Born-Again Work & Pensions Secretary Miraculously Struck Kind

On this day, it so happened that a repentant St. Iain Pduncan Psmith did testify before unbelieving scribes that the Lord Jsasus had appeared unto him in a vision as his party was journeying on the road to local election wipeout, demanding: “Smith, Smith, why do you persecute me?” before miraculously striking him utterly kind.

Hallelujah, we're saved

And it came to pass that St. Pduncan Psmith – hitherto feared throughout the land as the scourge of the weak – did henceforth bear witness to the suffering of the poor, the halt and the lame before the Pharisees of the Treasury, sending an inspirational epistle to the Times.

Verily, however, disabled recipients of the former high priest’s ministrations – many of whom had miraculously been declared fit by his Atos Medical minions – yet harboured in their hearts lingering doubts about St. Pduncan Psmith’s phenomenal affliction of kindness; for, in their wickedness, they said unto one another: “Indeed, this is like unto some temporary sort of kindness, from which he might recover just as miraculously on May 4th.”

And they were sore afraid.

Disability Nearly Abolished

Soon you won't have to look  the other way ever again

Government plans to make disability a thing of the past are well ahead of schedule, according to delighted officials at the Department for No Work Or Pensions, as figures were released showing that 37% of Britain’s unsightly, unaffordable disableds have already been cured by a simple but miraculous interview.

“All our wildest hopes have been exceeded,” commented pioneering doctor Iain Duncan Smith. “Disability, you see, is simply a matter of perception - and Atos Medical’s teams of dedicated nine-to-five doctors and nurses have conclusively proved that all you have to do is stop believing the disabled and hey presto! Suddenly they’re not disabled any more.”

“Despite gloomy predictions from the National Audit Office of no more than a 6% cure, I dared to think that 25% could be achieved,” he enthused. “But to have hit 37% in the space of a year strongly suggests there is every likelihood of removing disabled people from our society for good.”

“And just in time for the next general election, too,” he smiled. “Which is more than anyone could have hoped for.”

Poverty Not About Money, Explains Rich Man

The No Work Or Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, wants Britain to understand that poverty is not a matter of merely being pitifully short of money, according to a speech he delivered in London today.

Very poor

“I think there is a real problem with the way we measure child poverty,” insisted Mr Duncan Smith, whose personal wealth is estimated to be around £1m. “The new Conservative definition of poverty includes a lack of education, of culture, of opportunity and most of all, a total lack of hope of escaping to a better life. The coalition government is working hard to deliver all of these. Then you’ll know what real poverty is.”

“Judged purely in material terms, I might be considered a very lucky man,” he went on movingly. “But I deserve your sympathy. I suffer from a terrible poverty of compassion.”

Benefit Scroungers Started First World War, Insists Iain Duncan Myth

Not content with claiming that all rioting, truancy and appalling dress sense can be solely attributed to the insidious welfare state, No Work and No Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Myth today claimed to have uncovered irrefutable evidence that World War I’s 9,000,000 pointless casualties were the tragic but inevitable result of flagrant and widespread abuse of England’s insanely generous Poor Laws by a highly organised cadre of malingering paupers.

“Take this down, chaps,” he told delighted reporters. “I can, if required, produce incontrovertible-looking documents which purport to show that Gavrilo Princep was only able to shoot Archduke Ferdinand and his charming wife dead on that fateful day in Sarajevo because he had cynically hoodwinked some wishy-washy bunch of Manchester Guardian-reading Poor Law commissioners into granting him a crisis loan for an automatic pistol, claiming he needed it to protect himself from marauding crows.”

Of course, half the East End sported wingtip shoes the next day

Mr Duncan Myth went on to tell frantically-scribbling hacks that Broken Britain’s workshy criminal underclass were also single-handedly responsible for torching London, Coventry, Plymouth and dozens of other cities in the early 1940s and then concocting some unlikely sob-story about being provoked into committing their sinful acts of arson as a legitimate expression of their grievances concerning the so-called ‘fascist’ behaviour of officers belonging to the Luftwaffe's flying squad.

Iain Duncan Smith Joins Magic Circle

Just like that

The Magic Circle – the world-famous society of stage magicians – today announced the induction of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith into its hallowed ranks, in recognition of his jaw-dropping performance of the old Disappearing Unemployed Trick.

Legendary for his clumsy presentation, Duncan Smith selects volunteers from his captive audience of unemployed, and pushes them into his deviously-constructed Flexible New Deal, a large empty box. He then mumbles the nonsense word, “Helpingyoubacktowork”, spins the box, and only those who have been out of work for less than 18 months come staggering out - unless they’re under 25, of course, in which case any of them who have been unemployed for more than six months also vanish into thin air.

