The Gap Between 'Us' and 'Them'

Politicians spend an inordinate amount of time these days trying to reconnect with ‘real people’ and bemoaning the gap between politicians and the real world. While these sycophantic quasi-democratic unrepresentative fools may like paying lip service to building bridges with ‘the real world’, the recent G20 meeting in London served to highlight once again the chasm that exists between ‘us’ and ‘them’. For whilst the Metropolitan Police were busy beating peaceful protestors and battering innocent newspaper vendors to death our barely elected leaders were demonstrating how firmly their feet are planted in the ‘real world’.

A request under the Freedom of Information Act this week has revealed that the food and drink bill for the G20 quango ran to over half a million pounds. And guess who’s paying for this? Is it the over paid, expenses-draining representatives of ‘we the people’? Er, no, it’s just ‘we the people’. Once again the tax payer is left to foot the bill for a bunch of rich white middle class buffoons getting together in a totally unaccountable and un-transparent meeting to determine our fate. While the people’s liberties were being attacked on the streets, behind the police, armed guards, private security and bodyguards, world leaders, their wives, their secretaries, their assistants, their PAs, and practically anyone else who could secure a seat on the gravy train, were tucking into £66,000 pounds worth of fine wines, and munching their way through £435,000 pounds worth of food. The irony of these people meeting to discuss the global economic crisis and poverty and debt in the developing world whilst indulging in a Romanesque orgy of gluttony was no doubt lost on them.

(Prices taken from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/163500k-ndash-what-it-cost-to-feed-and-water-g20-leaders-1680401.html)