My previous post linked to a painful video which is designed to energise us into action.  As the About page of this latter site points out:

Welcome to The Real George Osborne – a 14 episode comedy web series about George Osborne’s personal journey towards tackling global hunger. We hope that you enjoy it, share it with your friends and, crucially, take action.

The Real George Osborne has been created for The World Development Movement by HOOT COMEDY. It stars Rufus Jones as The Real George Osborne and Rebecca Johnson as his advisor, Vicki Reed. It was written and directed by Ben Bond and James Rawlings, and produced by Ben Thompson and Annis Waugh.

It goes on to elaborate:

What is food speculation?

Banks, hedge funds and index funds are betting on food prices in financial markets, causing massive price rises in staple foods such as wheat, maize and soy. In the last year, average food prices increased by 15 per cent, driving more than 44 million people into extreme poverty.

Since widespread deregulation of financial markets in the 1990s, speculators’ share of basic foods like wheat has increased from 12 per cent to 61 per cent. These traders have no connection to the actual food and are only interested in the profit it will make.

And then explains:

What does it have to do with George?

George Osborne, backed by the City of London, is doing all he can to stop EU proposals for regulation of food speculation from being implemented.

But we think he can be persuaded to change his mind. Like all politicians he’s influenced by a need to be popular, not just among his banker friends, but among real people like you.

If enough people email George about food speculation he might listen to us and support regulation. Please take action now.

However, if the words of the World Development Movement weren’t enough, here – from the New Yorker no less – we have the following appreciation of exactly how badly our dear George is getting it wrong in this “Austerity Britain” of manifest stupidities:

During the past eighteen months, a callow and arrogant Chancellor of the Exchequer, empowered by a hands-off Prime Minister and backed by the bulk of the country’s financial and media establishment, has needlessly brought Britain to the brink of another recession by embracing draconian spending cuts that hark back to the early nineteen-thirties. Rather than changing course and taking measures to boost growth, the Conservative-Liberal coalition is doubling down on austerity. On Tuesday, it announced plans to extend its cuts for two more years, until 2016-2017. “Until now, we had been thinking of four years of cuts as unprecedented in modern times,” Paul Johnson, the director of the non-partisan Institute for Fiscal Studies, said. “Six years looks even more extraordinary.”

And so it was with the Soviet five-year plans.

If only our dear Chancellor was able to emulate their early successes.

But I don’t think so.

Do you, George?

I now know exactly what they meant when they said Britain under the Coalition would be a country fit for leisurely white males.

For I now know exactly what it is to be a laboratory rat.