Money, money, money...

It's a rich man's world.

Of course, there are different ways to get money.

You can steal it. The nearest I ever got to an embezzler was when I heard that the office manager in the place where I had my student job had been fiddling the books. He went to jail. The other people in the office were not particularly shocked at his actions but they were amazed that he'd stolen so little (the equivalent of about £30,000 these days) and didn't seem to realise he'd get caught so hadn't made a getaway plan. I see the sense in what they were saying: if you're going to steal money and ruin your and your family's lives, make it worth your while - we're talking a couple of million  here - and make sure you have your passport in your pocket and a bag packed under your desk for when you hear the auditors are on their way.

You can inherit money. That, of course, is what Dodgy Dave and his equally dodgy mate at No11 have done. No qualifications needed for this. Just the birth certificate. Neither of them is exactly a financial superstar. I suspect Dave's dad had a bit more nous about him than his son has: Cameron père was a stockbroker and actually knew about money while Dave was in PR. Spin, as we call it. I'll say no more. George's dad was a wallpaper designer. At least that's a proper job with skills, whereas George's total contribution to the UK economy seems to be that he taught English to Japanese students.

Or you can earn the money. Alan Duncan did that. He worked for Royal Dutch Shell and then became an MP. Seems a fairly straightforward and traditional career path: Oxford, oil executive...Tory MP...(failed) minister. For some reason Siralan seems to think that makes him - and his friends Dave and George - high achievers, while the rest of us are poor benighted craturs, jealous of our betters.

The trouble with Tories of the Siralan kind is that they really believe making money is all that matters and that having loadsa money somehow makes you superior to others. It might surprise them to know that what most people want is to have a decent life. If they can do something to earn a living that they enjoy and that brings in enough money to live on, that's fine. Other people are not so lucky: they are stuck in jobs they don't like. And then there are the people who can't find a job and those too disabled to get employment who would love to be in the workplace.

Looking at the Daves, Georges and Siralans of the UK, I wonder if we could somehow award them a few months of getting up at the crack of dawn, to go to a job that is badly paid and doesn't use their abilities or their skills, where the people they work for couldn't give a rat's arse about them - and where they now face the prospect of working until they're 70 before they can get a state pension.

And tell me this, why do the people who manage to make a lot of money in the UK almost always join the Tory party and turn into greedy bastards who would sell their granny for a pound?