Government Tells God To Mind His Own Business

The Conservative party at prayer

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith today told Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to ask God if He would kindly keep His nose out of things that don’t concern him and stick to saving Australians from exploding jet engines, after the archbishop called the government’s plan to force the unemployed into unpaid manual labour unfair and flawed.

"People often are in this starting place, not because they are wicked or stupid or lazy but because circumstances have been against them,” Dr Williams told the BBC, “And to drive that spiral deeper does seem a great problem."

“Dr Williams’ God is telling him to stick his oar into issues that are none of His business, like decency, humanity and the welfare of the poor, sick and vulnerable,” retorted Mr Duncan Smith. “Well, mine is telling me, through the pages of his glorious oracle, the Sun, to harass the holy living shit out of the lazy skiving bastards. And, unlike the archbishop, I have concrete proof that my god actually exists. So he can swivel on his crozier.”

“Hasn’t he got a tombola stall to run, or something?” he added.

Meanwhile, the Labour party, unions, charities and other organisations which nobody has much time for any more joined the church leader in condemning the proposals, as people on the second-lowest rung of society cheerfully set about kicking the people beneath them.

“I don’t see why I should pay taxes so these bastards in areas where there isn’t any work can sit around blatantly not doing the work that isn’t there, come to think of it I don’t see why I should pay any taxes at all,” said a badly-paid man with no job security who will be first in the queue to claim benefits when his temporary contract is cancelled later early next year. “Frankly, if you ask me, every welfare reform since the abolition of slavery has been a bit of a mistake.”