Cameron Defeats Tax Fiddles 1-0 With Well-Aimed Kicking Of The Unemployed

Pubs all over England erupted in frenzied cheers today as David Cameron, the legendary right-winger in the number 10 shirt, led his dream team of millionaires to victory with a beautifully-timed kick to the unemployed.

“The lads have been feeling sick as a parrot lately, what with all these intrusive stories in the papers lately about their tax lives,” admitted an ecstatic Mr Cameron, after being carried around the stadium by delighted fellow players including Sir Chris Hoy, Gary Barlow and Jimmy Carr. “But when I suddenly saw the ball coming my way, I knew I had no option but to boot it clean through the back of the welfare safety net. I reckon my old dad would be proud of me.”

Balls to the unemployed

“It’s a funny old game. One minute you’re down, the next you’re up,” grinned spud-faced bad boy Jimmy Carr – back on side after, only days earlier, earning himself a stern talking-to from his captain for bringing their game into disrepute and feigning injury. “But it doesn’t matter, because this shows our critics that we just can’t lose.”

“We’re gutted,” moaned the jobless. “It doesn’t matter what we do, we just keep losing and losing and losing. These guys are in a different league altogether.”

All over the country, meanwhile, manual workers on council estates and middle-class housewives alike are deliriously chanting the same happy song to their unemployed neighbours: “You’re going down!”

NatWest Death Toll Rises

Warning: contains scenes of heartbreaking inconvenience

Experts warn there is no cure in sight for the ongoing tragedy of NatWest customers dying needlessly in droves from the minor nuisance of having to use their credit card instead of their debit card.

Cash machines weren't built to handle this much customer dissatisfaction

The disaster began to unfold this morning, when a software glitch caused fatal bother and terminal vexation to 12 million innocent NatWest victims by freezing their current accounts.

By 10am, customer aid workers at NatWest branches were already overwhelmed by queues of pathetic refugees pouring out of clothes shops - many of them pitifully reduced to begging for compensation for the unbearable pain of being told “Your payment was not authorised. Please contact your card supplier” by a numeric keypad.

“My salary didn’t go through, which means that NatWest have effectively reduced me to slavery,” whined one haggard casualty, who had to drag her injured pride all the way up the high street from H&M. “My Visa card had already been thrashed black and blue. Without the essential new dress I need to go out in tonight, I know I will just die.”

“God in heaven help me, I don’t have any money to get pissed with either,” she moaned, before fainting through lack of ready funds.

“I was so moved by radio reports of the NatWest victims’ terrible plight, I ran ten miles to the nearest town in order to transfer a week’s wages (16,000 shillings, or £6.21) to Britain. I hope this will help to relieve their unimaginable suffering,” said Hassan, a subsistence farmer in Somaliland. Tragically, however, his potentially face-saving donation has also not gone through yet.

Nagging Golf Enthusiasts To Strike For God-Given Right To World’s Best Pensions

The contemptuous prick who lounges behind a desk for an hour or two every morning, ordering you to stop doing everything that gives you pleasure before roaring off for an agreeable afternoon out on the links, will be enjoying an extra round on June 21st because somebody, somewhere, is due for an even bigger pension than him, according to an open letter written by his gang.

St Mellion's fees are a tad dearer than your Age UK day centre, remember

“Listen, scum,” the BMA explained in every newspaper, “The founding principle of the National Health Service, according to no less an authority than that ghastly little Bevan twerp, is that our mouths should be stuffed with gold. The thought that anybody else might get more cash bunged their way, when they retire to Cornwall, than we will fills Britain’s hardworking doctors – and all the rest of us, too - with a deep-rooted moral sense of injustice, indignation and envy. Now for god’s sake stop smoking, you fat bastard. Get out, you disgust me.”

In a heartwarming gesture of goodwill towards the ignorant proles whose taxes rightly line their pockets, GPs promised that the humble lackeys who do all the tedious parts of the job - which would otherwise involve getting up from their expensive swivel chairs and actually touching poor people and their odious bodily fluids – will, naturally, not be permitted to take a day off.

“And if your stupid, ugly head falls off or whatever, don’t shit yourself,” added a BMA spokesman with a yawn, as he practiced his swing. “We’ve hired the usual foreign johnny to prod your flabby guts and scribble you a chit for two weeks’ worth of Prozac.”

