Politicians certainly don’t seem to change their spots. I suppose there are a few honest ones among them, but in general they are a shiftless, hypocritical bunch.

Take David Miliband for instance. When he was running to succeed Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party (he was eventually stabbed in the back and deposed by his brother) he railed about the immorality of bosses who pocketed fortunes. He insisted with considerable passion that the scandal of exorbitant wage packets and fat cat bosses had been ignored for far too long. He was particularly scathing about ‘grasping bankers’ and ‘greedy business chiefs.’

Yet nine years later, this son of a Marxist academic, who still sometimes rails against inequality, has joined the fat cats himself. Today, he swans around the world demanding more support for humanitarian causes and hobnobbing with actors, billionaires and royals as the grandly titled President of the International Rescue Committee.

Rescue from what damnit?! Apparently, this is a respected New York-based charity, founded at the suggestion of physicist Albert Einstein in 1933 and funded to the tune of £107 million over the past two years by British taxpayers.

Yet this august body’s latest tax data reveals that, with breathtaking hypocrisy, Miliband has seen his pay package swell to an astonishing $911,796 (around £741,883) — nearly five times the salary of the job he wanted as British Prime Minister.

It has gone up over the past two years by £195,314, almost seven times the average annual salary of those hard-pressed British workers helping to fund his globe-trotting high life.

Could this pompous pratwinkle not do the job for a mere half-a-million pounds or so? After all, his predecessor in the post struggled by on $380,000 (£309,400) a year.

Yet Miliband is not alone. 

The top twelve officials at the charity saw their pay surge by £1.1 million over this period to more than £4 million between them.

This is surely hypocrisy of the highest order, sadly all too typical of many big charities. It shows contempt for the hard-pressed taxpayer — and, even worse, for some of the world’s most desperate people. This money was donated for them damnit, not the likes of Mr Miliband.

Three months ago, Miliband gave a passionate speech in London attacking ‘the arrogance of power’ and complaining about the lack of accountability in what he called the ‘age of impunity.’

It was seen at the time as part of a campaign, fanned by his mentor Tony Blair, to entice him back to Britain to head a new centre party funded by donors dismayed by the prospect of Labour being taken over by the hard left.

Now we can see why Miliband didn’t really want that job as he enjoys the glitzy high life in New York. But what makes this even more disturbing is that he and his money-grabbing charity chiefs in Manhattan are far from unique.

They are symbols of a rotting aid system being corroded by an invidious form of corruption as torrents of cash flow from the poor deluded British public to make politicians feel good by hitting an absurd target ignored by many rich nations.

It seems to me that despite their self-promoting rhetoric, charity bosses like Miliband and private sector consultants are milking the public’s commendable wish to help less fortunate folk around the planet. This is surely corruption of the worst possible sort?

Politicians make earnest pledges of action, dole out billions donated by us, then do nothing to stop the waste. Many like Miliband leave politics after ranting about this sort of corruption, then jump on the gravy train themselves.

I did smile a little cynically when I read about Dr David Mackereth being sacked as a government claim assessor for refusing to bow down to the ‘trans’ fanatics by saying he would not call a six-foot bearded man Madam.

Now would anyone possessing an iota of common sense but a tribunal ruled that his defiance constituted a ‘lack of belief in transgenderism.’

Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister virtually abolished Christianity in this country and successive leaders since have done nothing to restore it, but these modern ‘isms’ have become the new, highly intolerant religion of Britain.

Don’t conform at your peril. The fanatics are out to get us all and they make the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition look like kindergarten teachers.

They call themselves liberal but intolerance for any views other than their own is their creed.