just quiet onlookers trying to get a decent shot with our cameras and mobile phones.  No threat whatsoever.

In the few minutes of police shouting I got a bit of an adrenalin rush and quickly devised a plan of action if confronted with a snarling rozzer wielding a baton at my head:  keep to the edge, not the middle, don’t get hemmed in and caught up in the melee just in case the fuzz think you’re a middle-aged white terrorist and send in a snatch squad to take you out, Taser you and cart you off in a black maria or whatever they’re called these days (you probably can’t call them black any more and they’re a rather nice gunmetal grey, anyway).

But - as they said about Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ – nothing happened. Twice.
Fat chance of a bit of a rumble. I should have known.

No way through.
And no way out if you were in the core group.

Separated and segregated from the march and with no chance of any meaningful action, even if there were any brave souls to lead us out of the trenches and over the top.

And as if to rub salt in the wounds and make the frustration  worse, you could see those who were obviously bankers in their ‘dress-down’ gear (cashmere jumpers, Jermyn Street shirts, designer jeans and brown brogues or loafers), looking on with amusement in between deep conversations about the size of the bonuses you and I will be paying them this year.

It was tempting to find the nearest bucket of something brown and smelly to throw over them.

After two frustrating hours of trying to find a way into the middle and join my fellow citizens for a bit of concerted shouting and chanting, I gave up.

Every now and again some cheers rang out in the distance and you thought ‘this is it – it’s kicking off’… but it never did.

Apparently a couple of RBS windows got broken (which  belong to all of us anyway) but more importantly, several heads got bludgeoned by the government’s police thugs as we saw on the TV news later.

So that’s it. That’s the state… or should we say police state… of Britain today.

Screwed by politicians and bankers,  thousands of us made jobless, homeless and powerless,  and you can’t even do anything about it because the long and heavy-handed arm of the law will be brought in to keep you down under some trumped-up terrorism charge in the interests of national security.

Doesn’t feel like a democracy to me.

Boris has suggested that he’s in favour of an amnesty for illegal immigrants, the key word being ILLEGAL. They entered our country illegally, they live and work here illegally, and many are claiming financial and healthcare benefits either directly or often indirectly through supposedly legal immigrants we’ve already let in – all at the expense of the British taxpayer.
That’s you and me. Our money. Our jobs. Our health services.
So once again we have an upper-class toff showing absolutely no understanding of the lives and concerns of ordinary people, trying to kid us that he does, and now showing his true colours.
We all thought he was harmless of course – a lovable buffoon – and he’s played on that for over a year, but he needs to show he’s a serious public servant, not the Pied Piper of City Hall.  We don’t need him leading an endless stream of illegal immigrant ‘rats’ through London and up the steps of City Hall to claim their free benefits, National Insurance number and ‘Buy-one-get-one-free’ citizenships (they always bring their partners and kids, of course).
They haven’t paid anything into our system, so why should they get a free ride to the front of the queue, courtesy of Boris Johnson?

Strangely in support of Boris, one of the journalists at the Guardian is suggesting that this might be a good idea. To quote Rahila Gupta: “…this amnesty will leave 700,000 people better off. It will mean a life free from fear of deportation. They will have the protection of employment laws, including the minimum wage, and can even campaign for the London living wage of £7.45 per hour”.
Oh, and who’ll be paying for these lucky 700,000 people?  Boris Johnson? Rahila Gupta? Guardian readers? We don’t think it will be the liberal-minded and politically-correct members of our society who will lose their comfortable jobs to foreigners.
No, it’ll be us – ordinary British workers struggling to get by in the mess that politicians and greedy bankers have got us into. Dumping on us from above while we get shafted from the illegal migrants below.
Nothing ever changes… unless we stand up to this nonsense.

There may be an economic point to be made about the cost of policing borders and tracking down illegals, but we’d rather tighten the laws, increase severely the punishment of illegals and reinforce our policing to CATCH and DEPORT them as soon as possible. They may then get the message and stop queuing up in their droves in France, looking for the next truck to get them over here.

Contact your MP about this ridiculous move for amnesty and make your voice heard

AND sign the official petition to Gordon Brown by clicking here.

We still let big business dictate what we can buy, at what price, and on whatever terms they see fit to impose:  food, water, gas, electricity, transport, housing, banking… you name it. All in the interest of ‘free markets’ and ‘competition’ rather than making sure everyone has a fair and decent standard of living – and a job – in our ‘civilised’ western democracy.
Is this REALLY what we want for ourselves in the 21st century?

But wait a moment. Is there a common thread running through all of these things?

Could it be anything to do with the politicians and the rich using the powers of State to divide and control us?
Removing our right to protest against those to whom WE gave power in the first place?
The right to proper free speech? (…not just the usual whimper of middle-class journalists, more concerned with how clever they are than wanting to CHANGE anything – heaven forbid).
REAL free speech, REAL freedom and REAL democracy – not the poor imitations we ‘re fobbed off with at the moment?
The right to strike, protest and to REMOVE any government that doesn’t represent its own citizens?

More importantly, are we too repressed to CHANGE anything after centuries of putting up with the ruling classes and being force-fed with their IMITATION democracy?
Are we too ‘British’… too ‘civilised’ to kick up a fuss?

Whether we compare 2009 to 1984, 1884,  or even 1684, the British people are still exploited by the same self-seeking politicians, ‘aristocrats’ and the rich: all of whom have gained power and wealth for centuries at our expense.
Things will never change unless we MAKE them change, and for good this time.
After all, the French don’t put up with it – and haven’t done so since la Revolution.   Why should we?
It’s a big idea, and it won’t happen overnight, but it can be done.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BritishPoorFirst

Well, let’s make it sooner than that and have an early summer this year, shall we?

And while we’re at it, how about protesting against the vulture capitalism of bankers and financiers, screwing British citizens and then expecting us to pay for its mistakes?
Watch this space for events.