Please, can you shove my Christmas bonus somewhere?

This is a request to anyone in government who still listens to the electorate.

Please, can you shove my £10 Christmas bonus where the sun doesn’t shine?

I mean, it’s not gone up in 50 years, so you may as well be done with it. It’s an insult. It’s not even enough to get a pint and a glass of wine in the local pub. And I’d hate to think people were going without because I received a tenner from the Exchequer.

So, please, give it to someone more deserving than me. Perhaps politicians who can’t afford their own stuff and rely on gifts.

Why this sour attitude? You may well ask.

Well, perhaps I want too much in life, but I was hoping for a change after the last administration. Sadly though, it’s less than three months since the election and, once again, British politics is quick to expose its frailty.

We have too many politicians with little or no experience; too many with ideas at odds with the consensus; too many with strange bedfellows; and too many with egos the size of a public sector pension.

Free tickets, overpaid advisors, fashion statements, stylish travel. These are hardly the things that should make the headlines.

But they can be a smug bunch, so most likely we’ll struggle to make MPs give up their perks or pensions, their freebies and their gifts, although I’m convinced that simply declaring these things in a register of interests doesn’t make them right.

While austerity rarely seems to get through the doors of Parliament, outside, it’s cold and the outlook is bleak; there’s little economic activity and not enough money to keep up a once-a-year payment; and each day, the messages just get worse.

The winter fuel allowance is not a huge amount, perhaps not even enough to cover most winter fuel bills. And even if you don’t need it for housekeeping, it barely covers the costs of a two-day break in the bleakest of UK resorts, never mind high profile concert tickets.

Worse still, the government doesn’t even have the courtesy to warn 10 million people that change is in the air.

The cause? Apparently, it’s a black hole. Oh, no, not another one.

Yep, it’s probably the same huge deficit that each incoming government over the last 40 years has blamed on the outgoing one.

I should think there’s plenty of room in the hole for my tenner.