Nobody Threatening To Kill Anyone For Wanting $100k Handbag

After receiving death threats for hacking a $100,000 Hermes Birkin handbag apart with a chainsaw and setting fire to it on her reality TV show, Clint Eastwood’s daughter Franscesca says she is still no closer to discovering why nobody has been marked for death for wanting to waste $100,000 on one in the first place.

Hoo-ee, gals, we's gonna have us a lynchin'!

“Ma paw blowed millions to keep Sondra Locke a-hangin’ on his arm, but wun’t nobody tol’ him he was gonna die for it,” pouted the 18-year-old model. “An’ hell, she could be -and was - comprehensively out-acted by a goddam gibberin’ monkey. Reckon them death threats is a-comin’ from jealous Hermes customers who done staked their claim on these here bags an’ are still waitin’ on a delivery.”

Mr Eastwood, meanwhile, vowed to track down the low-down dirty scum who threatened his purty daughter and bring them to justice.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he sneered. “Being as this is a $100k Hermes, the most power-dressing handbag in the world, and would blow your neighbours clean away, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel needy? Well, do ya, punk?”

Catholic Leader Suddenly Discovers Keen Interest In Something Other Than Sex

Just as education secretary Michael Gove orders an investigation into whether Catholic schools acted illegally in urging pupils to sign a petition against gay marriage, Cardinal Keith O’Brien - the head of the Catholic church in Scotland - has suddenly found that he is vitally concerned with the welfare of the poor.

How is it fair that some people live like me? demands the Cardinal

“Imagine my surprise when I heard that, in the rare moments when Jesus wasn’t ranting about the evils of bum sex, our Lord and Saviour expressed a passing interest in the less well off,” said the Cardinal. “’My word,’ I thought to myself, ‘That seemed to go down rather well with people. Perhaps I should try going down with people myself.’"

Cardinal O’Brien admitted that, engrossed as he was in saving the world from the awful plight of gay weddings, he had somehow failed to notice that the rich get richer and the poor get - children, and that this had apparently been considered “fun” for quite some time.

“This is, of course, entirely the fault of governments,” he maintained, speaking from his lavish mansion in Edinburgh’s Morningside district. “As a leader of the Catholic church, I positively welcome any measures which encourage people not to breed.”

Molotov Cocktail Not A Proper Bomb, Insists Ecclestone

As Team India staff begged Bernie Ecclestone to release them from indentured servitude and let them go home to their families after a petrol bomb narrowly missed them on a Bahrain motorway, the billionaire F1 microbe smoothly insisted that the Gulf state remains nothing less than a veritable oasis of love and harmony.

“A Molotov cocktail isn’t a real bomb at all,” he explained. “It’s more of a kid’s toy, actually.”

Mr Ecclestone decides to avoid the traffic jams

“What you have to understand is that Bahrain is sadly lacking in supervised play areas,” squeaked Mr Ecclestone from his luxury armoured personnel carrier. “The lovable local street urchins have to make their own entertainment with whatever they happen to find lying about. Since all the cash that used to float around on the breeze now belongs to me, that only leaves them with a giant underground lake of petrochemicals to amuse themselves with.”

“It’s just a bit of harmless fun,” he beamed indulgently as one of his APC’s eight wheels suddenly flew through the air with an entertaining bang, adding: “You cheeky little buggers! I know your dads!”

That Philanthropists’ Begging Letter To The Nev Filter In Full

Nev, sir – It may come as a surprise to your readers – and indeed the government - to learn that the government was, in ways which it is regrettably beyond the scope of this letter to describe, making progress in encouraging us to pass more of our loot through a charity. The insane proposal in the Budget to cap tax avoidance is nothing less than a full-scale war of extermination on philanthropy that would deter Our Good Lord Himself, if He hadn’t been such a raggedy-arsed pauper. It is confusing and dispiriting, and we all feel really depressed. We urge the Prime Minister and the twerp next door to back off pronto, or we’ll switch our main domiciles to Monaco and then they’ll be sorry.

We choose to invest in charities for a variety of reasons: we may have been touched by an issue which reminds us that, tragically, we are as mortal as the unwashed herd; we may be amused to support the development, access to and pickling of Tracey Emin; or we may just wish to give something back to our own little community.

