I Won't Call You Prig, But I Will Call You A Prick

For those of you that spent this week concerned with news stories that actually affect your life, you may have missed the following gem.

The Mail gleefully reported that on Tuesday the cash machine outside the Sainsbury's in Hull started dishing out twice the amount of cash its customers had asked for. As you might expect, people who didn't even need any cash started using it, eager to double their money.

Standard pub anecdote of no real importance? No! Yet another sign of the moral decay eating away at the heart of our once great nation? Yes, yes and yes again!

TOM UTLEY has decided he is the only man left on this island with the right mix of guts, gall and judgemental piety to take on these ATM bandits, and take them on he will. Tom goes straight for the jugular with the slightly confrontational headline: “Call me a prig - but is it imbecilic to ask why so many people today can't tell right from wrong?”

Now I don't know what a prig is either, but you can tell from his tone that this is one cheesed off member of the not-so-silent majority who work hard and respect blah blah blah. Tom keeps up the pressure with his rhetorical intro, asking “Perhaps I'm becoming insufferably pious in my middle age...” Well, Yes you are Tom, you really, really are.

This piety is exhibited for all to see when the boy Tom seethes: “Nobody appears to have thought it worth stepping into the shop, ringing the number on the machine or contacting the police to report what was happening.” Because that's what you'd do isn't it? I'm sure it's the first thing that popped into the head of every shopper - struggling single mother, means-tested pensioner and father-of-three with a blood pressure higher than David Blunkett's sperm count alike. Never mind the fact they'd just spent over £100 and all they had to show for it was wafer thin ham, Ribena and Skips. Never mind that council tax, petrol tax and booze tax have all just gone up, call in the rozzers and be a good citizen.

As word spread photographers arrived on the scene to document this momentous event in human history, and the demographic of the queue clearly shocked old Tommy. “By no means were all the thieves young hoodies, from whom we've learnt not to expect too much in the way of integrity and public-spiritedness.” Shock, horror and awe, Middle class people were involved too! Young people, being no better than syphilitic dogs, will obviously break the law at the first opportunity, but some of these people looked just like Tom and his fellow DM hacks. Now that must be really scary for them. If people that look like them are moral pygmies, how will they know who to judge on the street? I'd just like to see The Mail's reaction if the same thing happens outside the Waitrose in Chelsea. A tenner says you'll see at least three DM columnists in the queue for dirty money.

Just in case you're not quite following the logic of how these people are dirty, cut-throats deserving of vilification in a national newspaper, Tom clears that up for you. “You don't have to have a very highly developed moral sense to work out that the offence is identical (to stealing)”.

He's right. In fact, the only difference is you're stealing from a bank, not a person. You're stealing money that was probably made by investing your Granny's pension in a white phosphorous factory who's wares are burning flesh from Iraqi bones as we speak. It might have been made in the form of extortionate interest on a loan, given to someone who clearly could not repay it, the vultures in suits and name badges circling all the while. If you're really lucky it might even have come directly from the Bank of England. These are your taxes being used to prop up financial institutions because their privately educated staff don't give a monkey's toss what happens to anyone else, as long as they're on the high-speed link to Paris by 4:30.

So next time you hear about a cashpoint giving out double money, give me a ring.

Read Tom's Article Here

ALSO THIS WEEK...

...Mel Phillips blames child illiteracy on people being allowed to have sex with who they want...

...Amanda Platell has a pop at Nicolas Sarkozy for looking like a walking midlife crisis but remains friends with Piers Morgan. Go figure...

...Peter "Voice of Reason" Oborne warns us that we're entering "Terrifying new times". Ever read that in The Mail before?...