George Osbourne Parks Badly, Condemns Mick Philpott, & Plays a Blinder

IT is a few years since I last bumped into George Osbourne and his family, shortly before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, relaxing in the gardens of Dunham Massey owned by the National Trust: Dunham Massey is described as 'one of the North's great gardens'. Set amidst a magnificent deer park it is a grand Georgian house with a history of salacious scandal attaching to its former owners: the 7th Earl of Stamford married Catherine Cocks, a bare-back circus rider, and the 2nd Earl of Warrington, according to the National Trust handbook, was 'so enamoured with his wife that that he wrote anonymously on the desirability of divorce!'

Now, Osborne seems to have come down in the world and on Wednesday he is reported to have been photographed while his chauffeur parked the car carrying him back from a 'regional tour' in a disabled parking zone in a service station off the M4, as he nipped out to buy a burger. Yesterday, using a broad brush approach Mr. Osborne derided Mick Philpott who had just received a life sentence for manslaughter, and by extension he used this to castigate other folk on benefits, who might also be living unorthodox lifestyles.

While doing his darnedest to create a housing bubble with his latest budget, and inflicting cuts on the nation Mr. Osborne has recently declared that 'We are not anarchists!' Indeed, yet judging by his attitude to parking restrictions he may well be being too modest. After all, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, anarchist authorities as distinguished as Peter Good and Martin Gilbert have both recently had occasion to drawn attention to people on benefits.

Everything changes and everything remains the same; the Tories talk like anarchists and the anarchists like Tories, just as in Animal Farm the men become pigs and the pigs become men.