An open letter to the Prime Minister, and
his little dog too.
Originally written in 2012 about Britain's
then-Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Most of these sentiments are still applicable to the majority
of our so-called "leaders" in 2025.
Dear Mr. Cameron, and that deputy fellow
who seems to serve no real purpose,
You need to go. You are destroying this country from the
bottom up and we can't take it anymore. The working class,
small businesses, pensioners and those who have lost their
jobs are slowly having the life squeezed out of them by
the skyrocketing cost of living, spending cuts, increased
taxes, reduced public services and incomes that haven't
even come close to keeping up.
As is always the way, you are making the wealthy even
wealthier and the poor even poorer. This is by no means
something new, but it is well past time it stopped. You
are creating a top heavy society that will soon collapse
under its own weight. You see, it is not the wealthy that
supports this country. It is not the large corporations
you keep giving more and more breaks to. And it most certainly
is not self-serving politicians like yourselves. It's
us, the average shmucks on the bottom. We who dutifully
go to our dead end jobs every day - those of us that still
have a job, pay our taxes and national insurance, obey
the law and do our best to make ends meet. You sit back
and collect your expenses courtesy of the taxpayer and
then wonder why we kick up a fuss every time rail fares
leap up or the post office slaps an outrageous 30% increase
on postage. We are the foundation that holds this country
up and we are crumbling under the strain. As any builder
can tell you, if you destroy the foundation, the building
will topple.
I think part of the problem is that, like most politicians,
the word “struggle” just doesn’t exist
in your vocabulary. You come from money. You exist and
have always existed in an insular, publically educated
environment as far removed from the real world as a hamster
is from the concept of quantum physics. You have no idea
what it’s like to wonder how you’re going
to pay your bills or feed your family. The concept of
lying awake at night worrying about money or how many
more days your business can survive is totally alien to
you. You are so far out of touch with the day to day reality
of the common man that you may as well be governing the
UK from the outer rim of the galaxy. Like Louis XIV watching
his countrymen starve while he sips Champagne in the Palace
of Versailles, you’re watching Great Britain collapse
around you from the palatial comfort of Chequers with
a soothing glass of sherry in your hand. So we have to
ask, how can someone who has no idea what poverty is be
expected to make sensible decisions for those that live
in it? Obviously, as you keep proving on a daily basis,
you can’t.
Now you may well come back and say that you are the country’s
choice and therefore the best man for the job, but that’s
just not true. No doubt you’ve conveniently forgotten
this little fact, but you see, we didn’t actually
vote for you. You won by default. You managed to sneak
in because the biased electoral system we’re stuck
with made it possible, which of course is the whole idea.
It favours the unfavourable. When we went to the polls
we had to try and decide which was the least abhorrent
of all the undesirable politicans on offer, no easy task
I assure you. We thought we had voted for the lesser of
many evils, but somehow we ended up with you instead.
And now we’re stuck with you until the next election
when we can vote for someone else and, in all likelihood,
end up with you again. Despite the fact that, in theory,
we pay your wages and you work for us, we can’t
sack you. We are your employers, yet you tell us what
to do and we have no choice but to comply. What a fantastic
job! If only I could sit back and bullishly tell my bosses
what to do and still collect a paycheque every month,
plus all expenses paid - real or imagined - and a big
house in the country. Where do I sign up?
Yet I consider myself somewhat fortunate that I do still
have a job, even if it is a dead end and pays below par.
Because under your rule, record numbers of people can
no longer count themselves as employed. Well over a year
ago for example my better half lost her job after more
than 19 years with the same company. Why? Not because
they were a floundering business wondering how they were
going to pay their bills, or reluctantly laying people
off as a last resort to keep the bailiffs from the door.
No, it was because they decided to “shift their
focus”, which of course is nothing more than a business
euphemism for “make even larger profits for our
poor starving CEOs and shareholders who simply must buy
a new BMW because the one they bought just 6 months ago
now has a smudge on the windscreen”. If you cared
as much about "the worker" as you keep claiming,
you'd outlaw this kind of blatant coporate greed. Instead
you kick back and revel in the delights of the coporate
machine.
