Tuesday 12 May 2015

Semper virilis: a statement on meritocracy on behalf of the Johnson Family

What-ho, chaps and chapesses. 




Bozza here, yours truly. Pater, who was an MEP, and my brother Jozza – also an MP and now a Minister - have asked me to explain to you villeins what a 'meritocracy' means. 

Apparently some of you are cutting up rough about so many Johnsonians running the show. Now this is what fine Roman chap Horace called an inverted pile of piffle. Alright, you say, why is that Jozza and Bozza get to run the country, just because they went to Eton and Oxford, and were members of the Bullingdon club along with jolly old Call Me Dave and Gidders and the lead writer of the Financial Times who gave Red Ed a damned good thrashing for his obsession with 'equality', whatever that is? The only 'level playing field' I like comes with sheets, pillows and someone else's wife. Huzzah!  


The new Cabinet


It's about time you oiky types caught up. The School, the University and the Buller are what we call meritocracies. They only let the best in. Trotskyists, our cousins from the colonies and women keep on moaning ad nauseam that they're 'exclusive' because they're restricted to men from Eton (and in act of charity, Osborne who only went to St. Paul's) but they're amazingly wrong. You have to shake the cornflake box and see what rises to the top. In this glorious country, those who rose to the top - indicated by their use of white tie and tails as casual wear - were yours truly, my brainbox brother, Gideon and somehow Dave. My old man was a very clever chap despite only attending Sherborne before Oxford, so naturally Bozza and Jozza are also very clever chaps (as is my sister Razza except she understands she can't run things being a chapess of the female persuasion). In fact Comrade Dave proves that the system works. Descended from Charles II via the wrong side of the blanket and the son of a funny-money chap of the kind lefties describe as a tax avoider, he's very much the kind of guy who had to buy his own furniture. Good job he's got a fruity wife from the top-drawer to help him draw a veil over his origin in trade eh readers? 

I know some of you will struggle to understand this, given that you have IQs under 85 – about the same as my beagles – but you need coves like my chums and me to look up to. How could you possibly aspire to that second lavatory without the example of the landed aristocracy occupying the jolly old corridors of power, business, the armed forces, the media and so on? A little inequality might give one or two of you a shove and look where you might end up? We gave little Johnny Major a go, and there's always that nice Mr Shapps who amuses us all with his magic computer tricks. He's 'not quite' if you catch my drift, and he's down rather well for himself. 'faber est suae quisque fortunae' as we say at the Athenaeum. 

So let's hear no more about the politics of envy from you toilers. It's all a bit infra dig. We've jolly well earned the right to run the show (and rather a lot of the folding stuff along the way) so don't worry your greasy little heads about it: vae victis and so forth. I rather fancy we've heard quite enough of the vox populi for now. Pop off back to your allotments, foot-the-ball and bingo secure in the knowledge that some bloody good chaps – and Dave –  have it all under control. And if you all behave, we'll let you have a brace of pheasant each when the season starts! Don't worry: our secretary Theresa's got your address. 

Alea iacta est. Which is Bozza for 'pipe down plebs and carry on'.* 

Toodle-oo.

*And if you don't, we have another Roman tag for our administration: 
flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo 
Lex talionis very much applies - no more panem et circenses for you. Think on.

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