A Letter to George Osbourne

Today I received a most extraordinary letter from the Chancellor, George Osbourne. Here is my response:

Dear George,
Thanks for the personalised letter I received yesterday warning me that my house was in danger from the Labour party. Forgive the familiarity but you were so kind as to call me David, ( I guess whats sauce for the young Dundonian is sauce for the Old Etonian!). Could you thank your friend Dave for his very personal letter as well, rejoicing in the Tories speaking for the silent majority in Scotland and telling me what a wonderful dynamic leader you have in Ruth, who is going to lead us into the promised land. You will however forgive me a slight degree of scepticism. Lets leave aside the fact that the ‘silent majority’ you claim to represent is neither silent nor a majority. I just simply ask where were you when the very vocal minority managed to hijack and destroy the basic foundation of our society – marriage? Why were you speaking up for the liberal metro elites and not for the silent majority? And why did Dave tell us, in an ALice-in-Wonderland use of the English language which would have done George Orwell proud, that redefining marriage was actually conserving it?!
And then there is the problem of my house. Your letter warned me that my £2 million house was in danger if Labour got to power. Although to be fair you did also warn that this would soon go down to my £1 million house. I don’t wish to upset you, I realise that this is just a glorified garden shed to you, but you will find that neither of these categories of housing apply to me, or over 95% of your fellow citizens. Meanwhile you were announcing yesterday that you were going to save £3 billion over two years in cutting back on benefits for the working poor. Are they not the ‘hard working’ people that politicians so love to talk about? Or do you have to be over a certain income bracket to attain that status? I agree completely with you that we need to cut back on fraud and cheating – but can I ask why don’t you start with the £5 billion sweetheart deal that HMRC cut with Vodaphone? Or the numerous forms of tax evasion and insurance for City gamblers that you tacitly endorse.

I have a confession to make – sometimes I am tempted to vote Tory – when I see and hear good old fashioned conservative values mixed with compassion and realism. And then you and Dave and Ruth send me letters and bring me back to sanity, reminding me of just how unconservative and out of touch you are with most people. You have set a modest target of doubling the number of conservative MPs in Scotland from one to two, on the grounds that you think the No vote is a platform for a Tory revival. I suspect you will be in for a rude shock. Meanwhile thanks for letting me know why we are ‘better together’..and for continuing the good old Thatcherite policy of using Scotland’s oil to bail out bankrupt Britain and shore up City gamblers.

Yours in remembrance of a time when Conservative actually meant something more than Elitist,

David Andrew Robertson

PS. I forgot – could you tell your spokespeople who were on the radio this morning that having 80,000 people in Scotland sign up to get your letters does not mean you have 80,000 supporters – anymore than Secular Scotland having 1600 people on their FB page means they have 1600 supporters. So the next time they are asked how many members they have, can they just answer the question truthfully – and not list me as one of your supporters!