And what delightful benefits did my wife reap after finding
herself unemployed for the first time in more than 30
years? £65.00 pounds a week for 6 months with a
generous helping of disparaging comments and heavy handed
techniques from employment officers thrown in just to
sweeten the pot, as if she quit her reasonably well paid
job on purpose to collect a pittance a week for half a
year. And then… nothing. No income and little, if
any, hope of finding a job in middle age. Despite countless
applications and interviews, she was deemed overqualified
or simply too old, though of course they couldn’t
say that. But no matter, she was no longer an unemployment
statistic because she was off the official books, so from
your point of view the problem was solved. Out of sight,
out of mind. After paying NI contributions for 3 decades
this is the kind of thanks she gets? Mr. Cameron, you
have completely lost sight of what unemployment benefits
were originally conceived to be, if you were ever aware
of it in the first place. They are an insurance policy.
Something we pay into that gives us some peace of mind
when we’re put out of work through no fault of our
own. It is not supposed to be a punishment, nor is it
a bit of cake thrown to us in a vain attempt to make government
be seen as a caring, magnanimous entity. It is something
we pay for, and pay a lot for, that’s supposed to
keep us alive and with a roof over our heads until we
can get another job. Not for 6 months, and not at an insulting
rate that would barely keep food on the table of a family
of hedgehogs for a week, let alone pay their bills and
a mortgage. The way the postal service is increasing their
prices these days, £65.00 a week won’t be
enough to buy a first class stamp soon.
And yet, somehow, the people who have never worked and
seem to have no desire to do so, have never paid into
the insurance, reap even more benefits and in perpetuity.
Is this fair? If by some miracle we ever manage to put
you out of your highly paid job (and I assure you if this
becomes the case it will be your own fault) and if, by
an even bigger miracle, you managed to be stripped of
all your wealth, would you think yourself well done by
to receive £65.00 a week for six months and then
be kicked out the door with no income whatsoever? Would
you welcome the heavy handed draconian punishments threatened
by employment officers should you choose not to accept
a part time minimum wage job polishing toilets? I think
not.
Never mind, at least we’ve got a nice relaxing pension
to look forward to, right? Nope! Because despite paying
for it all our working lives, chances are there won’t
be one when we actually reach retirement age, or rather
IF we reach retirement age since you keep putting that
further out of reach too. And just to make it even better,
you’ve punished pensioners in the latest budget.
Shame on them for having the gall to stop working after
only 5 or 6 decades and sitting on their laurels, collecting
money for free. Let’s freeze that little money maker
and put a stop to their fun. Oh, and speaking of pensions,
a lot of us took your advice and started paying into our
own private pension funds, just to do our part and help
out a bit. Currently the two company pensions I have are
worth considerably less than what I’ve paid into
them, so thanks again for that timely advice….
This country is in dire straights, but you won’t
be aware of that of course because you and your friends
are doing just fine, thank you very much. Rest assured
though, if this keeps up we’ll be headed for another
depression quicker than you can say “panhandle”.
You seem to have no clue that putting money back into
the pockets of the common man, not removing it in ever
increasing amounts, is the way to turn the economy around.
To return to my original analogy, strengthen the foundation
and you’ll have a stronger house. Destroy the foundation
and your house falls down. The common man is the one who
spends a proportionately larger amount of his wages on
taxes and consumables. Buying things creates demand, demand
creates jobs. More people in work means more people spending
and paying taxes. The wealthy don’t keep this country
going because they spend proportionately less of their
income, or don’t spend at all in this country, and
they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Your recent
budget made sure of that too. You yourself are a prime
example. The fact that petrol is at an astronomically
high price doesn’t phase you because you don’t
have to buy it. It’s just an expense you can claim
for and that means that we, as your employer, have to
buy it for you. But you see, we can’t afford to
buy your petrol. We can’t even afford to buy our
own petrol, and for us it’s essential because we
need it to get to work so we can pay taxes and you can
use those taxes to get your petrol for free. See how this
works? Or doesn’t work, as the case is. You’re
making a hell of a lot more money than I am, so buy your
own damn petrol. And you can stop asking me to buy you
a new couch for your second London flat too.