None of us view tax relief as a primary motive, cross our hearts and hope to die (although it may substantially increase our donations until the rebate matches the unspeakably communist 50% rate of income tax). But it is an important signal that the decision to use wealth to help ourselves is recognised, encouraged and supported by society. You see, we only do it to make people love us. Seems they don’t. Fuck ‘em.

All tax reliefs are granted on the basis that the money is spent on charitable purposes and, fortuitously, this happens to be rather liberally interpreted by the Charity Commission. And there are certainly some jolly deserving charities out there which receive precious little consideration from an ignorant and jealous Johnny Public, such as the old alma mater and our family trust funds.

The current proposal will undermine the motivation to give generously in order to receive generously, and we will deprive charities of much-needed funds if comrade Osborne doesn’t resign immediately. Bloody cheek.

Mr Thomas Huge-Rebates 

The Mrs Thomas Huge-Rebates Foundation

The Hon Agatha, Lady Tabitha and The Hon Bagatha Sainsbury

The 3-for-2 Guineas Trust

Mr Grant Relief

The High Society Donor-Charity-HMRC-Donor Circle

Sir David Schoolfees 

The Schoolfees Fund

Mr Miklos Ferens 

The Miklos Ferens (Eastern Europe) Laundry Network

Movie Review: The Osborne Show

In an world addicted to contrived voyeuristic TV, ratings are dominated by the ultimate reality series – in which an innocent child unwittingly grows up surrounded by hidden cameras and millionaire actors who are only pretending to pay their taxes. Welcome, viewers, to The Osborne Show.

Lovable everyman George Osborne (played by rubber-faced goofball Jim Carrey) enjoys his job and likes everybody inside his artificial bubble until, on day 10919, a strange bundle of used tenners suddenly drops from the sky in front of him in an airmail package addressed to ‘The Cayman Islands’. Later, at his desk in the Treasury, an intrigued Osborne delves into the files – only to find that no such place appears to exist. However, when he checks the tax records, he is shocked to learn that neither he, his friends and family nor anyone else in his entire world has ever contributed a single penny to the economy.

His whole life has been a carefully-constructed illusion

Although the cynical executives who really run the show are initially alarmed, they quickly realise that the fickle viewing public will be easily distracted by Osborne’s emotional turmoil as he descends into fear and paranoia, driven to rebel against everything he has ever known and tormented by the gnawing suspicion that he may be the lifelong victim of a cruel deception.

The film succeeds because, from the very start, the audience knows what Osborne does not, seeing the scheming executives controlling everything for their own purposes, and longs for him to escape his comfortable bubble and break out into the real world.

Ironically, of course, it is only a fantasy. The Osborne Show ultimately fails to drive home the important issues it raises about wealth, the media and the rich men who control our lives, because the audience is too busy laughing to take it seriously.

Britain Prepares For Osborne's 2012 Budget

Democracy Threatens British Way Of Life, Warn Rich People

Listening to the people is the greatest threat the country has faced since Hitler, according to 537 worried captains of British industry who would be losing vast sums to the 50p rate of income tax if they hadn’t got such clever accountants.

Make the bad thing go away

“Penalising high earners through an unfair, politically-motivated tax puts populist politics before sound economics,” cautioned Robert Rawlplug OBE, founder of Bedford’s world-beating Bob’s Discount Rawlplug Emporium. “That grinning little creep Osborne is a card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers, you know. It’s just not British to put the wishes of the many before the need for an extension to my wine cellar.”

“This Bolshevik tax, which is in effect an eye-watering 58p tax after the government’s iniquitous national insurance scam is taken into account, puts wealth creators like us in a very awkward position,” agreed Sir James Yarn, CEO of The Swindon Yarn Centre. “If the budget doesn’t lower it to a more realistic figure – 0p in the pound springs to mind – I may well be left with no alternative but to relocate my entire yarn factory to Eastern Europe, at the cost of up to 5 little people’s jobs. And what comrade Osborne needs to bear in mind is that they actually pay income tax.”

Meanwhile Sir Charles Garden-Ornament, chairman of Gnomes of Bodmin plc, summed up the pain of Britain’s vital entrepreneurs by screaming and screaming and screaming until he was sick.

