We're Here to Help

It is of course axiomatic that the unemployed have no-one to blame but themselves. Still, even the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith's Department for Workfare and Privation can draw a distinction between the cold, calculating scroungers who have caused the City of London such grief, and those who are merely too insane to upskill their salesmanship. The Conservative manifesto provided for sanctions in cases who refuse medical treatment that might aid their shelf-stacking abilities; and by coincidence Lambeth council now propose to open a mental health emporium in the same building that houses the local idleness police. The DWP had announced that the Streatham scrounger correction office would be the first to have its own emotional adjustment squads, but later announced that the announcement was a mistake. Reassuringly enough, we have the DWP's word for it that people will not be sanctioned for refusing to Mindfulness™ their way into hard-working familydom; although the squalid Minister for Cripple-Kicking, Mark Harper, has suggested that mental health conditions could be included among the pretexts. Most likely he believes the Home Office should simply consult the loonies' medical records and drive PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER vans past their lodgings twice an hour.