I DON’T know about you but every day I seem to wake up to some bastard demanding more money from me.
Annual pet insurance for the cat has jumped by £40, the boiler cover has been turned up by £150 a year.
AlamyAll that extra cash we’ve been forced to shovel has been used on treats for entitled civil servants[/caption]
GettyAngela Rayner blasted the Conservatives for having their snouts in the trough[/caption]
booking.comA group of civil servants stayed at the five star Claris Hotel & Spa in Barcelona[/caption]
Now I’m waiting for the new council tax hike to kick in.
How much will they want off me this year? Perhaps this time they’ll demand a couple of body parts too, just to sweeten the deal.
I’m excited to find out.
But at least when the state comes grasping for a slice of your hard-earned cash you can take some comfort in knowing it’s going towards helping you out.
You know, like educating your kids or getting your hip replaced . . . or just fixing those damn potholes.
Well, apparently not.
Now we learn that all that extra tax we’ve been forced to shovel into Rachel From Accounts’ leaky bucket has been used to lavish five-star treats on entitled job-for-life civil servants.
And we’re not talking about the odd business class flight or late-night taxi back to their five-bedder in the Home Counties.
No, the latest disclosure of taxpayer-funded largesse reads like King Charles’ Christmas list.
Crystal glasses from the supplier to Downton Abbey at a staggering £125 a pop.
A whopping £1,400 splurged at Fortnum & Mason, a sumptuous department store in London’s Mayfair that makes John Lewis look like Poundland.
Bottles of English sparkling wine from a fancy pants vineyard in Kent totalling £600. And, incredibly, a pair of £741 “handsewn” shoes from a cobbler so exclusive you have to ring them up and book an appointment.
Why the hell are we paying for all this?
It’s not just luxury stuff that we’ve picked up the tab for either — it’s top-notch entertainment too.
Civil servants, when not working from home — as is their new obsession — found the time to spray thousands of pounds of our money around private members’ clubs from Pall Mall to Thailand. One group’s stay at a five-star hotel in Barcelona was also funded by us.
David Lammy — the foghorn-voiced foreign minister who is usually so quick to theatrically call out this kind of thing — saw his department rank as one of the biggest culprits.
In the first four months of this Labour government his staff blew over half a million pounds in “restaurants and bars”.
Exactly where that cash was spent has not been disclosed but it would be safe to assume it wasn’t at the Bangkok Beefeater.
Even James Bond kept his expenses tighter than this shower.
The list goes on, but I’ll leave it there to spare your blood pressure.
Look, I’m not suggesting everyone working for the taxpayer should entertain contacts with a couple of cans of warm supermarket lager while sitting on a park bench.
But these state-funded spendthrifts have lost all perspective.
They are, what is technically known as, taking the p**s.
Maybe we could have expected that from all those silver spoon-fed Tory types.
But Labour? The socialist party of the workers?
They came into power cursing this kind of kleptomania from the public purse.
‘Catalogue of waste’
Naturally Angela “I hate Tory scum” Rayner was the loudest critic, blasting those nasty Conservatives for having their snouts in the trough.
Two years ago she accused former PM Rishi Sunak of a “scandalous catalogue of waste” that showed public funds were being “frittered away across every part of government”.
There would be none of that when she and her cost-conscious Labour colleagues got into power, was the takeaway.
Ha!
So patently untrue has that turned out to be that even her department, the housing ministry, has seen wages rocket by £20million since she took over.
So why has nothing changed?
Why are we still having our pockets picked by the people we pay to serve us?
Was all that slamming and blasting of the previous administration just performative posturing to score a few points in the run-up to an election?
Something bitchy to say while you waited to dunk your own greedy mitts into the taxpayer treasure chest?
Come on, Ange, what’s the answer?
GettyRayner had accused former PM Rishi Sunak of a ‘scandalous catalogue of waste’[/caption]
Talking of James Bond, I have the perfect mission for him now he’s on the payroll at Amazon.
I’d challenge James Bond to deliver a parcel from a warehouse somewhere off the M1 to my home without just dumping it by the bin in plain sight of anyone walking past
Never mind hunting down a disfigured foreign psychopath in some North African hellhole or wherever.
I’d like to see him attempt to deliver a parcel from a soulless warehouse somewhere off the M1 to my home without just dumping it by the bin in plain sight of anyone walking past.
Because apparently that is currently mission impossible for Amazon.
