It will forever be known as The Rummikub Christmas.

In our home, we try to have a Yuletide theme for gifts to our adult children. The best year was the Christmas when all three got their very own Rummikub game to play with their spouses and tin lids. The Rummikub Christmas was a triumph.

Rummikub is a game played with 106 numbered tiles that must be arranged in combinations to rid yourself of all your cards. The first to do so, wins.

Here’s one example of a Rummikub strategy courtesy of the Ultra Board Games website: “The set of blue 8, black 8, yellow 8 and red 8 is on the table. You have a red 7 and red 9. You may take the red 8 to build a new row of red 7, 8 and 9. On the table are the rows of black 4,5,6,7, yellow 4,5,6,7 and blue 4, 5, 6. You have a red 4, 6 and 7. You re-arrange all rows into sets …”

Too hard? Here’s a game we can all play. Millions of us do, without knowing we’re doing it.

For want of a catchier name, let’s call it The Mean Game.

The rules are pretty loosey goosey, but the scoring system is simpler than Rummikub.

Here’s an example of a typical Mean Game play.

You’re watching the nightly TV news. A story bobs up about a homeless, single mother living in her car with her young children.

She starts with a full 10 points on the Compassion Index. We should feel sorry for them, without question.

But you notice the wagging tails of two dogs in the back seat. If she’s homeless, how can she afford to feed two dogs? She loses two points.

Mum also has several tattoos. There goes another point.

You notice a new mobile phone on the dash. A luxury. Deduct a point.

It looks like a late model car. The money for that could have gone toward renting a nice little flat, couldn’t it? Bang, a hefty three points go down the drain.

A smoker? Another point wiped. The kids have new toys. Sorry, not sorry, another point lost.

Without even trying, we’ve marked our battler mum down to a tenuous one point, with about as much chance of winning compassion as she has of getting into affordable, safe accommodation.

See how easy it is to go from soft-hearted to mean without even trying?

With a horrendous run of interest rate rises and galloping petrol, grocery and energy bills, the Mean Game is walking off the shelves.

It is shaping the national political debate, distorting Australia’s traditional image of itself as the land of the Fair Go.

Politicians and obscenely-rewarded corporate egos who don’t understand this – and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his new best friend, outgoing Qantas boss Alan Joyce, seem to be struggling with the concept – are in for a world of pain.

The polling found some real hard-hearted Hannah and Harolds when it came to what those on a minimum wage deserved

The PM is pitching a fair go as a central message of a yes vote in the Voice referendum and while that may have resonated in good times, it’s a tough sell now.

Kos Samaras, the former Victorian ALP official who now runs the influential RedBridge polling outfit, found recently that the only age group showing strong majority support for the Yes vote is 18-to-34-year-olds and “the only income bracket is households earning more than $200,000 a year”.

The July poll found the intention to vote no is “particularly high” among those aged 65 and older, with household incomes below $50,000 a year and with less than a Year 12 education.

He told News Corp that support is plummeting among lower-income, non-university-educated voters in part due to the “politics of grievance”.

“Since the RBA began its long road of raising interest rates, coupled with the cost of living, inflation when it comes to food and other goods, all of the things that could go wrong have gone wrong for people that live in the outer suburbs of our big cities,” he says.

“They personally may think it (the Voice) is OK but increasingly they’re getting annoyed that nobody’s talking about their problems.”

When it comes to hearing the clanging noise generated by the politics of grievance, Big Australia seems to have cloth ears.

Qantas has gone from perhaps one of our most loved companies to one that is now mocked and bagged for what many see as a disdain for its customers.

Under federal parliamentary grilling this week, Joyce defended his airline’s decision not to hand back the $2.7 billion in COVID rescue funds it received from taxpayers, despite turning a $2.4 billion profit last financial year.

Ditto with playing funny buggers with the more than $500 million Qantas is hogging in owed ticket refunds from cancelled COVID flights. Jetstar, owned by Qantas, reportedly owes money to half a million Australians.

Yet, Qantas wants them all to vote yes. Give them their money back Al, and they might think about it.

On Tuesday, the “independent remuneration tribunal” granted all MPs a lovely four per cent pay rise, taking the bog-standard federal backbencher’s salary from $217,060 to $225,742.

A South Australian backbencher will now pocket a minimum of $216,742 a year.

The tribunal effectively said the generous rise was a catch-up after previous “conservative” rises for MPs.

These MPs are the very same people telling Australians they really do understand that times are tough in the ‘burbs. I doubt they’ve got a clue.

Rolling the Mean Game dice doesn’t us make bad people, merely stressed humans. Nor are we alone.

A YouGov poll last month quizzed Britons on 35 common living expenses.

It asked the public to decide at what income level each should be attainable: for someone on out-of-work benefits, on minimum wage, on an average income, or only for society’s wealthiest.

The results are cringeworthy. The survey found 76 per cent of Britons believe everyone should be able to afford electricity, gas and water bills, regardless of income level. This means 24 per cent, almost a quarter surveyed, think it’s OK if not everyone can afford to heat their homes or cook their meals.

The figure was almost the same for being able to afford a healthy, balanced diet, with 74 per cent thinking this should be universally available, while the rest can eat Coco Pops.

Only 55 per cent think everyone should be able to afford a television.

The polling found some real hard-hearted Hannah and Harolds when it came to what those on a minimum wage deserved – only 28 per cent thought battlers should be able to enjoy a takeaway meal once a month and just 12 per cent believed they should be able to buy a house or flat.

The Guardian’s Frances Ryan writes that when benefits and wages in real terms are falling at their fastest rate in decades, the “smallest signs of pleasure are taken as proof that those on low incomes are not really struggling”.

“Been to McDonald’s lately? Then your wages must be fine,” she writes.

“This narrative puts the blame squarely on the individual for their lack of resources, as if the reason someone has no cash isn’t poverty wages, but their Netflix subscription.”

Sounds like the instruction booklet for the Mean Game.

It’s pretty likely such a poll in Australia now would unmask similar attitudes.

Oh, and the UK poll showed that only 60 per cent of Poms believed everyone should be able to enjoy “seasonal celebrations”, such as Christmas or Diwali.

Speaking of Christmas, last year, along with the traditional bag of coloured popcorn, our children each got a box of Who Gives A Crap toilet paper. Half of the profits from the gaily-wrapped, three-ply rolls go to sanitation and clean water projects in the Third World.

The Dub Rub Christmas was flushed with success.

Matthew Abraham is InDaily’s political columnist. Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.