A Pre-Budget Note from Dave

Dear Little People,

Taxing a massive axe to public sector services and jobs is a absolute necessity. Everyone agrees with me - the whole spectrum of media, from the Daily Mail to the Sun. Business groups that really care about the welfare of others, like the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce. Think tanks that definitely aren't a bunch of Tories masquerading as independent thinkers, like Reform and Policy Exchange.

There may be some economists that disagree with this approach. That's because they are communists.

Now, some might say that we are using this economic climate as an excuse to enact policies we have long-since envisaged, that somehow we are reverting to type. This is clearly nonsense - it's because we care about you, the little people, and we want you to be free to come home after a whole day in the office and to spend the rest of your evening and your weekend running your local school, police station or whatever other services I can think of.

Some say that the logic of this approach only works if you are the non-working, 'yummy mummy' spouse of a rich City type, living in the kind of semi-rural community in the home counties that people like us live in, and that applying it to the 99.9% of the rest of the population who don't have bucket loads of time and money would be plain silly.

This is nonsense  - Boris was telling me just the other day, over canapes in the Carlton Club, that Blotto and Barnaby are running a finishing school in Henley very well indeed. And if they can run a school that proper people use, then schools for the plebs and commoners must be a doddle. Besides, my black man in Portsmouth says it'll work over there too. I've never been myself - it's apparently filthy - but he lives there, so he should know.

Now, some other killjoys have suggested that we are failing badly to see the irony of hammering the very workers whose taxes have paid to bail out a banking system that caused the recession in the first place, and the even greater irony that the greedy, reckless blokes that created the mess are at the same time stuffing their pockets with massive subsidised bonuses again.

This is not true. We don't see the irony because irony is now dead, crushed by its own weight. This, however, is a positive development. Austere times call for compassionate cuts, and cultural functions like irony are not exempt from this. That is why my government has also agreed a five-year plan to phase out logic, sanity and basic human kindness.

On Tuesday, my Chancellor will announce that you are all shafted, except if you are called Hermione or Felix, or you work in the handful of financial institutions surrounding Liverpool Street station. This, though, is a necessary shafting. If you care about this country then you need to understand that you are a little person and that you are getting rogered because you've spent too long acting above your station. Now back to the fields, you pleb.

Yours Truly,

Dave