There are times when even the cynical old observer watches a day’s events and wonders, ‘Is this – now – rock bottom?’ I had such a day yesterday.

It was a day when, in the States, a messed-up mortgage relief plan from the Government was shown to have had little or no effect on the plight of millions of Americans trapped in negative equity – and now facing foreclosure. There is, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, no Government plan about foreclosure; so the banks saved by the trapped millions will now take their homes as well as their tax dollars.

It was a day when a senior British politician who is a liar – and not even a very good one – stood accused by our own security services of persistently lying to Parliament and the People.

It was a day when somehow the cost of feather-bedding bureaucrats doubled, and became the responsibility of future taxpayers already struggling with unemployment and their own (shrinking) pensions. A day in turn when the TUC’s reaction to this scandalous self-interest was ‘how dare you come after our public-sector pensions’.

And it was a day when The Guardian wrote me a final (I assume) email claiming not to have my email address in their records….but still unable to explain why my politely expressed views are banned from their comment columns – or to use their 1984 syntax, my comment privileges had been disabled.

Freedom of speech is the only privilege I can think of that one should never have to earn; so as ever ,Big G was looking through the wrong end of the telescope. What that newspaper’s blinkered vision will never perceive, however, is that our real planetary enemy is unearned privilege.

It may well be the focus for which I’ve been searching – the one that cuts through all the tired, outmoded Left v Right bollocks and asks ‘To hell with what class you’re from…do you deserve those privileges or not?’

An earned privilege for me is the result of something one has done, the effect of which – directly or indirectly – has been for the social good, and generally unselfish. This is not about thrashing oneself while dressed in sackcloth and ashes; it is a question of accepting that you can get as rich as you like, but if the social auditor says others drowned in the doing of it, then trust me kiddo – you will pay for it big-time.

The vast majority of civil servants have unearned pension privileges that will impoverish future generations less blessed than them. Precisely the same applies to the banking community beyond the everyday retail teller. Every ISP and major internet software supplier has a privileged safety from customer ire, none of which they deserve. Trade Unions enjoy the privilege of sponsoring Labour MPs, billionaires do the same with the Tories – as the oilcos in the US swamp Congressmen with support in return for tax privileges. These people too deserve none of it.

Privilege allows local councils to ban the media from Family Courts. It protects the rich from legal action, as opposed to making everyone equal before the law. The legal profession getting fat on this not only don’t deserve their hugely privileged position, they abuse it on a widespread basis. MPs claim Parliamentary privilege to escape the consequences of their frauds.

Multinationals claim tax breaks in return for creating employment, but then fire people at the drop of a share price – that price-fall often being the entirely random result of a non-dom tax-evading Hedge Fund manager ‘directionalising’ the market for his own and his clients’ greedy ends.

Islamic men claim privileges over women by quoting a K’Aran littered with references suggesting they have no such right. Islamist leaders desire privileges under the law to silence opposition – and to replace that law in countries where they represent a tiny minority of citizens. Harriet Harman’s ideas and proposed legislative programme for women assume a gender superiority which would act as an outrageous unearned privilege.

Benefit cheats abuse an unearned privilege. People addicted to welfare enjoy the sometimes unearned privilege of not having to earn a living by their own efforts. Far too many Afro-Caribbean males abuse the privilege of fatherhood – storing up social problems with which others have to wrestle. They too have enjoyed the unearned privilege of a Race Relations Act – a bizarre entitlement that has created a huge, costly and largely unproductive industry, and spawned the ultimate anti-libertarian attitude: “Yeh, but I’m entitled”.

Nobody is entitled to kill others for a fantasy idea, inherit vast amounts of money on the basis of genetic chance, foreclose on Vietnam vet widows, milk the taxpayer, demand legal immunity, lie to War Inquiries, give the media facts they know to be wrong, shout through celebrity letterboxes, hide the real cost of their largely unearned pension privileges, or open up website pages to comment, but then deny the right to disagree inoffensively.

Wherever we look in once-decent societies and among most of their enemies, simply by examining the undeserved advantage in each case, usually you can work out which side you’re on. And, as I’ve found myself over the last decade, disturbingly often it isn’t the side of the Party one normally supports. Frequently, the right course of action isn’t being put forward by any of the Parties. Why? Fear of losing unearned privileges. (Electoral reform in the UK is a classic contemporary example).

It’s a reminder of why I write The Slog. When you come across something which, on investigation, turns out to be complete bollocks, the broadcaster of the drivel is usually protecting something – from political power to professional reputation – that has given him or her a position above the law. The aim for me – for all of us who think like this – should be to eradicate every example of unearned privilege we can find. Wherever it exists there will be creeps using it to hide their crimes and shirk their responsibilities. They exist in all sectors of society, both genders, all ages, and at every stage of the political spectrum. Take it away, and we will at last see all the emperors without their clothes.

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