Similarly you’re giving corporations financial help
they don’t need. Just as you’re keeping permanently
unemployed lager louts in benefits they’ve never
paid for, you’re giving millions of pounds of our
money to mega-corporations that are already raking in
millions, or billions of pounds of profit as it is. Do
you fancy yourself as some sort of anti-Robin Hood? Taking
from the poor to give to the rich? How much more do you
think you can squeeze out of us before we have nothing
left to give? And to add insult to injury, you use our
money to bail out banks that floundered due to their own
greed and incompetence, despite making billions off us
in previous years. Strange how we have yet to see any
dividends from our role as unwilling shareholders.
When my wife and I realised her chances of getting another
job were slim to none, we decided to take the bull by
the horns and start our own business. After several months
in the retail trade, our shop is already struggling to
keep its head above water and we’re wondering if
it will still be in existence by the end of the year,
and we’re not alone. Every shop in our street is
in danger of dying due to poor sales. Where is our millions
in financial help? Oh sure, we could jump through a lot
of hoops and maybe, if we’re lucky, we might get
a grant of a few hundred pounds. Oh yes, and we do get
a year free of business rates. Don’t think we don’t
appreciate that, because we really do. But it hardly compares
to the millions you’re handing out to corporations
that are already rolling in dough now does it? And what
happens when our rates do kick in? We’re hooped,
that’s what. The first couple of months of this
year we foolishly thought we were doing well, even making
a bit of a profit. Ah, but then came the good old VAT
return and there went that fantasy.
Am I getting through to you? Is anyone listening, or are
you even there at all? We are sick and tired of hearing
you spout vacuous political rhetoric every time someone
challenges you on one of your many dodgy deals. We are
fed up with the plastic smile stuck on your face when
we see pictures of you shaking hands with your rich and
powerful bedfellows, or read stories of you giving them
our money. We’ve had enough of hearing all the tough
talk but seeing no action. We don’t want to hear
you blaming the previous government for all our woes because,
guess what? When they came to power they blamed the previous
government for the same things, as did the government
before them, and so on, and so on….
We are at our wits end with paying through the teeth for
services that don’t exist anymore. Our roads are
in a terrible state, our health care is failing. We pay
ever higher rates to jam ourselves like Sardines into
a transportation system that delivers increasingly poor
service. Our education system is a joke. Discipline is
non-existent in schools because teachers aren’t
allowed to exercise it anymore. Universities are charging
astronomical fees because of your policies despite the
fact that they’re churning out graduates who can
barely spell their own names.
We pay for police that won’t come out when you need
them because they simply don’t have the manpower
thanks to your cuts. What idiot would slash the budget
of the police force, one of the most fundamental services
of a civilised world? You babble on about how the government
will come down hard on anti-social behaviour, but have
you ever had to put up with it? It took us 3 years to
get rid of the irresponsible louts next door to us and
in all that time not once would the police do anything,
saying it was the council’s responsibility. The
council, on the other hand, were of no use whatsoever,
whether it was their responsibility or not. For 3 years
we put up with loud parties until 4 or 5 o’clock
in the morning, abusive and threatening behaviour and
intimidation from our neighbours. In the end it was neither
the police nor the council that removed them – they
simply grew tired of our complaints and moved out. Remind
me again how seriously the government takes anti-social
behaviour…?
In a similar budget slashing fiasco, what moron would
engage its military forces in a war that has nothing to
do with us, but not give them enough money, equipment
and personnel to do their job properly? While we have
nothing but admiration and respect for the members of
our military forces, we have nothing but contempt for
a government that sends them off to be maimed or killed
in an unwinnable war for an unjustifiable cause. Please
don’t keep telling us you’re keeping us safe
from terrorism. We never did buy that one and we certainly
don’t want to hear it now after hundreds of our
soldiers have come home in coffins and the threat of terrorism
has only increased because of your actions. Only a half
wit would invade someone else’s country and not
expect terrorist attacks against the invaders and their
allies to increase. Have you learned nothing from history?
Did you not hear about the grand ol’ time the Soviets
had in Afghanistan?
Thanks to you and those like you, we are quickly on our
way to becoming one of the third world countries we used
to smugly slap ourselves on the back for helping. I wonder
which countries, if any, will jump to our aid?
Oh, and one more thing. The EU is sucking the life out
of us. We want out, and then we want you out of our government.
And your little dog too.
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