Why doesn't the Sunday Times Rich List lead to a political revolution?

Every year the Sunday Times does us the favour of telling us how the super-rich have got super-richer: the top one thousand and their billions. Even when it's a crisis, says the Sunday Times, it's not a crisis for them.
Even when it's a crisis for you, says the Sunday Times, it's not a crisis for them.
I send this information to my friends. We tweet it. We Facebook it. We recycle it as damning info, evidence that this is how capitalism works, an argument for showing that all this talk of benefit dependency or the deficit or 'balancing the books'; are a smokescreen for a system that creates inequality. This is not the Big Issue saying this. Or Socialist Worker. Or Socialist Revolutionary Worker. Or Revolutionary Worker Socialist.
The Sunday Times must be so confident that we'll do nothing.
Maybe moan a bit. Write a really angry poem perhaps.
Is it because in the end we think this is how it has to be?
That it's the best way to divvy things up?
Or that it's the only way?
Or that trying anything else would be too risky and would end up with prison camps and starvation?
So in the meantime we should just carry on doing what we do, knowing that everything any politician says about fairness, justice and equality is complete hooey?
Or is it that people think we aren't strong enough or clever enough to change anything or run things ourselves?
Or are we each so in debt that we don't dare defy anyone in case we get thrown out of our homes?
Or that we so long for things in the shops that even when we can't afford them we want to hang on till next week, next month, next year, next decade…when we might just possibly be able to afford it?
Or is it that we're all in a race which any of us could win so we'd better not do anything that might stop the race, even though there will only be a tiny handful of winners, who will only be winners because the rest of us are in the race, doing the running, doing the work, that makes those tiny few the winners anyway?

Proof that Telegraph's 'Small Business' letter is a Tory letter

How to find out where the Telegraph's latest small businesses support the Conservatives letter came from.
1) Click on the PDF link in the story below (about halfway down)
2) Save the PDF to your computer
3) Right click the file name on a PC or ctrl-click on a Mac
4) On a PC choose Properties, on a Mac choose Get Info and then click More Info
5) You should see that the author of the PDF file is CCHQ-Admin - Conservative campaign headquarters. Something the Telegraph story neglected to mention.

(this is from Facebook contributor Dan Barrett) 

Grant Shapps Poem or 'clerihew'

Grant Shapps
is several chaps.
People in the
media
think he fiddled wikipedia.
Grant Shapps
never lies.
He mistakenly
over firmly denies.

[I originally put this up on Facebook but then tweeted it and more by luck than design it just fitted the tweet 140 characters.)

Cleggy Sacrifices the Poor

Cleggy said public sector workers had "made enough sacrifices".
Really? 

Who voted to make them make those sacrifices, Cleggy?
Who's benefited from their sacrifices, Cleggy?
Why should the poor make sacrifices for the rich, Cleggy?

Debt, Deficit, Wages - what Humphrys forgot to ask this morning

1. Total government debt up in absolute terms. They have borrowed more in five years than every Labour government in history - something over £517bn. (As a share of GDP they have claimed it has, just, fallen but as someone says - if memory serves - this is because they counted in the sale of Eurostar).

2. Deficit down, but they forecast £40bn for start of this year. It is more like £90bn. Instead of being gone by the end of this year, they have shifted the target to being gone by the end of the next parliament.

3. Average real wages down 2% on 2010 (IFS figure). Would be worse but falling oil price has brought inflation down, boosting real wages.

(this comes from economist James Meadway, on a thread on my Facebook account) 

A Photo of a Milking Machine

A photo of a milking machine
won't tell you
how fast the milk is going into the tank
It won't tell you
whether the milk going in is speeding up
or slowing down
nor whether it's going in faster than
it was yesterday or slower.
And - come to think of it:
it won't tell you whether the milk is going
from the cow into the tank
or from the tank
into the cow.

The Dentist and the Toe

I was at the dentist and when he had finished
I said, One of my toes is hurting, could you
take a look at it while I'm here?
He said, Sure.
I took off my shoes and socks and he looked
closely at the the toe I was talking about.
He said, I can do a variety of things here, I
can drill down behind the nail and then give you
a temporary filling; I could take a mould, then
remove the toe and give you a new toe; or
I could send you to a chiropodist.
I said, I like the sound of the new toe.
So he said, Fine and got to work straightaway.
It all went fine. This was a few weeks ago
and I've got the new toe. It's OK - not great
though. It's a bit inflexible because it's made
of the stuff they fill teeth with. I was talking to
someone the other day about it, and she said
that all I had probably needed to do was
cut my nails a bit more carefully.