Mad Dave 4, or Why We Should Scrap the UK Honours System and Ban the Tories From Ever Holding Office Again

Part four of my serialisation of Mad Dave Cameron’s biography, ‘Call Me Dave’

I better get this off my chest upfront. I’ve always thought the peerages, OBEs and other titles showered upon the celebrity glitterati every New Year to be not only a little bit arbitrary, but at worst a squalid example of how corrupt our political leaders have become. My reasons for thinking this are threefold.

1. Honours sometimes get given to complete monsters

The first reason for doing away with the honours is that they are often awarded to people who with hindsight turn out to be hideous human beings – deeply flawed individuals who pretend to be something different in public to what they are in real life. Take Jimmy Savile, or the female CEO of a famous-brand UK challenger bank, as being two that spring to mind. Pinning medals on closet paedophiles, corporate bullies and psychopaths is hardly the best advertisement for an ‘honours’ system.

2. Honours are often undeserved

Secondly, honours should ONLY go to people who do things WAY above the call of duty. Those selfless individuals who dedicate their lives to noble causes. Fund raisers, charity workers, the thousands of anonymous souls who toil selflessly for their local communities. What honours should NOT be about is doling out sweeties to pet celebrities and civil servants for ‘services to’ their chosen career, i.e. getting out of bed and going to work.

As far as I can tell, most of the more salubrious recipients – whose various gongs and peerages adorn the front pages of our newspapers every New Year’s Eve – appear to have been awarded them for no better reason than simply doing their job well. That is to say, turning up for work and making a decent fist of their occupation, day in, day out, just like the rest of us. For which most of them have already been handsomely remunerated.

What’s more, for every care worker, miner, policeman, engineer, road-sweeper or nurse who gets a mention in despatches, there seems to be a whole army of these famous A-listers queuing up to become Knights and Dames. As though being famous is considered an achievement worthy of honours in itself. Which would suggest it’s more about the vanity of those handing out the honours, than anything to do with the recipients’ worthiness.

3. Honours are invariably politically motivated

For most of history bestowing honours has been the preserve of kings and queens. Monarchs typically bestowed them on members of the aristocracy in exchange for loyalty, military service and keeping the peasants in place. Only since the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries when the power of royalty began to wane and parliament became supreme, has the method of selecting individuals for honours gradually changed. Kings and queens have continued to confer them, but on the advice of their ministers rather than on a royal whim. Recipients began being drawn from all walks of life, not just the blue bloods.

However, of late there seems to have developed a somewhat regressive trend among the political class to regard the honours system as an opportunity to do a bit of a personal back-slapping with their chums. That’s to say, a chance to reward those who have done them personal favours, endorsed them, bunged them money, that kind of thing.

David Cameron’s bestowing of a knighthood on Lynton Crosby in January 2016 for ‘services to politics’ was a particularly flagrant example. For those not in the know, Crosby was the anonymous spin doctor who masterminded the Tory election victory in May 2015. His knighthood is that grubby. And while it’s true that no party has been above such squalid practices in recent times, when a political snake like Crosby gets one for services to a party who are piece by piece dismantling everything that is good and decent about our country, then the whole idea of honours becomes discredited. Crosby’s elevation would seem to indicate that the system has sunk to a new nadir, and provides proof perhaps that the Tories now think they can get away with anything.

No leader of a self-respecting democratic nation should be allowed to brazenly elevate their cronies to the peerage in this way, or stuff the House of Lords with their political mates. That brings the whole system into disrepute. Simply replacing one all-powerful potentate (e.g. a king who showers awards and honours on his favourites, elevating them to positions of influence) with another all-powerful potentate (e.g. a Prime Minister, who does exactly the same) doesn’t seem much like progress to me, whether the demagogue is called Bad Prince John or Mad Dave Cameron.

If anyone thinks comparing the current Tory Government to a despotic feudal regime is a bit extreme, I’d suggest you have a quick glance at ‘Angels Coffins’, Chapter 3 of Mad Dave’s biography, ‘Call Me Dave’. Pay particular attention to the third paragraph down, which covers the early years Mad Dave spent at boarding school.

“Founded in 1908, Heatherdown catered for fewer than 100 boys at any one time, but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in social exclusivity. According to one account of Cameron’s time there, among the parents of his contemporaries were ‘eight honourables, four sirs, two captains, two doctors, two majors, two princesses, two marchionesses, one viscount, one brigadier, one commodore, one earl, one lord, and one Queen (the Queen)’. Cameron’s classmates included the grandson of oil billionaire John Paul Getty, thanks to whom he would later enjoy an extraordinary holiday in America; and Prince Edward, whose older brother Andrew was also educated there.”

If this list of ennobled individuals with whom the young dictator rubbed shoulders from an early age proves anything, it does perhaps give some inkling as to why Mad Dave turned into such a sly, double-dealing apologist for rampant inequality and social exclusivity in Britain. And as one picks over the carnage of George Osborne’s latest budget, incredulous at the almost medieval savagery with which this Government is attacking the poorest and most vulnerable in society while showering gold and tax breaks on the richest and most powerful, one can only conclude that Mad Dave and his Tory mob are determined to turn Britain back 500 years to a kind of feudal society where a landed aristocracy of rich robber barons considered it their divine right to bleed the populace dry, and keep the masses in a state of servile vassalage.

Hold on to that thought, when you next vote in a General Election, or the EU referendum. Cameron is your enemy, not your friend. He is in it for himself, not for you. He is a congenital liar, a dissembler, a conman whose word you should never trust on anything.

How the Tories ensure the richest 1% of society control the poorest 99%, is by perpetuating the lie that ‘we’re all in it together’, when they are patently only in it for themselves. How they keep us in place, continually enslaving and impoverishing us, is by lying, cheating and stealing from us all on an institutionalised basis. It is the British people who built our railway network, our steel industry, our energy industry, our postal service, our great NHS, and we did it with the sweat of our brows and the brilliance of our intellect. And now these modern-day Tory robber barons are selling it off to their rich chums in the city, as if it were theirs to sell.

If there is any blame attached to the British people it is only this: that they were credulous and gullible enough to believe a word that ever came out of Tory mouths in the run up to the last election. They mistakenly believed that as public servants who were supposed to have the best interests of the people at heart, our political leaders were men and women of integrity, whose word could be trusted. But as the last 12 months have proven, since they broke free of the Liberal Democrat influence which had proved a handbrake on the worst Tory excesses during the coalition government, this current Tory administration are among the least trustworthy, the greediest, most cynical, hypocritical and socially unjust administrations in living memory. We will only have ourselves to blame if we EVER trust them on a single promise again.

Mad Dave Cameron is the 21^st Century’s Machiavelli. A modern day cut-purse who dresses in a gentleman’s clothes to dissemble and deceive society about his true motives. Don’t fall for it. Not again. To borrow from Oscar Wilde, to be fooled once could be considered a misfortune, but to be fooled twice would begin to look like carelessness. Reject Mad Dave and his party of greedy capitalist thugs. Reject every nasty little policy they stand for.

Oh, and if you ever find yourself within a hundred yards of any of these closet fascists in Tory clothing, with a sniper rifle and a dozen rounds of 50 cal, in open line of sight, you know what to do.

Posterity will thank you.

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