The UK today sent two prominent politicians to China with their caps firmly in hand. The Chancellor George Osborne and the present Mayor of London Boris Johnson arrived in Beijing to plead for cash rich China to come to the UK and start spending. Perhaps an open letter might have been more apt?
Dear Li Keqiang
We have come to your country today because frankly, we're in a bit of a pickle. We are one of the most civilised democratic countries in the whole world but the old coffers aren't looking too pretty.
We'll try and get to the point but you're going to have to bear with us on this one. We may not get there together and we might die trying but we'll give it our best shot. Over many years, we have been taking the moral high ground in world affairs. The upshot is that we have probably been involved in more wars than we can afford. That was certainly true in 1945 but the fact is we rather like getting involved. The problem is that wars can be jolly expensive. Rather more expensive than they were in 1945 if we're going to put our cards on the table. In fact, we've only just repaid our debt to America for the money we borrowed to get involved then so you see, all the wars since then have been stretching the old purse somewhat.
Back home things haven't been too much better. As you may know, we have the best health care system in the world. It's so good that we let just about anybody access it completely free because we're rather good chaps really. You don't even need to have a British passport because we just take altruism to new levels. In fact, if we're going to be brutally honest about the whole thing, it wouldn't be so costly if we just had to deal with people from outside the UK. The problem is that we all rather like our grub and don't much like that exercise rubbish. We could really do with some new ambulances capable of taking the weight of our patients and were rather hoping you might come up trumps and trouser us a few quid in that direction.
Everyone seems to think we have a great education system and we're more than happy to go along with that if it means you'll send loads of your students over. Of course, you do understand we'll have to charge them about £30,000 per annum for their tuition fees but they will, after all, have a British degree at the end of it so you can't very well argue with that can you? Your students might take a while to adjust to the social life of our youngsters. Putting it bluntly, they quite like to let their hair down a bit. Well, rather a lot if we're going to be straight with you. They all seem to have great fun though and we're sure your chaps will soon get the hang of it. Basically, if they like booze, it'll be a doddle in the UK for them.
The other thing is transport. We've been a bit lax in that department. In the '60s, we paid a bloke a lot of money to tell us what to do with our trains. The trouble is, he did. Mr. Beeching took a pretty big hatchet to our train lines which was good for a while because everyone wanted a car instead. The problem is that there seem to be rather a lot of cars now. So many in fact that all our cars now come with just 2 gears because there's basically no need for third, fourth or fifth because the whole car thing has got so damned slow. The trouble is that everyone now has one and we need them to but petrol in so that we can tax the backside off them.
We believe your coffers are looking pretty good so thought you wouldn't miss it too much if it was spent over in the UK. We know we haven't always been the nicest to you in the past but well, let's let bygones be bygones shall we? Oh yes, about our Prime Minister and that Dalai Lama chappy. Complete misunderstanding that one we're afraid. He went to Eton but isn't much good at saying what he thinks so he has to be PM. Boris here also went to Eton but he's a bit of a straight talker and that wouldn't go down to well with the Civil Service chaps back in Blighty.
Come to that, we'd better fill you in on our Public Sector. In plain terms we like to look after them. Well, that's a little less than the truth actually. The trouble is they're rather strong in number so our hands are a bit tied. They're all on guaranteed inflation proofed final salary pension schemes - and there are milions of the blighters. So you see we're in a bit of a hole as the Americans are so fond of saying.
Contrary to what you might have read in the world press, we're not all that bothered about your Human Rights record as long as you bung a few quid in our direction. You don't even need to think about the whole of the UK because we certainly don't. All we want is for London to get plenty of dough. The other chaps are a resilient lot and quite capable of surviving on virtually nothing. Well, that's what we've been giving them up to now anyway.
We're rather keen on a new railway line because we used to be good at that sort of thing. We don't want all those silly branch lines like we used to have. All we really need is to connect London to Manchester and Birmingham. It'll just make the the people outside London think that we care about them. The trouble is that this new line is going to cost about £50 billion. Well, that's we've told the people back home anyway because they seem to believe most of what we say. Quite surprising really because we've been spinning them yarns for years now! You have to wonder how we ever won any wars - we do!
We'd better come clean with you. We're bloody desperate and if you don't agree to throw some money our way, I'm afraid we'll find ourselves in Queer Street. We've been there before and its starting to get a bit tiresome now so just name your own terms and we'll gladly sign on the dotted line. Oh yes, before we forget, do you remember that Post Office we used to have? Well, we sold it for a song last week because we needed the money. The trouble is that we're now running out of things to sell so thought maybe you needed somewhere to offload your dough. Tax? Don't even mention it. We'll say no more about it as long as you make it, let's say. £100 billion to get the ball rolling.
Pretty please. Pretty, pretty please. We've always loved the way you run your country.
Yours sincerely
George and Boris
We love you China (No, really we do - honestly!).
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