Would you rather be hung or shot?

"Are you going to poke me the next time you're on or what?"

Hey Kids! Guess how cool and funky the ConDem government can be?! They’re going to ask YOU on Facebook about what you think should get cut from our public services! Neat, huh?

Do you often think about how your local leisure centre is a waste of money? How about all those lazy disabled people that need care at home, surely they could do a bit more for themselves, right? What about libraries, who needs boring old books when we can all go on FACEBOOK and get connected with the Tories!

This new era in justifying government policy super cool direct democracy is the result of a deal that’s been struck between the government and Facebook. They’re planning to set up a “spending challenge channel”, that’ll come up when you login, inviting you to make suggestions on where the government should make spending cuts.

The idea behind it is to con people into feeling that they’ve been given a say. But if this was really democratic, you’d have the chance to say you don’t want ANY cuts, something that won’t be an option. In fact, the whole thing is about making everyone believe the lie that the cuts are an inevitable and inavoidable part of reality, like a rainy day, instead of what they are: a calculated attempt by the rich to make themselves even wealthier at our expense.

Britain's rich

Chancellor George Osborne, writing in the home of sound economic thinking, The Sun, says: “As every family knows, when you’ve got less money you have to spend it better. That means getting your ideas.” Talking about Britain as a family goes along with the Tory slogan of “We’re all in this together,” implying that we’ll all be sharing the pain of the new age of austerity.

This of course is bollocks, as the millionaires, including most members of the government, continue to stack the cash while they make the poor majority pay more tax, get less benefits and have more of their essential needs ignored. If Britain is a family, it’s a fucking dysfunctional one where some fat cousin we barely know has turned up and started spending all our money on himself while the rest of us starve.

Not only is the option that most people want (no cuts) not going to be included, even the crappy Labour Party argument that “We need cuts but not just yet,” won’t be included either. The Facebook PR move by the government won’t open up a debate about if we need cuts, or even when they should be made or how deep they should be. It will simply be about what you think you could live without. It’s like giving a prisoner on death row the choice of which execution method they’d like.

Shortly after turning a baseball cap back to front, Prime Minister David Cameron said: “We are really excited about having Facebook involved in the spending challenge. There’s enormous civic spirit in this country where people want to take control and do things in a different way. We are giving people an opportunity with Facebook and I am sure that they will take it.” Of course, he didn’t add, “take just enough control to make the people who are really in control look good.”

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (one of the youngest billionaires in the world thanks to the amount of time you spend logged into his website) was also loving the government linkup.

“The government’s willingness to reach out and engage with Facebook users is going to go a long way because I’m sure that all the people using Facebook in the UK have a lot of great ideas on how they could do this,” he gushed.

“It’s really innovative to open up policy making and engage the public in this way to try and create more social change.”

His enthusiasm isn’t surprising when you realise that the people who own and operate Facebook have got a political agenda themselves, one that fits quite well with what the Tories are trying to do to the UK. Zuckerberg and friends are all members of neoconservative right wing groups that want to see a total free market, no government support for the poor and complete global capitalism. They are super rich venture capitalists themselves, who have made themselves billionaires thanks to your use of their services, such as Facebook and PayPal. Now they’ve got an ally in the UK government, and together they’re teaming up to try and make us cut our own throats.

Let’s not let them get away with it. If you’re a member of Facebook, take two minutes just now to join the group ‘Vote on what cuts we wants? No thanks, we don’t want ANY cuts!’

We’re still waiting to see how exactly the finished “spending challenge channel” will look, but make sure you tell everyone you know to refuse to take part in it, and refuse to endorse the lie that we must make cuts. If you are going to post a suggestion, here’s a few that perhaps the government ought to consider, but never will:

1. Cancel Trident and all of Britain’s weapons of mass destruction.

Head of the Royal Bank of Scotland

2. End the war in Afghanistan and drastically cut military spending.

3. Crack down on the rich tax dodgers, like, errr. . . the guy who paid for you to get into power!

4. Tell the banks that seeing as we paid for them, we want some say in what their Scrooge McDuck style heaps of profits get used for.

5. Get rid of the monarchy, and send the Queen and her fellow benefits parasites on the Civil List out to work for a living!