I suppose I am past the point in life where, as Gore Vidal put it, litigation takes the place of sex. I have consulted lawyers at least 12 times so far this year, which easily exceeds the amount of times I have engaged in mutual sexual activity. Even on my birthday I rang a lawyer and did not have sex. As it happens sex was on offer, as a special treat — along with the cake with its 50 bloody candles, each one lit with malevolent glee by my wife — but I had somehow wrenched my knee out of joint and any form of movement caused excruciating pain and a sinister, strangely synthetic popping noise from within the wrecked joint. You cannot have sex under those conditions; you cannot have sex while hopping. Or at least you can, but only with a kangaroo. My suspicion is that it will be the same sort of story on Christmas Eve — which is the other time of the year I am allowed to have sex, along with Walpurgisnacht, provided I dress up. And Beltane, if it’s not too warm.
I realised this week that I am also past the point in life where I appreciate autumn. While once upon a time, with my silly head full of Ray Bradbury novels and Keatsian melancholy, I would be positively excited by the passing of summer and the new chill in the air and the whiff of decay, these days I lock myself inside with several copious beakerfuls of the warm south, shipped in by the crate from Oddbins. The whiff of decay is still around, though, no matter how tightly I bolt the windows. I am also infuriated by that autumn thing which I used to so enjoy, the copper-brown mounds of fallen leaves. There comes a point in your life where you start to think autumn leaves are untidy and that someone should clear them up, and it won’t be me, with my knee being how it is. I want the unemployed to clear them up, gratis. I am already paying for them through my taxes but if they clear the garden and the lane every day for the next two months, I will also give them a free meat pie, as a goodwill gesture.
Luckily my wishes accord with current government policy, although without the pies. This is the brainchild of that brilliant, underrated former leader of the Conservative party Iain Duncan Smith — to set the unemployed to work doing menial tasks which were once done almost exclusively by muggers, burglars, assorted minor miscreants whom we cannot afford to put in jail but to whom we wish to make clear that they have done wrong in some manner. Painting the walls of the community centre, picking up litter and, with any luck, clearing my surroundings of fallen oak leaves.
It is important that we let the unemployed know that they have done wrong, too, by being fat and idle and largely northern. Mr Duncan Smith, once he had been forced by unkind circumstances to cease leading his party, supposedly experienced an epiphany and devoted himself to the task of understanding social issues. At first we were all worried that he might go the same way as Portillo and suddenly adopt a namby-pamby approach, having been hoodwinked by the left with their interminable commitment to facts, figures and explanations for all manner of social ishoos. But it is clear that this is not the case at all. He has shown empathy where it is required, by shaking his head in a concerned manner and looking downcast when confronted with poor people, but his politics remain vigorous.
This is presumptuous of me, but I have a modest proposal as to how Mr Duncan Smith’s plan could be improved further: why limit the unpaid labour simply to those who actually claim unemployment benefit — why not involve their children in the scheme, too? This would inculcate in them a proper sense of shame, an understanding that their dreadful lives are the consequence of having dreadful parents — and, with any luck it will instil in them a fervour never, ever, to be unemployed themselves. Of course it would be wrong to have the children doing heavy labour, but there are certain simple, painless tasks that they could be expected to perform. For example, there is a lamp in my study which I cannot use because the wooden stem which holds the bulb is cracked and prone to collapse. A small child, perhaps an eight-year-old, could be trained — in a matter of weeks, even if it came from Newcastle-upon-Tyne — to hold the bulb aloft while I go about my work, while its useless father swept up the leaves in the garden. In the summer, Dad could cut the grass while his kids served cocktails on the patio. It is all about the dignity of labour, I reckon. After all, that’s why I work — not for the money, but for the sheer life-affirming pleasure of a good day’s honest toil.
Labour’s Douglas Alexander has complained that the main reason people are out of work is that there are not enough jobs around. This is surely absurd. There is always work to do. His government’s answer was to import thousands upon thousands of Poles to do low-skilled menial work at a much cheaper wage rate than the indigenous British lumpenproles were prepared to entertain. As a consequence we had cut-price nannies, street cleaners, porters and toilet attendants. That’s fine, as far as it goes — but we still had to pay the unemployment benefits for those British people who were put out of a job as a consequence. Iain Duncan Smith’s idea squares the circle: pay even less for British workers to do the same sorts of things and make them feel bad about it at the same time.
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