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(note to Murdoch hacks, The Daily Mail and Tories – don’t get too excited – this is a joke)
A Modest Proposal
For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Britain From Being a Burden to Their Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to The Public
Unemployment benefits, food, housing, education, health – all of these things are under the CONTROL of countless GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS where myriads of CIVIL SERVANTS and GOVERNMENT MINISTERS sit in rooms endlessly discussing UNIMPORTANT thing such as schools, hospitals and badgers.
The government is WASTING millions of taxpayers’ money with a myriad of schemes designed to HELP unemployed families waste money on luxuries such as FOOD, shelter and kids’ clothes!
The government has proposed giving food vouchers to the unemployed and beds in shelters to unemployed families ON TOP OF the money they don’t get for stacking shelves in Tescos or flipping burgers in Burger King on workfare schemes.
This criminal WASTE of money HAS TO STOP!
We need to STREAMLINE this MINDLESS bureaucracy by ABOLISHING GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS such as Heath, Education and Work and Pensions completely – and hand over the keeping of the millions of unemployed who REFUSE to get a non-existent job – to firms like TESCO.
We need to CUT OUT the middle man and allow TESCO to have access to a round-the-clock pool of labour by housing unemployed families in their voluminous underground car parks and store rooms where they can do something useful to society by stacking shelves.
FOOD VOUCHERS which can only be spent in TESCO STORES should be provided by TESCO in place of all state benefits as well as EDUCATION VOUCHERS and HEALTH VOUCHERS which can only be used in TESCO schools and hospitals.
Government subsidies should be provided to build an EXTENSIVE CHAIN of out-of-town centres where MILLIONS of the nation’s unemployed can live, work and eat without ever having to see the light of day.
We could call them TESCO MEGASTORES.
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Note: With apologies to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), author and satirist, famous for Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and his most famous satirical piece – ‘A Modest Proposal’ (1729):
A Modest Proposal By Jonathan Swift
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For more information on Workfare, see here:
Related articles by Tom Pride on this subject:
Public displays of poverty and disability to be banned
Grayling – Benefit sanctions to be dropped. Even though they don’t exist.
A4e Claims Success In Getting Taxpayers Money Off Benefits & Into Its Own Pockets
Did you know the government is subsidising McDonald’s with taxpayers money – your money?
The government has finally done something so outrageous even I can’t be bothered to satirise it
Struggling to find words to describe this government? Here’s a list to help you.
No hidden agenda behind government’s Training & Experience for the Sick, Crippled & Old programme
Tory minister – no shortage of jobs for disabled toddlers
Department of Work & Pensions – Death No Reason Not To Be Classified As ‘Fit For Work’
Government Responds To Banking Crisis By Cutting Benefits For Disabled Kids
Government – Light-Touch Regulation Of The Disabled To Blame For Economic Crisis
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Please feel free to comment – you don’t need to register and I’m extremely minimal with the moderating – so please go ahead.
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Pride's Purge 
I know you said at the beginning of your blog that your proposals were a joke but I am worried that the Tories (not noted for their sense of irony, they once elected IDS as leader after all) will adopt the policies you have outlined
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you’re very good at what you do. Thanks for the link to the Swift piece, of which i was formerly unaware but which almost made me want2 cry, at the ‘other expedients’ paragraph especially… thanks for the link to the workfare site, of which i was formerly unaware but which almost made me want2 cry, at the part where almost all my local charity shops were outed as, well, overseers… you get the picture. Almost wanting to cry is actually a preferable state to be in after the blissful, blameful ignorance a lot of us wallow unhelpfully around in. Asides from your links, you are very droll.
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Thanks a lot. I Know what you mean – if we don’t laugh we would only have to cry.
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I am deeply offended by your “modest proposal”. It clearly doesn’t go far enough. It is simply wrong to hand the unemployed food vouchers that can be spent on ANY product in Tesco’s stores. We hardworking families know that allowing such choice will only lead the feckless poor to squander their vouchers on such luxuries as brown sauce, mustard and kit kats.
Instead I propose Tesco introduce benefit claimant only food aisles where the unemployed can choose from a selection of “Tesco’s own” basic necessities carefully chosen for their nutritional value such as plain rice, pasta, salt and porridge.
Obviously such frivolous luxuries as instant coffee, cakes and biscuits and BBQ sauce etc would be unavailable in such aisles. Its a tough love approach I know but no one ever died of mustard withdrawal or condiment deficiency.
Finally I propose that such goods which are available are provided in striped wrappings with “benefit claimant” stencilled on in large unmistakable letters.
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Reblogged this on Notes From Nowhere.
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I’m sorry but I have to seriously disagree. Mustard withdrawal is a very serious complaint and deficiency of HP sauce in young people has been shown to have very serious consequences in later life.
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Bleeding heart liberal do-gooder. You’ll be demanding mayonnaise and vinegar for the unemployed next. Its a slippery slope and research has shown that mustard is a gateway condiment.
We need to help the unemployed get off condiment dependency for the good of the nation.
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I seriously object to your lumping mustard users along with hard-condiment users such as Worcestershire sauce or Branston Pickle. I myself have been using mustard for many years and I find your suggestion that I would ever even consider using more dangerous substances like piccalilli deeply offensive.
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Why not use Swift’s original Modest Proposal to deal with the offspring of those workshy, reckless breeders who pop out children just to get more benefits and to live the life of Riley in 8 bedroom mansions at the expense of the taxpayer?
Of course, any meat sold under that scheme would have to be certified to be free from TB and other, notifiable diseases especially if the “human beef” was to be exported, but the job of testing could be carried out in the private sector more cheaply than it could be done by the NHS. If the meat were to be exported to some parts of the world, it might not even need to be tested at all, so those markets could be exploited for meat from sink estates in Manchester, Liverpool and such like places of urban squalor.
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Although my research into workhouses has shown me that if this were done it would have no way of actually working I have to say that I think there may be some future in the idea. It is not the idea of huge corporations practically owning people that I am suggesting might work but rather a return to cooperatives. I have known many businesses that have essentially been run by communes and I think that they could be far better for our future than the general business model with which we now live.
At the moment everyone lives alone and a lot of illness and many issues are caused largely by the loneliness that so many people have to endure. In addition to this so many people are being forced to become numbers who are given a pitance to help line the pockets of corporations. On top of this the cost of housing is exorbitant and the huge number of houses that have been built are eating up the countryside while the massive amounts of power that these households are using is taking its toll on the environment.
120 years ago most people were members of cooperatives. We often think of the unions as protecting us from the might of the corporations but it was the unions that led us into accepting the rule of the corporations. I think that we should make a move back towards cooperatives and communal living where we can share the responsibilities that we have and also the bills that we must pay.
Robert Owen failed dismally with his attempts to force people into massive cooperatives and the idea of cooperatives has got mixed up with the disastrous failure of large scale marxist economics but the fact that this is how we used to live once upon a time is proof that it can work. The problem is that when the ideas were revisited it was without benefit of the knowledge we have developed of psychology during the 20th century and the experience we have had of different forms of community during the last few centuries. I maintain that this could be an effective mode of living for many people. Naturally it will not suit everyone but it will work for some and I think that the more options there are the happier people will in general be.
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