There's an inebriated accountant with a dissolving liver clogging up intensive care

I’VE BEEN telling you this would happen for years. The middle classes are finally on the verge of revolt.

According to The Guardian, the police are preparing for a ‘Summer of Rage’ as victims of the economic turndown take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions. Polishing his extendable baton, Superintendent David Hartshorn of the Metropolitan Plod “raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming ‘footsoldiers’ in a wave of potentially violent mass protests as middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger”.

Well they’ve been doing it in Europe for years. In recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik.

As ever, a delightfully funny and rather rude website called the Daily Mash (www.thedailymash.co.uk) does it better than I could, so I make no apology for quoting their take on the story: A senior officer said that “Economic downturn means people you would not normally associate with civil unrest taking their anger on to the streets. It’s a very special time in a policeman's life.

“A lot of my lads were too young for the poll tax riots and so this could be their only chance to knock the absolute living shit out of a Guardian reader. Ideally it’ll be the sort of people who have fancy dinner parties, with their Le Creuset pots and their Cloudy Bay and their nonce friends, passing round the marijuana cigarettes and raising money for Hezbollah.”

He stressed that anyone who is thinking about protesting this summer should not be put off, adding: “Come to London. Have a day out. Throw bricks, deface banks with your tins of Farrow and Ball paint and above all, when the policemen charge at you, stand your ground. And when six of my lads are dragging you by the hood of your Fat Face cagoule into the back of a van, please do struggle a bit, thereby giving them reasonable cause to boot you squarely in the kidneys. They love that.”

Marvellous stuff.

MAYBE THE Met aren’t being unreasonable. After all, it’s becoming clear that the real rot in our society isn’t caused by the workshy, benefits-bleeding Poveratti, but the supposedly squeaky-clean middle classes. Just look at their drinking habits, for instance.

Some of them imbibe more than a glass of wine a night. Outrageous. What kind of burden is that imposing on our struggling health service? Nary a night passes without an inebriated accountant with a dissolving liver clogging up intensive care. And that’s if they don’t have diabetes as well, the lardy-arsed, glucose-gobbling wasters.

Still, the Nanny State has an answer. They’re going to fit CCTV cameras inside shops, supermarkets and pubs so Big Brother can identify those of us who take too much advantage of Threshers’ three-for-the-price-of-two wine offer. Presumably we’ll then get the six o’clock knock from one of Harriet Harman’s hit squads and be carted off to a gulag in Glamorganshire where we’ll be taught the error of our ways.

In the London borough of Islington, it is already compulsory for any premises applying for an alcohol licence to fit CCTV. Expect that to spread as the Town Hall Trots find another way to bully the small businessman.

I was talking to the landlord in one of my locals the other night. He reckons that it would cost him three grand to fit a basic camera system. That is money he can’t afford. He’s already been battered by the idiotic smoking ban (to the point that he’ll now allow you to smoke as long as you sit by the log fire) and by supermarkets selling bottled lager for less than bottled water. This added expense will merely nudge many pubs over the edge. Thinking about it, maybe that’s the plan.

IT’S IRONIC that in the week that our already camera-saturated nation had another level of surveillance inflicted upon it, it also became illegal for an ordinary citizen to take a photograph of a policeman. Counter-terrorism, you see. And they’re obviously getting twitchy about middle-class rioters snapping them snapping limbs during this summer’s coming demonstrations.

I’VE A new modern day parable: Beware the empty barber.

I’d been trying to find time for a haircut for weeks and was starting to look like Worzel Gummidge, but every time I found half an hour to spare, my usual premises were either closed or packed to the rafters.

Then, on coming out of an unfamiliar pub in an unfamiliar part of town on Friday afternoon, I found a barber’s shop two doors down that was absolutely deserted, apart from the barber. Or so-called barber.

I now know why the shop was empty on a Friday afternoon. It is the worst haircut I have ever had. I look like that kid out of the Adams family and, to be honest, given my sparse locks there was little scope to cock it up in the first place.

So now you know – beware the empty barber.

I SAW a television advert the other night for our local Safety Camera Partnership. What’s that all about then? Never mind the waste of the money that they’ve already stolen from us, but do they really expect anyone to say: “Ooh, that’s a good idea. Let’s have some more speed cameras”?