My Swollen Pancreas

I can see I'm not going to make it out of this week without my bile duct exploding through overuse.

Let me explain this to you very simply, George. If you want to make a big song and dance about how everyone is in this together - and calling for workers to unite in the middle of your party blaming unions for everything from teacher-bashing to the fall of Constantinople is, if nothing else, an example of superb comic timing - you might want to think a little bit harder about how reciprocity works.

For example - and this is just a random example, off the top of my shiny, maths-packed head - you might want to consider that offering employers the option to force a deal upon their workforce, and offer that workforce the option to not get a job or sign away their legal rights, might not be the best way to foster a feeling of being in it together.

Naturally, this is a double-whammy for the Conservatives, since once people start refusing to take jobs - at the hardest time to look for jobs since the last time the Tories clustered in the Cabinet Office licking children's blood of the walls - because they don't want to sign away their legal rights, the state can stop paying them benefits.  Benefits are people who want to work! If you don't like it, someone else will take it.  It's not like we're running out of applicants.  Chardonnay, maybe, but not applicants.  Which is fine; Dave from accounts will go out and buy us some more.  Or we'll fire him.

Plenty of people are pointing out right now that keeping one's workforce in constant fear of immediate unexplained dismissal will make them more productive is not only wrong, but gets things exactly backwards. Which is true, but only half the story.  The other half, of course, is that anyone fucking stupid enough to think legal rights are things to force people to sign away so they can feed their children isn't anyone whose shares are going to be worth anything a few years down the road. Tax-exempt or not.

Honest to God, we're six months away from putting VAT on JSA forms.  But hey, there's hope.  Sure, the Liberal Democrats might have signed off on this in principle, but at least they're still haggling over the numbers.  If Nick Clegg reaches Christmas with higher polling numbers than Ming the Merciless, it'll only because his next Youtube video involves a tearful apology and a suicide through self-immolation.