Place Your Bets...

"Come on boys! Let's get them!"

...on who will be the scapegoat for the coming Depression. International trading in stocks, shares and investments is like a casino isn't it? Why not join in and place bets on the scapegoat for the mayhem in the offing?

Everyone gets along in the good times, oh, how we all get along! But when the bottom falls out of the economy and people are selling Granny Smiths (and Granny) on street corners and shining shoes at train stations for the employed, some innocent party is going to have to shoulder the blame...

1. The Germans: The Germans are the ones who got us onto this 'Eurozone' channel and yet when I looked for it on Sky TV after midnight, I couldn't even find it! What a rip-off! It's a German who is heading the European Central Bank. How convenient! It was Germany that started the two world wars with their expansionist ways and its the Germans, aided by those onion-wearing cyclist on the Tour de France, who got this European showboat on the road. Nazis! We've been to Germany and their bread was stale, but at least they've got bread! If other countries default on their debt and Germany come out of it looking relatively unscathed, then it was all a plan to create the evil fascist empire they always dreamed of, and remember that many of them still enjoy swimming naked. That's got to be both sick and perverted! They must all be paedos or something! Let's get them, boys! 35/1

2. The Gays: We're broke and how much money has been squandered on these LGBT equality campaigns and on placating this so-called community's near constant demands for both attention and public cash, just so they can close down hard working Christian Bed and Breakfast owners (because in the bad times, we remember our Christian heritage) parade near naked on marches through city centres on sunny days and ram their sexuality down the throats of joe public? In good economic times, we accept and tolerate your love as the love that dare not speak its name, but in a massive recession, where are the babies, the future generation that's going to get us out of this mess by spending on our high streets on digital cameras and Xboxes!?  Make them marry women and have children and if they don't agree to it, imprison them or make them join the army and if they don't join the army, nuke Brighton! Sod the 'pink pound'! What about the pound sterling!? And besides, its sick and perverted! Get your hands off our children! Backs to the walls, lads! Let's get them, boys! 200/1 

3. The Poles: In the good times, they're our hard-working, honest neighbours who'll do our plumbing for a cheaper rate than British workers and do it in half the time it would take us to do the job. But this is a recession and these guys are not just taking our jobs, but our women and, suddenly, there's something about them that I don't like. They look shifty to me and the language is seemingly complex and almost totally alien. They must be plotting something! Immigration has led to this country being run by socialists and jacks of all trades from Eastern Europe. Some of them don't even speak our language at all and their food is also confusing us. We know what Stephen Fry said about them and even though we hate him now because we hate gays, we hate Germans too and we know all Germans and Poles are Nazis! Come on, boys! Let's get them! 80/1

4. The Catholic Church and Catholics: Those Catholics are all over the World, getting their greasy hands on State schools, indoctrinating our children with their sky-fairy, cloud-dwelling, bearded dad of all mankind myth and their Virgin birth tooth-fairy stories! In the good times we really quite dislike you with your constant moralising, telling us how to live, while spreading HIV around the globe and managing the World's largest child abuse ring, but in the bad times, we hate you, with your fat cat banker Pope, lapping up all the cream with his vast wealth! Oh yes! We wouldn't be in this mess if you had sold the Vatican museums and all of your lovely buildings and bailed out the World economy, would we!? Oh, no! So much for Christian charity! When we needed a neighbour, were you there?! We tolerated your Bible stories and transubstantiation tales for a while, but how come you're the only country in the World that isn't in debt by £500 trillion?! We are! Why aren't you!? Anyway, he was in Nazi youth when he was 14 and so he must still be a Nazi and we hate Nazis! Lads, the Catholics have robbed us and you can tell because they've got their own bank and the Pope's behind it wringing his hands with glee! And that Blair got us into those expensive wars, bankrupting our nation while murdering our troops and he's kind of a Catholic. Come on, boys! Let's get them! 50/1

5. The Jews: In the good times of high-living, champagne drinking, credit-spending days of boating in Henley-on-Thames, if someone said something that could be interpreted as remotely negative about Jewish people they were slung out of the boat with a weight on their legs and left to drown. "Good riddance, you anti-Semite!" we said. But now, its a double-dipper rollercoaster of a recession and we need a scapegoat and pronto! Let's order copies of the latest interviews with SSPX loose cannon, Richard Williamson, buy the collected works of David Irving and make some seriously sick revision of history, because times are hard and someone has to take the blame for our plight. The head of the federal reserve is Jewish, the man who owns the highly over-priced Sainsburys is Jewish and other business leaders are Jewish. Well, that's enough for us! There can be no other explanation! This whole financial crisis must be a Jewish conspiracy! Let's have those Olympics in 2012 in London, but let's deck the stadiums out in swastikas and elect some far-right demonically possessed psychopath in military uniform to sort out this problem and militarise this great nation. After all, the only thing that's going to stimulate our economy is World War III! Come on, boys! Let's get them! 75/1  

