There is more honour in serving gravy than riding the gravy train

I was chatting with some guests on Monday evening after the early rush had died down. The conversation soon got round to the subject of MP's expenses. It's hard not to be shocked at the gall of the bastards even if you have pretty much always considered every politician in the world to be about as morally bankrupt as it gets. Jabba the Hutt has more moral rectitude than most of these so called servants of the people and he imprisoned Han Solo in carbonite. The bastard.

But say what you like about Jabba the Hutt he never claimed £2,000 from the tax payer to get a pipe fixed under his tennis court unlike Conservative Party Policy Chief Oliver Letwin. Nor did the Hutt family, (is Jabba married?), bill the tax payer for the cleaning of his moat. A MOAT FOR FUCK SAKE! A FUCKING MOAT! WHO HAS A MOAT THESE DAYS? WHY AREN'T THERE RIOTS IN THE STREETS? WHY AREN'T PEOPLE MARCHING ON PARLIAMENT ARMED WITH PITCH FORKS AND BURNING TORCHES? JESUS H CHRIST! If this isn't the right time to sharpen the blades of the guillotine then exactly what do the fuckers have to do to get their heads chopped off?

That said I would love a moat. I'd like to see the postman try and deliver me my phone bill when I have a moat.

Arf!

But still it's outrageous conduct from those in public office and shows the politicians up for what they truly are - self serving, blood sucking, pocket lining, lying crooked bastards thus making Oliver Letwin et al sleazier than Jabba the Hutt.

Obviously.

"Oh I'd love to be a politician...", says the convivial American chap I was chatting with.

"Really?", I replied with some disbelief. We had both come to the same conclusion only a moment earlier that anyone who even considers becoming a politician should be shunned and treated with contempt, skepticism and derision.

"Yeah, I need to get the house painted." We laughed.

Personally I would rather jab a red hot poker up my chuff than sell my soul into the world of politics. Oh definitely not for me is that life of bungs and backhanders. There is more honour in serving gravy than riding the gravy train. My reasons, as the title suggests, are tenfold.

Ten Reasons Why Waiting Tables is a Better Job than being a Politician.

1. Waiters don't have off shore tax havens, secret bank accounts or slush funds. We have regular banks accounts, piggy banks for loose change and down the back of the couch for the tough days before pay day.
   
2. Waiters are more likely to be believed than politicians. I mean if a politician told me that this was the month of May I would check the calendar. But if the waiter was to tell you that today's soup was tomato and basil you would believe them right? Politicians say things like, ""Read my lips: no new taxes" and then promptly raise taxes. Lying bastards.
   
3. Waiters don't have to worry about Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Rolf Harris and that lot writing protest songs about them. Would The Dead Kennedy's "California Über Alles" really have lit that punk flame in your average teenager if it had been about waiters and their sometime proclivity for snootiness? I don't think so. There are no protest songs about waiters cause we are good people. Mostly.
4. Waiters look like....politicians look and smell and talk like this...
5. Waiters get to watch daytime television. Politicians don't even know who Fern Britain is nor who the principal characters in BBC afternoon soap, Doctors, are.
   
6. Waiters are free spirits and our wings are unbound are our thoughts, what thoughts we have, are free to express themselves - within the constraints of polite society that is. Politicians have to tow the party line at all times. They have to do and say what they are told no matter if the party line runs contrary to their own view. That's a shocking state of affairs. If I don't think that the special is as special as the chef thinks it is I say so. But if an MP thinks that selling of the post office is a terrible fucking idea they keep that thought to themselves so that they don't get a lashing from the party whips. Pfft, no backbone at all.
7. When did you last see a waiter get pied, egged, shot or require 24 hour police protection? Never! That's when. People love waiters and they detest the very ground politicians walk on.
8. Waiters also have no fear of democracy as you cant get a waiter shifted from his or her section, even if everybody at your tables wants a different waiter. Just like the pope we keep our sections until we die or get other jobs. Do popes get other jobs? Probably not. We are also infallible. And if by some miracle you did get the waiter moved to a different section the next waiter is going to be even worse, on purpose. Politicians fear democracy, they really do. They lie awake at night pishing into their pj's at the thought of elections.
9. Waiters sleep well at night, actually most of them sleep well at work. Our consciences are clear. Politicians don't sleep well. How could they with all the lies and soul selling?
10. And in the end being a politician is a morally repugnant job. Being a waiter is not.
    

Tony Benn is exempt mainly because he isn't a politician any more but as a politician he was ace. Oh and Carrie Gracie is aces. Watch this.