Let them eat cake

I was having lunch. A sort of pseudo-tapas, served on a windswept plastic grassed first-floor bar terrace. A post-industrial makeover of something that was once useful: all chrome, glass, plastic wicker bucket seats and infra-red heating. The sort of place they add 10% “discretionary service charge”, and make you pay before you’ve had the food in case you think it’s crap…which it nearly was. You get the picture. Down in the street, lined with blinged-up monster Beemers and Mercs with blacked out windows, was the local Big Issue seller. I wondered what he thought about Dave Cameron (remember him?) and his take on The Big Society. You know, where we all take care of each other, run the libraries, buy sandwiches for the homeless guy, and save the state a fortune in welfare. And then I got to thinking about Saint Theresa May and her being a sort of political bag lady, picking over the recycling bins for anything useful that we might swallow. I thought about how the safety net of our welfare state has more holes than an ageing sex-workers tights, and how so many more of us are falling through. I wondered if Dave Cameron’s Tories (including Saint Theresa) ever really believed any of the ‘Big Society’ doctrine and, if they did, what do they think now? Are they embarrassed? Apparently Saint Theresa now believes “only the Conservatives can build a fairer Britain”. Does she think we don’t know she has spent the last 6 years voting through, and supporting, the measures that have made Britain the most divided and unfair it has been in a century? Doe she think we’ll believe “that was Dave, but this is me”? Does she think we haven’t noticed being victims of the biggest, longest running, shell game in recent British History? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there is a pea under any of those shells. “Let them eat cake”, but add 10% service.