Not equipped for work? Legally she can now make you go job hunting in your pants.
In a surprise move Iain Duncan Smith has announced that Atos, the company whose callousness made Lord Voldemort look like Michael Palin, will be replaced by “some PE teachers.”
A bunch of tossers: sometimes this stuff writes itself
In a gesture of goodwill the government has invited everyone to the House of Commons today for pancakes. However before making their way to Westminster people are being urged to read ministers’ statements about the pancakes in order to determine if they meet the criteria. Continue reading
A squirrel: infinitely more well-qualified than Iain Duncan Smith
A leaked document from the Department of Work and Pensions has shown that the government is preparing to ditch controversial French owned company Atos Healthcare. Now, The Evening Harold can exclusively reveal that from 2015 onwards the administration of fit-for-work tests for those in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance will be carried out by squirrels. Continue reading
At this range a good quality taser will get them up on their feet and dancing
Workers who are sick and off work for more than four weeks will soon get government sanctioned advice, to help them get back to the workplace. The Health and Work Service’s default advice will be ‘get back to work you idle sod or you’ll regret it’, although the new government-funded agency will also offer non-compulsory amateur medical assessments and d.i.y. treatment plans.
Duncan Smith believes a much-needed economic stimulus would be provided if the bedridden could be genitally-tasered and has personally volunteered to pull as many triggers as possible. Continue reading
Having a bit of trouble getting in is no reason not to attend work.
Iain Duncan Smith has stopped all benefits for people living in flooded areas after branding them all scroungers.
“Just because your home and community are underwater that’s no reason not to be making a contribution to society like millions of hard-working tax-payers up and down the country,” the Secretary for Work and Pensions said. “It has come to my attention that those in receipt of benefits and living in the worst hit areas for flooding are responsible for shockingly high rates of workplace and job centre absenteeism and this is unacceptable.” Continue reading
Filed under environment, News
‘Disabled claimants could work from home’ : IDS
Under COBRA emergency powers, Ian Duncan Smith will soon deploy benefit claimants in the battle against rising flood levels. “The Prime Minister asked me to try to sink the unsinkable” the charismatic Work & Pensions Secretary announced today “and my next logical move is to use claimants’ innate spongy-ness for the public’s good”.
Starting next week, long-term benefit claimants will lie down in flooded areas, sop up moisture until they are fully saturated, then go home to dry off overnight. “Research has shown that poor people don’t move very much anyway,” says IDS “nearly 40% of them are inactive, exercising less than 30 minutes a week. This way, they’ll simply exchange a stained sofa for a soggy field contaminated with sewage. In practice they’ll find very little difference”. Continue reading
Maybe it’s harder than it seems: photo shows the result of Duncan Smith being asked to point to his arse and his elbow.
In a speech yesterday Iain Duncan Smith announced that benefit recipients who aren’t in employment will become slaves as part of the Tory party’s “historic mission…to give people from chaotic lives security through hard work. And the security that they will get is knowing that the hard work will never end.” Continue reading
Harold resident Gavin Barker spoke to journalists this morning of his confidence that even though only a single day remains in 2016, he will still manage to achieve his perhaps optimistic set of resolutions from last New Year’s Eve.
In a wildly over-ambitious resolution frenzy as 2015 drew to a close, Mr Barker’s long list of commitments for 2016 included learning Spanish, losing four stone in weight and getting a novel published. Having started none of these with only hours remaining, his wife and friends have expressed scepticism that he will manage to get through the list. ‘I’m starting a bit late, it’s true’, Barker admitted, ‘But with a reasonably aggressive timetable today I should be able to knock all these off.’ Continue reading
Filed under Around Harold, Christmas
Seconds after this photo was taken the door knocker transmogrified into the face of William Beveridge but Duncan Scrooge dismissed his dire warnings as humbug.
In his latest attempt to suck every last joy out of the world Iain Duncan Scrooge has declared that any benefit claimants caught celebrating Christmas will have their money stopped immediately.
