Five-star hotels, Downton Abbey crystal & £700 shoes…...

I DON’T know about you but every day I seem to wake up to some bastard demanding more money from me. Annual pet insurance for the cat has jumped by £40, the boiler cover has been turned up by £150 a year. Now I’m waiting for the new council tax hike to kick in.

Image Credit: The Sun [Palace of Westminster and Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) in London.]

How much will they want off me this year? Perhaps this time they’ll demand a couple of body parts too, just to sweeten the deal. I’m excited to find out. But at least when the state comes grasping for a slice of your hard-earned cash you can take some comfort in knowing it’s going towards helping you out.

Image Credit: The Sun [Angela Rayner leaving Downing Street after a cabinet meeting.]

You know, like educating your kids or getting your hip replaced . . . or just fixing those damn potholes. Well, apparently not. Now we learn that all that extra tax we’ve been forced to shovel into Rachel From Accounts’ leaky bucket has been used to lavish five-star treats on entitled job-for-life civil servants.

Image Credit: The Sun [Rooftop pool and lounge area at a hotel, overlooking the city.]

And we’re not talking about the odd business class flight or late-night taxi back to their five-bedder in the Home Counties. No, the latest disclosure of taxpayer-funded largesse reads like King Charles’ Christmas list. Crystal glasses from the supplier to Downton Abbey at a staggering £125 a pop.

Image Credit: The Sun [Rishi Sunak speaking at a factory.]

A whopping £1,400 splurged at Fortnum & Mason, a sumptuous department store in London’s Mayfair that makes John Lewis look like Poundland. Bottles of English sparkling wine from a fancy pants vineyard in Kent totalling £600. And, incredibly, a pair of £741 “handsewn” shoes from a cobbler so exclusive you have to ring them up and book an appointment.

Image Credit: The Sun [Man in a safety vest carrying a box against a background of an explosion.]

Why the hell are we paying for all this?. It’s not just luxury stuff that we’ve picked up the tab for either — it’s top-notch entertainment too. Civil servants, when not working from home — as is their new obsession — found the time to spray thousands of pounds of our money around private members’ clubs from Pall Mall to Thailand. One group’s stay at a five-star hotel in Barcelona was also funded by us.

Image Credit: The Sun [Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at a wheelchair basketball match.]

David Lammy — the foghorn-voiced foreign minister who is usually so quick to theatrically call out this kind of thing — saw his department rank as one of the biggest culprits. In the first four months of this Labour government his staff blew over half a million pounds in “restaurants and bars”.

Image Credit: The Sun [Collage of photos and notes on a corkboard.]

Exactly where that cash was spent has not been disclosed but it would be safe to assume it wasn’t at the Bangkok Beefeater. Even James Bond kept his expenses tighter than this shower. The list goes on, but I’ll leave it there to spare your blood pressure.

Image Credit: The Sun [Sir Alex Ferguson watching a football match from the stands.]

Look, I’m not suggesting everyone working for the taxpayer should entertain contacts with a couple of cans of warm supermarket lager while sitting on a park bench. But these state-funded spendthrifts have lost all perspective. They are, what is technically known as, taking the p**s.

Image Credit: The Sun [Happy boy fishing by a lake.]

Maybe we could have expected that from all those silver spoon-fed Tory types. But Labour? The socialist party of the workers?. They came into power cursing this kind of kleptomania from the public purse. Naturally Angela “I hate Tory scum” Rayner was the loudest critic, blasting those nasty Conservatives for having their snouts in the trough.

Image Credit: The Sun [Adam Hills, MBE recipient for services to Paralympic sport and disability awareness.]

Two years ago she accused former PM Rishi Sunak of a “scandalous catalogue of waste” that showed public funds were being “frittered away across every part of government”. There would be none of that when she and her cost-conscious Labour colleagues got into power, was the takeaway.

So patently untrue has that turned out to be that even her department, the housing ministry, has seen wages rocket by £20million since she took over. So why has nothing changed?. Why are we still having our pockets picked by the people we pay to serve us?.

Was all that slamming and blasting of the previous administration just performative posturing to score a few points in the run-up to an election?. Something bitchy to say while you waited to dunk your own greedy mitts into the taxpayer treasure chest?. Come on, Ange, what’s the answer?.

Talking of James Bond, I have the perfect mission for him now he’s on the payroll at Amazon. Never mind hunting down a disfigured foreign psychopath in some North African hellhole or wherever. I’d like to see him attempt to deliver a parcel from a soulless warehouse somewhere off the M1 to my home without just dumping it by the bin in plain sight of anyone walking past.

Because apparently that is currently mission impossible for Amazon. I’VE had a busy weekend having only just finished cleaning up all the vomit I violently ejected after clapping eyes on Meghan Markle’s “mood board”. Her collection of trite affirmations, posted on Instagram, resembled the kind of tat you usually find in a garden centre gift shop.

Meaningless twaddle such as: “I love you with all my butt. “I would say heart but my butt is bigger.”. Oh God, pass the bucket . . . here I go again. Meg’s decision to release this smorgasbord of schmaltz is all part of her plan to get our juices flowing for her new lifestyle brand, As Ever.