I’m relatively rich.
I can afford private healthcare. I don’t have to worry about long waiting lists for operations or the impossibility of getting an appointment with my GP. If I or my rich friends need a doctor then there are plenty of wonderful chaps in Harley Street. I know they charge quite a bit. An hour with one of them could pay for a holiday in Ibiza for a family of poor people. But my friends charge even more. We’re all something in the City, or lawyers, in PR and advertising, academics, or high up in the BBC. Some of us are lucky in being ‘celebs,’ earning millions for speaking in funny accents and looking serious in front of a camera.
I can afford private education. I don’t have to worry about large class sizes in which English is rarely spoken. Some of us rich people send our children off to expensive boarding schools to prepare them for life. The life of a senior politician. Or we send them to independent schools in London. I know, I know, full of Russian oligarchs who we sneer at behind their backs. But those oligarchs do throw the most outrageous parties and their wives are simply gorgeous!
I know we’re all rich but there are some things for which we refuse to pay more than is necessary. That’s why I like all the EU immigrants, especially those from Eastern Europe. They make the most wonderful cleaners. A British cleaner is just too expensive. My friends who are CEOs of large corporations cannot praise the Eastern Europeans too much. Just do the sums, every pound in pay saved by employing an Eastern European in their company goes straight into the CEO’s pocket as part of their bonus. That’s one pound, per hour, per employee, it adds up to…the numbers are too big to do in my head, but put it this way, some of my CEO friends commute to work from their country shooting estates to London in their own helicopters. You’ve got to love free movement of labour!
My politician friends in the EU Remain campaign even have a clever way of spinning the advantages of immigrant labour. Get this, “the immigrants contribute more in taxes, and take less in benefits, than the native Brits.” That fools the proles almost every time. What they don’t say is that the real explanation for this is that the immigrants undercut the Brits and take their jobs. Net result…exactly what they say, “the immigrants contribute…” I’m not sure how the Brit who’s lost their job feels about this. Probably not too good. (Do poor people have an old boys’ network? I’m not sure, I don’t really talk to any.) And as that immigrant takes the job of the Brit it also increases the number of people who need healthcare, education and benefits (that poor unemployed Brit!). Well, as I said above, I can afford private healthcare, etc. etc.
Only two weeks to go now before the Referendum. Just got to keep pulling the wool over the eyes of the poor, and the young, for fourteen more days!
Why don’t you and the family pop over to our villa in Tuscany for a few days during the summer hols? We’d love to see you and Isabella.
Alicja, when you’ve finished cleaning the fridge and taken the dog for a walk, could you be a dear and make me a cup of tea?
P