MEG-A BASIC
I’VE had a busy weekend having only just finished cleaning up all the vomit I violently ejected after clapping eyes on Meghan Markle’s “mood board”.
GettyBut by sharing it, Meg succeeded only in reminding us she is, in fact, just basic[/caption]
InstagramMeghan Markle’s decision to release this ‘mood board’ is part of her plan to get our juices flowing for her new lifestyle brand, As Ever[/caption]
Her collection of trite affirmations, posted on Instagram, resembled the kind of tat you usually find in a garden centre gift shop.
Meaningless twaddle such as: “I love you with all my butt.
“I would say heart but my butt is bigger.”
Oh God, pass the bucket . . . here I go again.
Meg’s decision to release this smorgasbord of schmaltz is all part of her plan to get our juices flowing for her new lifestyle brand, As Ever.
But as ever she has missed the mark wildly and succeeded only in reminding us that far from being some kind of aspirational figure, she is, in fact, just crashingly basic.
Never Ferget
GettyMan United’s bosses are fed up with hearing about Sir Alex Ferguson’s legendary run of success[/caption]
OH, so apparently Man United’s new “dream team” of highly effective bosses – Jim Ratcliffe and David Brailsford, take a bow – are fed up hearing about the team’s glory days.
They reckon talk of Sir Alex Ferguson’s 13 Premier League titles, two Uefa Champions League titles and five FA Cups is having a negative effect on the club, now languishing three places above the relegation zone in the Prem.
I’m not surprised they hate hearing about Fergie’s legendary run of success.
It makes their penny-pinching stewardship look even crapper than it already is.
FAT JABS SOLD
DRUG dealers are now selling fat jabs alongside their more traditional class A fare.
Which begs the question: Why?
Surely they’re already peddling weight loss treatments.
I mean, have you ever seen a fat smackhead?
It wasn’t called “heroin chic” for nothing.
PEACE IS REEL SIMPLE
AlamyThousands of Gen Z are taking up angling to tackle anxiety[/caption]
WHEN I was a young sprat, my brother and I would spend hours sitting by the rivers of Derbyshire trying to catch fish.
So I was delighted to see that thousands of youngsters are now taking up angling.
According to the Angling Trust the last two years has seen a boom in rod licences as Gen Z take up the pastime to tackle anxiety.
Well, I can vouch for that. It was a magical time for me and my brother as, being just 20 months apart in age, we would otherwise be at home, knocking ten bells out of each other and stealing each other’s Matchbox cars.
But peace reigned when we were sat by the Derwent or the mighty Trent (as it always felt to us whippersnappers).
A long blast of pure silence, with the occasional drama of actually catching something, usually too small to eat.
At the end of a long day, having caught a million gudgeon and the odd roach, we’d tip our keepnet back into the river and return home, relaxed and without so much as a bruise between us.
JOKES LOST ON NHS
AlamyAlthough laughter is the best medicine, I’d rather be pumped full of Prozac to treat depression than sitting through an Adam Hills stand-up show for 30 minutes[/caption]
DID you hear the one about the MP who suggested comedy gigs should be prescribed to people with depression?
Well Dr Simon Opher, Labour’s representative for Stroud, wasn’t joking when he backed the leftfield plan as he railed against the modern malaise of necking pills for every problem we face, no matter how minor.
He’s right. Laughter really is the best medicine in my experience – I eat dad jokes for breakfast.
A trial is now being run by a firm called Craic Health (geddit?) but exactly what events they will offer has yet to be disclosed.
Let’s hope the NHS doesn’t have too much sway over the line-up.
You can only imagine the kind of humour acceptable to a right-on health service which thinks women can have penises and seriously asked staff to call breastfeeding “chest-feeding”?
Will depressed folk be forced to attend the kind of leftie woke claptrap that now courses through the veins of the once-edgy Channel 4?
Because if the choice is sitting through 30 minutes of an Adam Hills’ stand-up show or being pumped full of Prozac, just give me the tablets.
A BOTT OF FUSS
BOTTICELLI’S The Birth Of Venus has been slapped with a trigger warning for nudity in case snowflake students get offended by a bit of Renaissance rudeness.
Well, so the story goes.
I think the University of Roehampton, in Surrey, are just trying to drum up interest in a subject that young students weaned on a diet of TikTok garbage might find a bit dull in 2025.
It’s like being slumped in front of late-night telly and the announcer intones: “The following film contains scenes of a sexual nature.”
Once you hear that, there’s no way you’re going to bed.
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