You Too Can Be As Wealthy As A Waitrose Shelf Stacker, Promises Clegg

'Shelf stackers of the world, unite and take over'

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has shared his glorious vision of a share-owning Britain, in which every man, woman and child can bask in the untold riches enjoyed by Waitrose shelf stackers and John Lewis till operators.

“We don't believe our problem is too much capitalism - we think it's that too few people have capital,” enthused Mr Clegg beatifically. “We need more individuals to have a real stake in their firms. More of a John Lewis economy, if you like - full of quality goods, complete with a moving Smiths soundtrack performed by someone with a softer voice than Morrissey.”

“And what many people don't realise about employee ownership,” he added, as choirs of angels sang ‘Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Still Loves Me’ above him, “Is that it is a hugely underused tool in unlocking votes from those apathetic council-estate scum who dream of getting something for nothing.”

Politicians Beg Cat To Save Eurozone

European leaders are travelling south today to beg Tomasso, the four-year-old cat who has inherited all the money left in Italy, to consider using his new-found riches to save the ailing eurozone from imminent collapse.

There's plenty of money in the kitty

French PM Nicolas Sarkozy is understood to have enlisted the support of a squeaky rubber mouse to help persuade the world’s richest cat to underwrite European debts, while Germany’s Angela Merkel is offering Tomasso unprecedented access to a tempting ball of string.

Not to be outdone, David Cameron is flying to Rome this afternoon with a crate of catnip, possibly intending to offer the feline property magnate the governorship of the Bank of England.

“I hear Tomasso likes to spend his days mostly licking his arse,” said Mr Cameron, as he boarded his flight. “Well, I can do it for him. I’ve had plenty of experience doing that for our City bankers.”

Somewhere On An Uncharted Island In The South China Sea, A Midget Butler With A Solar Cannon Loyally Awaits A Master Who Will Never Return

Evil, but lovably cute

As triumphant Libyan rebels eagerly pass around the dead Colonel Gaddafi’s golden gun, spare a thought for the trusty midget valet who mounted a lonely vigil on a tiny, hollowed-out island off the Chinese coast – waiting in vain for his amoral playboy boss to return.

“See, I keep de solar laser een teep-top order,” he smiled as he gave visiting members of the National Transitional Council a guided tour of the island’s luxurious facilities. “Pow - I blow op your seaplane! Only keeding.”

Reflecting on a lifetime of loyal service to his notorious master, the energetic French midget carefully adjusted his bowler hat as he told reporters: “Meester Gaddafi, he not so bad guy. He teep very well, and he always breeng de beautiful girls.”

“Meester Gaddafi, he leave me ze island een hees will,” he added. “Who knows, maybe I go into partnership and turn eet into de magical place where de peoples can come by de plane to live out de improbable fantasies and discover de tings about de selves.”

Turning 50p Tax Rate Into 50p Tax Rebate Would Magic Away Britain’s Economic Woes Forever, Insist Barefaced Liars

20 of Britain’s leading liars somehow managed to keep straight faces today as they confidently told chancellor George Osborne that the one thing preventing Britain from achieving total dominance of the global economy by next Monday was his craven failure to ditch the 50p upper tax band he inherited from the previous communist government.

The game's up, Trotsky

As part of a PR campaign run by professional liars in red-framed glasses, two former Bank of England spreadsheet users whose suits cost more than a year’s Jobseeker’s Allowance were among the signatories to a letter, sent to the Financial Times, which openly challenged the craven chancellor to abandon the punishing top rate of income tax, and maybe replace it with a tax rebate of 50% as a token gesture in recognition of all the sterling effort that very rich people put into awarding themselves massive bonuses.

“This ruinous injustice clearly deters fabulously wealthy investors like Warren Buffet and Lilliane Bettencourt, who have said they would be happy to pay higher taxes in their own countries, from coming here to reap the benefit of our world-beating tax-avoidance experts,” rambled the country’s financial gurus. “If that doesn’t make any sense to you, then you are obviously an economic illiterate who stupidly thinks we earn too much, and you really shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Sort it, Osborne, or you can wave bye-bye to those directorships you fondly imagine will drop into your lap when you finally get kicked upstairs.”

Britain Appalled By Implication That Some Schools May Be Better Than Others

An indignant nation spluttered cornflakes all over the table this morning, as educational charity The Sutton Trust dropped a bombshell claim that some schools which charge parents a lot of money could possibly be better than some which do not.

