Prime Minister Gordon Brown today appeared before a select committee in Parliament to explain how redistribution of wealth operated under New Labour.

"Once upon a time it was assumed, wrongly in my view, that wealth should be redistributed from the rich to the poor, from the fortunate to the needy. After a series of exhaustive focus groups conducted during the 1990s we concluded that this was wrong however. What our surveys, our research was telling us was that redistribution should not be from the rich to the poor, but from anyone with any money whatsoever to anyone that New Labour might pretend to care for. We realised that the only money that should actually be redistributed from the rich people should go solely to New Labour - precisely so that it could spread the gospel of wealth redistribution. And speaking as a Christian, I can tell you that it is the gospel of caring that counts, not the petty fine print of actually caring for the poor, for the sick, for the vulnerable."

"We realised that the only way in which we could persuade people to take 'caring for the poor' seriously was by marketing the concept, by making it clear that we, New Labour, were the people who cared. We did this by courting celebrities who themselves wanted to enhance their own images and who wanted to appear generous. We did this by asking all of the major investment banks and multinational corporations to support our initiatives and to bask in the very sunlight of 'charitable status'. We did this precisely so that everyone could know that NEW LABOUR REALLY CARED."

"And we felt intensely relaxed about bankers and footballers and celebrities and high profile public figures being paid filthy amounts of money as long as they were part of this New Labour project, a project that not only cared, but was seen to be caring... A New Labour project that also wanted itself to share in this redistribution of wealth through the most honourable and time honoured system of expenses that were paid to our most esteemed Parliamentarians."

The PM concluded by stating, "There is nothing wrong with expenses, there is nothing wrong with bonuses if they motivate people. Bonuses are the right kind of wealth redistribution. They are redistribution from the 10p taxpayer to the government so that the government can bail out our esteemed investment banks. They are redistribution that allows banks to pay out bonuses once more to its much, if I may say, maligned employees, so that we, the government and the bankers of the United Kingdom can get this economy moving again. And I say unto you that bonuses are the very endoskeleton of our economic system, they prop up this nation of ours." As the PM, a tear in his eye, walked out of the select committee he sang quietly, solemnly to himself: "Sir Fred's bone's connected to the McKillop bonus, the McKillop bone's connected to the Myners bonus, the Myners bone's connected to the PM bone, the PM bone's connected to the Mandy bone, the Mandy boner's connected to the..."