“What right have they to be merry? What reason have they to be merry? They’re poor enough,” the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said at a press conference earlier today. “It’s hard working people like myself who got off their arses, lied about their education and then had the sheer common sense to marry an heiress that deserve Christmas. I’ve earned it, they haven’t.”
“I shall work my will,” Duncan Scrooge thundered, flecks of spit gathering in the corners of his mouth. “Every claimant who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, shall be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He shall!”
When it was pointed out to Duncan Scrooge that at this festive season of the year it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and the destitute who suffer greatly at this present time with many thousands in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands in want of common comforts, he appeared to laugh before bringing himself under control. He then gathered his great coat about him and strode out into the snow determinedly muttering something about “decreasing the surplus population”.
As the press conference ended many were heard to remark that they couldn’t see how this bleak tale could ever have a happy ending. However the sunnier souls gathered there did say that they were looking forward immensely to May 2015.
This location is more accessible to the disabled than more than fifty per cent of Atos assessment centres.
Later on today Iain Duncan Smith will announce that he is planning a massive shake-up of the welfare system which will see the Department of Work and Pensions end its controversial partnership with Atos, a private company that managed to make ‘fit for work’ the three most terrifying words in the English language since ‘Jimmy Savile’s here’, and instead work with the Grim Reaper from now on.
“Atos was just too slow,” Duncan Smith explained. “Despite their best efforts with the sick and disabled some are still alive. The Grim Reaper is going to deliver the results I really crave.” Continue reading
Happy birthday Samaritans. Five million calls answered a year and no one ever gets put on hold. Whatever you’re doing we wish you could train the call centre at our bank to do it too.
Is it just us or does Scrooge look a lot like Patrick Stewart?
The newly appointed Secretary of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has reported that his first few days in office have been productive and struck a cautiously optimistic note by declaring them not ‘entirely humbug’.
“Stepping to Iain Duncan’s Smith’s shoes after the Cabinet reshuffle was never going to be easy,” ex-city financier Ebenzer Scrooge told us. “According to this government’s own figures since he took the reins statutory homelessness has risen by 34% and the Samaritans have reported a significant rise in suicides which are now at their highest peak this century. Sterling work but I’m hoping that my new reforms will top that.” Continue reading
Osborne crosses his fingers for luck as he announces his Big Idea.
Chancellor George Osborne today used his speech at the Tory Party conference to announce a new policy in which the long-term unemployed will be herded into camps and rendered what he calls ‘statistically invisible’.
“There are 200,000 long-term unemployed in this country,” he said. “I’m going to end this something for nothing culture, prise them away from their cigarettes, their massive televisions and their X-boxes and send them somewhere where they won’t keep buggering up my figures on economic recovery.” Continue reading
Iain Duncan Smith was almost unrecognisable
Duncan Smith said the idea came to him when he visited the Westminster McDonalds and he noticed that none of the employee of the month winners were still working there.
“There they were posing in a photo with a McDonalds uniform, a silly hat, and a forced smile” said Duncan Smith. “Obviously the humiliation of it all meant they soon got another job and left. We thought the same concept could work with beneficiaries.”
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Filed under Around Harold, Economy, News
With the financial crisis still rumbling along and belts being tightened enough to make Eric Pickles look like an hour-glass, a new crisis is emerging that is going to require another bail-out. Rumours of a lack of deposits has led to the country’s first run on a food bank.
With more and more people being forced to use the banks in order to feed their family, deposits in them are now running at an all time low. The charities are now looking for a bail-out to boost their stocks they hold from the government, or Asda.
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Is this man a danger to the public?
An attempt to prove that Atos assessments are fair and transparent spectacularly backfired today when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, was declared unfit for work.
The assessor ruled that Duncan Smith lives largely in a fantasy world as evidenced by his misuse of statistics to prove points both in the media and the House of Commons and the lies which were present on his CV until a Newsnight exposé forced him to change it. Despite his highest qualifications merely being A’levels, Duncan Smith had claimed to be a graduate of the Universita di Perugia and to have been educated at Dunchurch College of Management. This inflation of his academic record was classified by Atos as being symptomatic of a severe case of an illness commonly known as a touch of the Archers. Continue reading
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