A Modest Counter-Proposal

As many of you will already tragically be aware, on Tuesday up-and-coming arsepimple Alec Shelbrooke used his privileged position as a Tory MP and his rather more commonplace position as a cunt to launch what may be the most unpleasant Conservative attack yet on vulnerable people. Specifically, Mr. Shelbrooke would like to see all benefits provided on prepaid "welfare cashcards" the use of which would then be limited to "essential" items such as food, clothing and travel, with "non-essential, desirable or damaging items" (NEDDs - geddit?) prohibited. Dirty benefit scroungers would then be unable to levy their largesse on such gaudy baubles as alcohol, cigarrettes and Sky TV, the latter of which I agree is both unnecessary and damaging. Shelbrooke also argues that this would prevent benefit claimants spending their money in betting shops, though anyone who thinks only allowing people to purchase food will prevent gambling has clearly never bought a kebab.

It almost goes without saying that this idea is not only unfair but unworkable, the only sure-fire result being the creation of a black market where welfare cards are loaned out to people with ready cash in exchange for a commission. Leaving aside, for a moment, the fact that the plan is both cruel and fuckwitted, I'd like to make a counter-proposal: the Tory MP's Cashcard.

To take one example, Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke received £65,738 in wages this year, plus a further £38,666 in expenses for a total of £104,404 of taxpayer's money, around four times what the average British family earns. Currently this sum is paid directly into Shelbrooke's bank account where it can be spent on all manner of unnecessary things like illegal fox hunts and secret donations to UKIP. I propose that, instead, Tory MPs should only be able to spend their money on the following undesirable and hopefully very damaging items:

• Special brew
• Battered saveloys
• 10-decks of Sovereign
• Dangerous dogs (untrained)
• McDonalds
• The wrong gang colours for the local area (clothing)
• Piggy-backs from skinheads (transport)
• Payday loans
• White lightning
• The Guardian
• Heroin

Limiting Tory spending to the above items will not only help increase the stigma and indignity associated with being a Tory MP, but it will also help reduce the cost to the taxpayer as more and more Conservatives take their rightful place as horribly bloated corpses, overfed on saveloys and McDonalds, reeking of cheap booze and slightly more expensive heroin. As an added bonus to the treasury, footage of Britain's small army of overpriviledged bellends vomiting themselves to death as skinheads kick the remains of a battered saveloy out of their uselessly chubby fingers can be made into a primetime BBC 2 reality TV show, and serialised around the world. The money raised could then be used to pay for the NHS and/or a bouncy castle. Possibly a bouncy NHS.