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.”

Tata For Now

Unions at Jaguar and Land Rover have welcomed the announcement from Indian corporate giant Tata that there would not be any “significant changes” to the terms of employment of the 16,000 staff on completion of the car-makers’ sale.

The $2.3bn deal was concluded yesterday, leaving Ford with roughly 40% of the money they originally paid for the two companies.

The unions are said to prefer the car plants to be sold to Tata, rather than left to the tender mercies of asset-strippers.

“We are confident that Jaguar and Land Rover are in safe hands with Tata,” they said in a press release. “Although this company and its subsidiaries have a somewhat dubious history at home of bringing in cheaply-paid contract workers at the Jamshedpur steel plant, union-busting at the Telco plant in Pune, laying off nearly half of their steel workers between 1994 and 2006, poisoning the environment in the Gulf of Kutch Marine National Park, dumping mountains of boiler ash in the town of Jugsalai, and signing a deal selling hardware and vehicles to the military junta in Burma, we are nevertheless utterly convinced that they will treat their new British employees favourably - perhaps out of gratitude to the Empire, which kindly made them agents for shipping vast quantities of opium to China in Victorian times.”