The bumbling comic magician then stumbles into the stage curtain, which collapses to reveal them all jumping through amusingly-shaped hoops - held by his prancing assistants from the employment-agency sector - to get to their Jobseekers’ Alllowance.

“This brilliant deception was originally dreamt up by the late-unlamented Tony Bongo donkeys’ years ago, and when he passed into the Great Unknown the straight-faced illusionist Gorren Brown incorporated it into his act,” pointed out veteran magician Paul Daniels. “But Iain’s enormous, fumbling hands have brilliantly transformed the old ropey trick into high farce. Now that’s magic.”

Duncan Smith Invites Businesses To Break Law

Patriotic work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith today urged Britain’s bosses to lay themselves wide open to legal action, by openly discriminating in favour of British job applicants.

QED, say employers

“Now look here, chaps, for the last year I’ve been going round telling everyone that there are plenty of jobs out there for the taking,” he complained peevishly. “Now it’s come to my attention that you’re handing them all to a bunch of foreign devils, simply because they happen to have skills and work hard – and I have to say this won’t look good in the papers. Come on, now, play the game and give those jobs to British school leavers. You’re making us Conservatives look a bit foolish, and it simply won’t do.”

When the news was gently broken to him that employers adopting a strict nationalistic discrimination policy would be breaking the law, Mr Duncan Smith frowned for a minute, then beamed and pointed out that, once the government’s legal aid cuts come into effect, no unsuccessful applicant will be able to afford to take an employer to court.

Employers are not persuaded by Mr Duncan Smith’s jingoism, however. A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses retorted: “Dream on, baldy. Tell you what - if it’s all the same to you, we’ll just carry on employing EU nationals who can actually read and write, and take the trouble to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to customers instead of yawning and grunting ‘orright mate’ at them.”

“Meanwhile, perhaps you could come up with an education policy that works,” he added.

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.”

Elections In Burma, Forced Labour In Britain

Britain takes its rightful place in the southern hemisphere

NASA experts are excitedly studying dramatic satellite images of the precise moment when the Earth suddenly turned upside down today.

“We were alerted to a slight wobble at the poles, coinciding with the opening of the first democratic elections in Burma in twenty years,” said excited geophysicist Randy von Braun. “The oscillations continued at a low level until Iain Duncan Smith unveiled his White Paper proposal to introduce forced manual labour for Britain’s unemployed, at which moment the entire planet suddenly flipped over and the northern hemisphere went south, and vice versa. We know that the Earth’s magnetic poles swap positions every few million years, but we never suspected that the actual poles could too.”

“This is the sort of thing you never expect to happen in your lifetime,” added Mr von Braun. “And the planet going ass over tit is a pretty bizarre phenomenon, too.”

Big-Hearted Iain Duncan Smith Leaps To Defence Of Territory

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith angrily defended his patch today, following the publication of a leaked letter from chancellor George Osborne which targets the sick and disabled for a £2.5bn cut.

This idle scrounger could easily tow a bus or something

In the letter, Mr Osborne tells his fellow Tory: “Given the pressure on overall public spending in the coming period, we – meaning I - will need to continue developing further options to reform the benefits as part of the spending review process in order to deliver further savings, greater simplicity and stronger work incentives. Reform to the employment support allowance is a particular priority and I am pleased to inform you that you, the prime minister and I have agreed to press ahead with reforms to the Employment Support Allowance as part of the spending review that will deliver net savings of at least £2.5bn by 2014-15."

A visibly seething Mr Duncan Smith immediately called a press conference, in which he whispered furiously that kicking people when they were down was his job and his alone.

"I am looking at a range of options for welfare reform,” he raged quietly, “And any decisions I make will be made in the context of my spending review. My reforms will ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected from the chancellor’s arbitrary cuts and subjected to mine instead, thank you very much."

As usual, a spokesman for the sick and the disabled was not available for comment, as the lazy bastards apparently can’t even be bothered to appoint a lobbying company to handle their PR, the amateurs.

However, the tabloid press promised faithfully that they would spare no effort to find plenty of typical bloody ESA fiddlers over the coming week.

Duncan Smith To Replace Welfare System With Beatings

Still in his dressing gown, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith called an urgent press conference at 7 o’clock this morning to explain the idea that was fixed in his head when he woke up.

