Francis Maude, Paymaster General, worth an estimated £3m, has proposed that we should all be giving 1% of our income to charity as a matter of course, when use our bank cards, apply for driving licences and passports or fill in tax returns. It appears that this may be a feature of that as-yet-shapeless dread, the Big Society.
Rather like the speech in which Cameron stated 'well-being can't be measured by money' or any of the odious Toby Young's Free School nonsense, my outrage was instantaneously subsumed by a sense of existentialist terror, a little like the moment in The Shining when the shot of the manuscript - an endless repetition of "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" - confirms that Jack has gone stark staring nuts. The difference is that here, it's not a chilling realisation of insanity crystallising, it's the final and conclusive evidence that they do not have a clue about 95% of the nation(s) they are governing.
Do people in high-rises in Stoke get up in the morning and think 'never mind that I haven't got the money to give the kids breakfast, the beauty of our surroundings and the quality of our culture (verbatim Cameron) give me such a sense of well-being, I'll go and volunteer somewhere for the day'?
Do folk stacking shelves at Dagenham ASDA get home in the evening and then think 'I know what, our kids really need a better education; I'll ring a few of my mates and we'll submit an application to Michael Gove to set up our own school'?
Maude, almost fantastically, states 'there's an absolute social norm that if you go to a restaurant you expect to tip between 10 and 15%'. Of course, we all do. You often get stuck behind the family in the queue at the Burnely KFC drive-in as they get try to calculate the appropriate percentage of their Bargain Bucket-for-six bill.
I predicted that we were in for a hung parliament on the basis that however disastrous were the final days of Gordon, White Van Man and the rest of the Sun readership wouldn't let themselves be tele-transported back to an age where Eton ran the show and the rest of us were 6 inches shorter, died 20 years earlier and were condemned to counting well-being on the basis of how much was left for beer on a Friday night.
Short of tattooing 'Out Of Touch' on their foreheads, how much further does this foul collection of poshboys need to go before the penny drops?