According to the horrifying report, the top five schools – four of which charge fees, including the hated Eton – send more sixth-formers to Oxford and Cambridge than the 2,000 worst hellholes put together.

Eton

“This affront to humanity cannot be allowed to continue,” howled Sutton Trust chairman and selective grammar-school system alumnus Sir Peter Lampl (Corpus Christi, Oxford). “Everyone knows instinctively that Eton and its shabby ilk are nothing more than monkey-houses whose staff spend all their time wiping saliva off the chins of the idiotic spawn of inbred toffs; no offence, prime minister.”

“As it is universally acknowledged, not least by themselves, that feral children from inner-city estates are every bit as good as - in fact, better than - everybody else, it is obvious that every school ought to send exactly the same proportion of its pupils to university, regardless of ability,” he chipped. “Judging anyone by their ability is a cruel and barbaric practice which has no place in a civilised society, as any fool knows.”

Britain’s universities cringed in shame, wrung their hands, and begged the government to free them immediately from the awful responsibility of having to choose between applicants.

Meanwhile Linda Sinclair, the principal of top-five ranked - and state-run - Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, sat patiently but fruitlessly in her office all morning, waiting in vain for somebody to offer congratulations to her students.

Regulator To Help Real Victims Of Bankers’ Greed: The Rich

In Richmond, everywhere you look is poverty

Cheers of relief echoed round the home counties today, as the Financial Services Authority watchdog rode to the rescue of ordinary rich people whose investment portfolios have been blighted by evil, self-serving bankers.

The FSA’s investigation of 16 banks showed that 14 had recklessly exposed 79% of their poor wealthy clients to high or medium-high risk of loss through unsuitable investments.

“I hope my losses will stop all those bloody disableds from whining about about how hard up they are,” snapped corporate lawyer Jocelyn Searle, as he got off the 7:24 from Virginia Water. “They’re only losing thirty quid a week, whereas some bloody twerp at Lloyds may well have lost me a potential £30,000 in dividends. Now that’s real hardship.”

“My heart goes out to the hard-hit suits of the sunny south-east,” said a former incapacity benefit recipient with cancer, whose JSA has been suspended for missing a Jobcentre appointment because he idly stayed at home puking his guts up. “The theoretical losses they could possibly have suffered are frankly staggering.”

New Study Suggests Poor Have Less Money

Not a pair of designer-ripped jeans in sight

Poor people have significantly less money than the rich, according to ground-breaking new research carried out by the Institute For Fiscal Studies which flies in the face of accepted social maxims long cherished by the tabloid press about benefit scroungers living in palatial council houses.

“Apparently the whopping increase in the price of essentials – food, water, electricity and whatnot – leaves your average pauper with hardly any spare cash for a new handbag every week, or even the occasional impulse-buying of a pair of Jimmy Choos,” said project leader Mary Antoinette. “Would you believe, many of these people can’t even afford a weekend of pampering at a health spa, even though the lucky so-and-sos are hardly inconvenienced at all by the terrible drain of mortgage repayments?”

“We hope this new data will form the basis of further studies into why the poor are so appallingly dowdy,” she enthused. “I mean, look at the state of them. The government seriously needs to invest in personal stylists for these walking fashion disasters.”

The Dawkins Delusion

Bookshops report that they are fast selling out of God’s new book, The Dawkins Delusion, in which the omnipresent creator systematically demolishes the antiquated myth of liberal meritocracy to which millions of woolly thinkers still slavishly adhere.

The feeding of the £18,000

“Dawkins and his apostles have been cynically peddling their outdated belief system for too long,” snarled an angry but just God. “While they publicly proclaim their absolute faith in the miracle of natural selection on the basis of inherent ability, in reality they have constructed a self-serving temple of Mammon whose shabby purpose is simply to keep them in riches at the £18,000-a-year expense of their tragically deluded followers.”

“Verily I say unto you, it is easier for a talented but poor student to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the New Kingdom of the Humanities,” he thundered.

God later smote Dawkins’ high priest, AC Grayling, with a smoke grenade as he preached to the chattering classes at Foyles Bookshop – an act which Archprofessor Dawkins dismissed as a simple conjuring trick, while his acolyte Niall Ferguson vehemently argued on Channel 4 that the incident never really happened at all.

