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Who couldn’t applaud George Osborne’s admirable idea that people in receipt of state handouts should do something in return for the money?

I imagine he isn’t including any of the things that so many people in receipt of state handouts already do – they help out at school, for example, or do Granny’s shopping for her, or collect the next-door-neighbour’s kids while she’s at work, or run cub troops, or soccer clubs, or… No? None of that counts? No.

Well, never mind. It’s great that people who receive state money should do something in return. And don’t for a moment expect me to suggest the poor old Royal Family should roll up their sleeves. That would be far too easy, and goodness knows they work themselves to the bone already. Crikey! Poor Prince Charles works so hard he hasn’t even the strength to squeeze his own toothpaste tube at the end of the day, and poor William and Kate have a baby too. In fact, Wills has had to give up one of his jobs – the one we paid for him to train for – because of the pressure of managing the household staff, poor lad.

No, leave the Royals alone. And farmers for that matter. Yes, they get loads of state subsidy, but they actually do do some work in return for it. And don’t have a go at George Osborne, who did nothing but be born in the right bed to earn his huge trust fund, or even Iain Duncan Smith, who lives in a grace-and-favour mansion thanks to daddy-in-law – they certainly did nothing for their fortune, but that part of their indolence is not, by now, public money.

No, what I’m looking forward to is payback time from those who take loads of state money and give nothing in return. The overpaid directors of state-enabled private monopolies like the utility companies, for example. MPs. PR men and women paid by the government and the political parties. Hedge fund managers. God, it’s a long list.

And somewhere in it, down among the leeches, the useless and the unemployable, is the cretin who thought up George Osborne’s latest sop to fling to the guffawing Bufton Tuftons of the Tory Party: what is the economic effect of getting jobs done for nothing, eh? Who, long term, does that help?

How about Osborne instead announcing that he’s going to take the profits of the banks or the utilities to pay the long-term unemployed a living wage to pick up litter and clean graffiti? Goodness, with proper jobs and some money and some self-respect, maybe the wretches won’t drop litter and scrawl graffiti in the first place.

Getting people to do your dirty work for nothing went out of fashion in the 19^th century.

Laughs a-plenty

It’s a good job last week provided a really good laugh. And watching the rabidity of the reaction to Labour’s pledge to freeze energy prices was hilarious: the full majesty of the south-east English establishment mustered to defend the indefensible. Ed Milliband said he might pull away the trough in which snouts were snorting, and the resulting squealing put a sty of outraged fat pigs to shame.

I waited with baited breath to see what the Daily Mail could come up with: would it be Dread Ed? Comrade Ed? No! You won’t believe this, but it was “Red Ed promising to march us back to the 1970s”! Who would have guessed that? Inspired!

I have to confess there was a slightly bitter edge to the laughter that greeted the utility spokespeople warning of blackouts as a consequence of Labour’s “madness”.

Bitter, because I remember another time when another organisation threatened blackouts, not to make money for a few but to protect the livelihoods of the many. Then, the weight of the state – an obedient media, the army and the police armed by and paid for by the taxpayer – savagely beat those perceived as making the threat into bloodied submission, costing the nation tens of billions of pounds in lost jobs, broken lives and shattered economies. This time, those threatening blackouts are being applauded. Remarkable.

But the laughs just kept on coming, as the po-faced BBC reported Red Ed’s catastrophic, disastrous policy with no hint of balance whatsoever.

Alleged journalists trained at vast cost and paid in the tens of thousands must have thought it rude to ask the utilities: “But if you cut off the power because you’re not making enough profit, old, ill, poor people will die. Don’t you think that’s just a bit bad-mannered?”

The utilities were allowed, unchallenged, to argue that if wholesale prices went up and hit their profits, they would have no alternative but to let people freeze in the dark – no alternative such as, for example, taking a cut in their vast profits.

I roared with laughter when Peter Mandelson supported the Tories and their rich friends in criticising the idea of controlling the privatised utilities’ rampant profiteering: there’s the sort of friend you’d want, eh? Look what he did for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown! Good luck with that one, David!

I hooted at the timing: the pigs rallied round as Osborne and Cameron went to the courts to fight the European Union’s bid to cap bankers’ bonus payments, just in case anybody had the tiniest scintilla of doubt about whose side they were on.

But the funniest thing was the constipated seriousness with which we were all expected to take the threat of losing the skilled businessmen who run the utilities, if they weren’t allowed to continue profiteering at the expense of the vulnerable.

Aren’t they, then, skilled businessmen? Because surely a skilled businessman who can’t make enough money at Job A, or Product B, will switch to Job C or Product D and make money at that instead, because of his extraordinary skill?

Surely these businessmen can’t be scared because they are know they are far too inept to make millions unless gifted those millions by monopoly giants with a governmental laissez-faire to rip off customers?

That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. In July, Sir Ian Byatt, for ten years director general of the water industry watchdog Ofwat, endorsed a highly critical report by the thinktank CentreForum, which investigated the financial activities of privatised water companies.

The report found, and Sir Ian confirmed, that excessive dividend payments in typical shareholder returns of between 20 and 30 per cent a year meant some companies were having difficulty funding vital projects. For example, Thames Water, having coughed up fortunes in dividends to its private owners, is now seeking support from the taxpayer to improve sewers in its area. Oh, and it wants permission to put its bills up by £80 a year too, of course.

The privatised companies, Sir Ian and the CentreForum report confirmed, funded dividend payments through debt, which meant they were able to slash their tax bills – so they ripped us off to pay the rich, and then didn’t contribute anything to the country in return. Now they’re mired in debt which we’re paying for. And we give them airspace on the news!

They’re not even subtle about their disgusting conduct. Essex and Suffolk Water directors’ pay rises over the past four years? 35%. Customers’ price rises? 37%.

And we permit these criminals unchallenged airtime? We permit them to even walk the streets? We do as the media says and look up to them?

No, here’s where the laughter stops. The people who run the utilities, who avoid paying tax on the profits, who bank the dividends, who threaten to kill people with blackouts to protect their stash: these are the uttermost dregs of society, the vilest of the vile, a porcine cross between bumbling incompetence, immense good fortune and sickeningly repulsive greed.

I, too, join the criticism of Red Ed. He has not gone far enough. The utilities should be renationalised without a penny paid in compensation: rather, everybody who has ever banked a penny piece of profit from them, or owned a share, should be fined or imprisoned.

Too whisky

I watched Kevin McCloud (of Grand Designs) and his programme about building an off-grid holiday home on the cliffs of West Somerset.

McCloud and his builder friend were making soap, which required them to use a whisk to mix a bunch of hideous looking ingredients including fish oil and seaweed.  Kevin asked his friend: “Have you carried out a proper whisk assessment?”

And another great line this week, stolen from Twitter for the benefit of The Brother Who Must Not Be Named: “What is the ideal Christmas present for a vegetarian who eats fish? A dictionary.”