“Listen, because this is completely brilliant,” he exclaimed to yawning journalists. “There’s all this money we pay to people who don’t do anything. And I woke up thinking, ‘Why don’t we just stop doing it?’ There you are. Brilliant.”

After eventually shushing the cheering Daily Mail reporter, astonished correspondents asked the minister what he proposed in place of benefits.

That's the way to do it

“What? Oh, I don’t know,” replied Mr Duncan Smith. “I had the answer when I woke up – but, wouldn’t you know it, I’m damned if I can think of it it now. It might have been a special place where they have to go to be beaten with a stick by a policeman. Or was it allowing anyone with a job to clout them with whatever comes to hand? I’m sure beatings were in there somewhere.”

When asked if he was seriously proposing clubbing the disabled as they starved to death in the gutter, Mr Duncan Smith frowned and mused, “Hmm, that Clegg fellow might draw the line at that.”

“Perhaps we can defer the cripple-beating until after they’ve starved,” he conceded, before going back to bed to work out the details.

British Forces in Afghanistan Begin Construction Of Jobchester

The first council tent was ceremonially erected in Helmand province at dawn this morning by Royal Engineers, formalising the foundation of Iain Duncan Smith’s visionary city of Jobchester – a wonderful place where Britain’s unemployeds can all live happily ever after.

“Just imagine a place where every job is a vacancy,” smiled the Work and Pensions Secretary at lunchtime. “Well, now it exists. The army has kick-started the process by putting up fifty well-appointed council tents, ready for the first tranche of jobless construction workers to ship out and start expanding this city of dreams. All the building materials have been provided for millions of eco-homes – you’re literally tripping over dirt and goatshit out there. And I’m confident that Jobchester will have the best neighbourhood watch scheme in the world.”

“Once the pioneering shipment has knocked together a pub, a branch of Iceland and a couple of bookies, I have no doubt that the entire workshy population of Great Britain will be queueing up to swap their manky flats for the limitless potential of a plot of Afghan soil,” enthused Mr Duncan Smith. “Mainly because we’ll be adding a clause to that effect to the back of the chit they have to sign at the Jobcentre to get their benefits.”

Local Afghan warlords say they are already eager to employ Britain’s famous orange slappers in their harems, and can guarantee plenty of jobs for workers to tend and gather what promises to be a bumper poppy harvest.

Mr Duncan Smith added that Jobchester would also abound in fencing and other security-related opportunities, along with water management and goat husbandry.

“With Afghan wages among the lowest in the world, Jobchester can comfortably undercut India to become the call-centre capital of the world,” he added. “As an added bonus, irate British customers will finally have a British voice to argue with.”

“Although when they hear a Glaswegian recently relocated from Easterbrook on the other end of the line, they may find themselves none the wiser,” he conceded.

Iain Duncan Smith Beheaded After Failing To Deliver On Death Promise For Unemployed

In an attempt to forestall damning headlines in tomorrow’s press after failing to act on an apparent promise to kill the long-term sick, Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s head has been placed on a platter and couriered on a swift tour of the editorial offices of the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Sun, the Daily Star, the Daily Telegraph and the Times.

Media commentators were left slavering with delight after Mr Duncan Smith issued a statement about Incapacity Benefit, claiming: “If you have been on this benefit for more than two years, you are likely to die on it.” Their bloodlust rose further when he appeared on the BBC and quoted the sign above the gates to the Auschwitz concentration camp, saying: “Work actually makes you free.”

However, the hungry howls of right-wing expectation turned to yelps of rage when he stood up in the House of Commons and lamely announced nothing more punitive than the same sticks for the beating of the unemployed that had already been introduced by Labour.

“I had a fucking erection the size of Nelson’s column when I heard the quiet man of Tory politics whispering veiled death threats and making what I took to be pretty clear references to gas chambers and ovens,” snarled a furious Paul Dacre, angrily pacing the roof of the Daily Mail headquarters where he bays at the full moon. “Now all he’s come up with is even more fucking CV-writing courses, the useless baldy cunt.”

“I hope Cameron at least had the decency to make that wet fart Clegg take the axe to Duncan Smith’s yellow neck,” he added. “If this is the way it’s going to be, let me just say our support for the coalition isn’t fucking written in stone. I know this much - Nick Griffin wouldn’t have let the dossers lounge around some wanky office suite, swilling free fucking taxpayer’s coffee on tap.”

Over at the Express offices, proprietor Richard Desmond was unavailable for comment as he was busy knocking enough shit out of his staff to fill tomorrow’s front page and an in-depth feature about an imaginary family of seventy chuckling dole cheats swanning around Cheshire in a gold-plated Zeppelin.