6. Celebrities and Premier League Footballers: How much is that Simon Cowell on? Britain's Got Talent!? Britain's Got Talent!? Well, that's great, but how come he's rolling in cash with houses scattered to the four corners of the globe, but the rest of us are offering car washes to the employed with our own spit because our water's been cut off because of hyperinflation and there are no longer any town wells?! And isn't it just so convenient that just because someone can kick a football around a pitch that they should be multi-millionaires at 25? My boy has five degrees, a masters in astrophysics, NVQs in hairdressing, plumbing, needlework and tapestry-making and he still can't get a job! Where's the justice!? These celebrities need to learn the hard way that life isn't all fast cars, loose women, botox and sunning it up on private beaches in Malaysia! No! Life is graft and if you don't graft then you're just a parasite living off the the hard work of those who have none! Get a real job, you layabouts! Join the army and start getting our economic recovery on the road as we attempt a land invasion of Germany! If you don't, you're not British! Come on, boys! Let's get them! 25/1

7. The Muslims: In the good times, Islam was a rich culture of people with a fascinating heritage steeped in exotic Eastern tradition, a nice range of curries, local shops and marked contributions to the life of this great nation. Sure, there were one or two homegrown terrorists who blew up a few buses and tube trains, but we overlooked that because times were generally good and they were just young, misguided and disenfranchised Northerners, bless 'em! But now we're in a double dip recession and they're the only ones with convenience stores, while we who were earning £45K a year are applying for jobs at Sainsburys just to pay for our mortgage arrears! We were here first and these Muslims have come and taken our jobs and they're all terrorists anyway, wanting their hook-handed sharia law in every town up and down the length and breadth of the country. Well, we're not having it and we're British and proud of it! Go home back to your own countries and if you don't go, we'll put you on a boat and sink it with 200,000 copies of yesterday's edition of The Daily Mail! That'll teach them! Come on, boys! Let's get them! 60/1

8. The Chinese: Up until 10 years ago, we all thought 'mandarin' was a type of succulent fruit constituting a nice change from satsumas and clementines. Now, there are courses in your local college available for you to learn it as a language! That's it! The Chinese are taking over with their communist ways! Damn those clever commies! Give these guys an inch and they'll take a wall so wide, tall and long you can see it from the moon! All this time, those commies were biding their time, allowing the West to get in debt to them and now they're cashing in on their investments and plundering the populace. They're already here with their foreign students taking our homes! How come we can't get a job in a Chinese restaurant? I suppose its because we don't look Chinese, isn't it!? Charming! We appreciated their take-aways, in fact we loved them, but now we see it was part of a long, drawn-out plot to take over the World and enslave us into the bargain! Henceforth, they'll be making us take a yen an hour to make cheap clothes for their high street shops in brutal, sweatshop servitude, while telling us how many children we can have! Let's get them, boys! 250/1

9. Politicians: Our politicians have sold us down the river to filthy foreigners in Brussels, bankrupted the country, bailed out the banks because of their own incompetence and they've all been dining out on the public purse while thieving fivers and tenners from it for duck houses while we weren't looking. In the good times, we were mildly irritated by their avarice because they were lovable rogues who read the riot act to benefits cheats. But now we're on the dole, which has been slashed in half thanks to cuts, we need a bit of extra cash and we're willing to break the law to do it. Who do they think they are!? Hypocrites! Come on, boys, I'm sick of these self-serving bureaucratic, money-loving scum bags! Let's vote for Nick Griffin, that guy who used to present daytime TV or some other politician on the extreme right of the lunatic fringe - someone who can stand up for the British way, sort out the gays, the Poles, the Muslims, the Jews, the Catholics, Germans, Chinese, Eton-toff politicians, celebrities and premier league stars and...9/2

10. Bankers (aka Banksters): Bring back the death penalty for all bankers! All bankers need shooting, but even if you brought back public execution, hanging, drawing and quartering would be too good for them. All the time I trusted the 17-year-old apprentice cashier girl at my local HSBC and now I find out that she's been stringing me along only to swipe my hard-earned savings in one of greatest robberies of the British public since 2008! I thought she'd put on weight last time I went in to pay off my £400 heating bill. She has! Why? Because she's one of those fat cats, lapping up the cream! No wonder there are no bank managers any more. No! They got out of the branches while they could because the banksters were planning this raid on our pensions from before they were even born, so I can only take my rage out on young Melissa here, but we know all banksters are the same, even the ones in India at the call centres that used to employ British workers! Investors, stockbrokers, traders, mortgage advisors, insurance advisers, cashiers, security drivers and guards are all wicked banksters lapping up the cream, while we try and eek out an existence on skimmed milk donated by the local Salvation Army! Come on, lads! Let's get them! 5/2