And Dig Till You Gently Perspire

Disability activists, trade unionists, healthcare professionals and other expendables have been protesting the latest wheeze by the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith's Department of Workfare and Privation. Since "there is evidence linking employment with good health", it follows that bad health among the unemployed is all their own fault, especially if it's bad mental health which can be conquered with nothing more than a bit of self-discipline and positive thinking. Accordingly, the Government has decided to place agents of the Idleness Police in doctors' surgeries in order to chivvy the mentally ill into pulling themselves together. The scheme is being piloted in Islington, presumably to reward the local proles for electing Corbyn to Parliament; and the encouragement personnel are being provided by Remploy, whose record of providing practical help to the vulnerable evidently measures down to the DWP's exacting standards. The idea of turning the NHS into a tentacle of the Idleness Police is so transparently brilliant that no evaluation of the pilot is deemed necessary before the scheme is allowed to metastasize across the nation; and any refusal to advantagise oneself of the pilot scheme will have no impact on social security benefits until such time as the DWP decides that lack of scrounger uptake is the reason for any little disappointments in the results.