So we are all in it together are we?
I don’t think so.
Not when our PM thinks it’s acceptable to double the budget for something that we don’t need at the same time as reducing the living standards of the most vunerable in society.
At a time when we are getting used to the fact that those in the public sector will have to work longer for less pension and many in the private sector won’t ever be able to retire, Mr Cameron thinks it’s OK to double the Olympic opening ceremony budget.
I know the argument he will use: that it’s not new money, it’s from within the overall budget for the games.
I say he should be aiming to bring the games in under budget and then consider what might be a good use for the surplus. Most of us wouldn’t have too much trouble identifying a couple of dozen worthy recipients.
All this just adds to the feeling that Mr Cameron and his cabinet of multi-millionaires are not just from another world but inhabit a parallel universe.
One in which top executives pay increases exponentially with no regard to the success or failure of the economy and it’s OK to tax the poor in order to subsidise the rich.
Where it’s morally acceptable for old people to die from hypothermia and the disabled to lose benefits whilst the goverment’s ego is massaged by a grotesquely extravagant Olympic fireworks display.
We should, I believe, be taking the opportunity of the Olympics to tell the world that we have nothing to prove. That Britain has grown out of that adolescent stage where insecure cultures and countries need to show off to the world how big and grown up they are now. Just because their corrupt leaders have managed to amass enough dirty money to bribe the governing bodies of world sport.
The biggest and best thing we can offer to the world is just within our reach if we choose to grasp it.
We can, just by not trying too hard, show the world a better way.
So please Dave, put your ego away, save us a few quid and show the world what’s really important.