That TUC Report On The Rich-Poor Divide In Full

The Livelihood Crisis - by Richard A. Whiting, Gus Kahn & Ray Egan

Bill collectors gather round and rather haunt the cottage next door - men the grocer and butcher sent, men who call for the rent. But within, a happy chappy and his bride of only a year seem to be so cheerful. Here's an earful of the chatter you hear: “Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening - ain't we got fun! Not much money, oh, but honey, ain't we got fun! The rent's unpaid, dear, we haven't a bus - but smiles were made, dear, for people like us. In the winter, in the summer - don't we have fun! Times are bum and getting bummer - still we have fun! There's nothing surer - the rich get rich and the poor get children! In the meantime, in between time - ain't we got fun!”

Let them eat Strictly Come Dancing

Just to make their trouble nearly double, something happened last night. To their chimney a gray bird came - Mr Stork is his name - and I'll bet two pins, a pair of twins just happened in with the bird. Still they're very gay and merry - just at dawning I heard: “Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening, don't we have fun? Twins and cares, dear, come in pairs, dear. Don't we have fun! We've only started as momma and pop. Are we downhearted? I'll say that we're not! Landlord’s mad and getting madder - ain't we got fun? Times are so bad and getting badder – still, we have fun. There's nothing surer - the rich get rich and the poor get laid off. In the meantime, in between time - ain't we got fun?”

When the man who sold them carpets told them he would take them away, they said, “Wonderful, here's our chance! Take them up and we'll dance!”

And when burglars came and robbed them, taking all their silver, they say hubby yelled, "We're famous, for they'll name us in the papers today! Night or daytime - it's all playtime! Ain't we got fun! Hot or cold days, any old days - ain't we got fun! If wifey wishes to go to a play, don't wash the dishes - just throw them away!”

“Streetcar seats are awful narrow - ain't we got fun! They won't smash up our Pierce-Arrow - we ain't got none! They've cut my wages, but my income tax will be so much smaller! When I'm laid off, I'll be paid off - ain't we got fun!”

Universities Promise Hooray Henries A Ready Pool Of Servants

Britain’s snobbier universities - including Oxford and Cambridge, obviously – assured well-heeled parents that their establishments were already overflowing with cash-strapped scions of the shopkeeping class, guaranteeing that there would be no servant problem greeting their guffawing heirs when they are ushered out of the Rolls brandishing their Coutts cheque books.

“For many gifted state-school oiks, being a gentleman’s gentleman for three years is the only job they will ever get a crack at,” smiled universities minister David Willetts. “And if your agreeable trust fund is happy to pay them £9,000 a year, you can enjoy watching them fight tooth and nail as they queue up to be interviewed.”

Burn the ironic t-shirt, slap on the Brylcreem and they scrub up OK

Gonville Bromhead, a spokesman for the Russell Group of universities, which are better because they got their charter from a medieval inbred, added: “£9,000 is more than they’re worth, naturally, but it does rather ensure that one’s man will have been brought up to speak the Queen’s English, what? A lot of them are jolly brainy, too, and will gladly sit one’s bothersome exams if threatened with a damned good hiding.”

“Less than £9,000, though, and one runs the risk of getting some ghastly northern bursary claimant who grunts like one’s head gardener,” he warned, “And that would be quite, quite beyond the pale, old boy. Goes without saying.”

In the modern world of academe, of course, female domestic staff are also widely available for hire at Britain’s top educational establishments.

“Not only can your horse-faced daughter have the lady-in-waiting she’s always longed for,” beamed Mr Willetts over a Pimms, “But your lusty heir can sow his wild oats with the servants to his heart’s content, then simply pay to have his scullery-maids’ unborn bastards dealt with in the time-honoured fashion – namely, by paying one of the world’s top medical researchers to warm up the old coat-hangar.”

Later, prime minister David Cameron moved swiftly to fend off criticism that any chancer with a bulging wallet could exploit the two-tier system he was creating.

“My goodness, no. This scheme isn’t for the oafish sons and daughters of money-grubbing tradespeople from the provinces being able to buy their way into university,” he laughed. “They can carry on going to Exeter. Students on these extra places will not be funded by wealthy individuals. No, their funding will come either from businesses, such as the banks of which their daddies are directors, or from charitable foundations, i.e. their trust funds.”

Nick Clegg, meanwhile, has announced that he has grave misgivings.