The Count counts himself lucky not to be royal.
Politicians have decided that the cost of royalty is too high. They can wrap their tiny minds around tiny sums. But even the biggest headed of them can not wrap their big heads round big numbers. A tiny mind in a big head makes a lot of noise: it rattles around. To make a politician, all you need to do is to add a big mouth. Politicians can focus on the cost of a train journey (A rip off £500) but are clueless about the billions (£5 billion to rebuild 200 perfectly good school buildings while spending not one penny on the teachers: call it the City Academy programme and the MPs go to sleep and approve it). It would take ten million rip off train journeys to pay for the folly of the Academies. So if you are an MP you do the obvious thing: attack the train journey cost. Duh.
One thing is for sure. They are right about slime balls who pay themselves too much, have too many paid flunkies, offer no discernible benefit to society, insist on traveling first class, like to lord it over ordinary people, have luxury accommodationon and multiple homes paid for by the taxpayer, live in a security cocoon that protects them and leaves us to the mercy of thieves and terrorists and can look forward to a retirement with an indexed linked pension. This is a description of themselves that politicians avoid.
But hypocrisy is easier than honesty. Instead of attacking themselves, they attack royalty. The cost of Royalty, according to the politicians, is £37 million. This gives them plenty of scope to complain about a plane trip costing £12,800. The same MP who whinged and whined about the use of the royal train quietly took the taxpayer for a cool £250,000 in pay, pension and allowances. Throw in the cost of running Westminster, special advisers and special security, our MPs are blowing at least £200 million on keeping themselves in a comfortable lifestyle. Although they are very clear about how much the Royals cost, you can look high and low for how much Parliament costs. That's how to be a politician: complain loudly about other people's costs and keep very quiet about your own while you milk the system for all it is worth.
The politicians may know the cost of everything (except themselves) but they clearly know the value of nothing (except themselves: they think they are very precious). What is the value of Ian Davidson, who complained about the Royal train? And how does that compare to the value of the Royals? How many millions of tourists come to see Ian Davidson each year versus seeing the Queen?
The count would like to suggest a way of economising. Royalty can be funded by cutting out 150 MPs. They would not be missed: most of them have never even been heard of. We would not miss their missives to the local council about broken paving stones and housing waiting lists. We would not miss them legislating, regulating and bossing us around. We would not miss their pompous press releases. We would not miss paying their useless salaries and allowances.
£37 million is a small sum, but qualifies for the meadow mayonnaise awards. Let's do the count's three step:
1. The venal start: you know that there is going to no impartiality when the Public Accounts Committee is involved. They are not there to scrutinise expenditure and stop waste: they are there to score cheap political points and gain publicity for its anonymous, underachieving, time-serving members who dream of a junior ministerial job followed by a knighthood. Attacking royalty is risk free, because royalty never attacks back.
2. The Meadow Mayonnaise Moment. The cost of Royalty is £37 milliion (60p per citizen annually). This completely ignores the value of the cost; it ignores that much of this is the Queen's own income anyway; it ignores the absurd costs of the people doing the scrutinising; it ignores the costs and value of any alternative. But it does provide some cheap shots for cheap politicians.
3. The illogical conclusion is to cut costs of royalty even further. We could have them all living on the dole in a council house, but it would rather lose the point. Alternatively we could appoint Ian Davidson as Queen (is he a natural for this role?); or we could ask Mrs Beckham or Mrs Blair or any other washed up C-list celebrity to be queen/king president.
It is time the country woke up to the value of its heritage. All royalty and Counts deserve to be kept at taxpayers' expense in some luxury. It is the least we deserve.
Politicians have decided that the cost of royalty is too high. They can wrap their tiny minds around tiny sums. But even the biggest headed of them can not wrap their big heads round big numbers. A tiny mind in a big head makes a lot of noise: it rattles around. To make a politician, all you need to do is to add a big mouth. Politicians can focus on the cost of a train journey (A rip off £500) but are clueless about the billions (£5 billion to rebuild 200 perfectly good school buildings while spending not one penny on the teachers: call it the City Academy programme and the MPs go to sleep and approve it). It would take ten million rip off train journeys to pay for the folly of the Academies. So if you are an MP you do the obvious thing: attack the train journey cost. Duh.
One thing is for sure. They are right about slime balls who pay themselves too much, have too many paid flunkies, offer no discernible benefit to society, insist on traveling first class, like to lord it over ordinary people, have luxury accommodationon and multiple homes paid for by the taxpayer, live in a security cocoon that protects them and leaves us to the mercy of thieves and terrorists and can look forward to a retirement with an indexed linked pension. This is a description of themselves that politicians avoid.
But hypocrisy is easier than honesty. Instead of attacking themselves, they attack royalty. The cost of Royalty, according to the politicians, is £37 million. This gives them plenty of scope to complain about a plane trip costing £12,800. The same MP who whinged and whined about the use of the royal train quietly took the taxpayer for a cool £250,000 in pay, pension and allowances. Throw in the cost of running Westminster, special advisers and special security, our MPs are blowing at least £200 million on keeping themselves in a comfortable lifestyle. Although they are very clear about how much the Royals cost, you can look high and low for how much Parliament costs. That's how to be a politician: complain loudly about other people's costs and keep very quiet about your own while you milk the system for all it is worth.
The politicians may know the cost of everything (except themselves) but they clearly know the value of nothing (except themselves: they think they are very precious). What is the value of Ian Davidson, who complained about the Royal train? And how does that compare to the value of the Royals? How many millions of tourists come to see Ian Davidson each year versus seeing the Queen?
The count would like to suggest a way of economising. Royalty can be funded by cutting out 150 MPs. They would not be missed: most of them have never even been heard of. We would not miss their missives to the local council about broken paving stones and housing waiting lists. We would not miss them legislating, regulating and bossing us around. We would not miss their pompous press releases. We would not miss paying their useless salaries and allowances.
£37 million is a small sum, but qualifies for the meadow mayonnaise awards. Let's do the count's three step:
1. The venal start: you know that there is going to no impartiality when the Public Accounts Committee is involved. They are not there to scrutinise expenditure and stop waste: they are there to score cheap political points and gain publicity for its anonymous, underachieving, time-serving members who dream of a junior ministerial job followed by a knighthood. Attacking royalty is risk free, because royalty never attacks back.
2. The Meadow Mayonnaise Moment. The cost of Royalty is £37 milliion (60p per citizen annually). This completely ignores the value of the cost; it ignores that much of this is the Queen's own income anyway; it ignores the absurd costs of the people doing the scrutinising; it ignores the costs and value of any alternative. But it does provide some cheap shots for cheap politicians.
3. The illogical conclusion is to cut costs of royalty even further. We could have them all living on the dole in a council house, but it would rather lose the point. Alternatively we could appoint Ian Davidson as Queen (is he a natural for this role?); or we could ask Mrs Beckham or Mrs Blair or any other washed up C-list celebrity to be queen/king president.
It is time the country woke up to the value of its heritage. All royalty and Counts deserve to be kept at taxpayers' expense in some luxury. It is the least we deserve.
posted by Count Kostov at
10:10 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home