Having had enough of being constantly ridiculed, blamed and oppressed, the billionaires of the world gathered last week in Aitchisonia-upon-Chenab, the capital of the Republic of Cliftonia, to draft a bill of rights that will ensure that each member of this unfairly persecuted community (along with their families, love interests, business cronies, golf partners, real estate agents, haberdashers, hairstylists, long-distance running partners, and their LinkedIn followers) find succour and protection in this hallowed and much-needed document.

Known as the ‘Cliftonian Bill of Rights’, the covenant enumerates a number of demands the elite is convinced it deserves in order to be treated with the favouritism, partiality and advantage which it believes it is entitled to. The 5,000-page document contains a preamble and a total of 7,429 rights. We reproduce excerpts below:

“The unanimous declaration of the oppressed billionaires of the world: 

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one persecuted class of people to rearrange the political, financial, social, technological, historical, geographical and delusional bands that have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate, highly revered, and holy station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to believe thusly.

Excerpts from the 5,000-page ‘Cliftonian Bill of Rights’ drafted by the flatulent affluent…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all billionaires are created more equal than others, that they are endowed by their Creator with innumerable unalienable rights, and that among these are their life, their liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness.

“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the super-affluent rulers. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the billionaire ruling-folk to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience has shewn that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

“Such has been the patient sufferance of these here-gathered billionaires; and such is now the necessity that constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present global system is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny of the undeodorised and unfragranced, over the gloriously perfumed and well-intentioned wealthy. 

“To prevent this from occurring any further, let it be known that we, the Billionaire Babydolls:

• Have an unalienable right to entitlement and self-righteousness;

• Have an unalienable right to express our opinions on every subject under the sun with the kind of gusto that is the sole preserve of the highly flatulent;

• Have an unalienable right to noblesse our oblige over whomever we consider deserves our obliging;

• Have an unalienable right to wear polka dots and paisleys (together or as part of separate outfits) as and when we deem fit;

• Have an unalienable right to acquire as many nationalities as we desire;

• Have an unalienable right not to have our patriotism questioned despite our confusion over our loyalties as citizens of more than one state;

• Have an unalienable right to constitute, form and dissolve governments as and when we desire;

• Have an unalienable right to inflict our opinions upon the world through our personal podcasts;

• Have an unalienable right to consume as many carbs as we wish;

• Have an unalienable right to describe ourselves as ‘students of history’ after watching three episodes of Ertugrul;

• Have an unalienable right to merge (if we so desire) and/or acquire properties (corporate or otherwise);

• Have an unalienable right to save the poors of the world by setting up foundations named after ourselves;

• Have an unalienable right to support bigoted, racist, megalomaniacs from among our own kind as populist, anti-status quo revolutionaries;

• Have an unalienable right to have our holidays remain unaffected by inflation or travel restrictions of any kind;

• Have an unalienable right to have the world suffer our delusions of grandeur;

• Have an unalienable right to laud ourselves every week for our imagined sacrifices in service of God and country;

• Have an unalienable right to proudly declare: Billionaires of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your last ounce of decency!”

Farid Alvie was born.
He currently lives.
He tweets @faridalvie

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 23rd, 2023