A Modest Proposal

For Reducing the Burden Borne by the State

In the Provision of Social Housing

By Johnny Quick

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this Town to see the streets crowded with a great Mob of people benefiting from state subsidised housing as a consequence of their low income. How absurd that their low level of achievement should be so rewarded!

Since it is not agreed by all Parties that this Entitlement shall be cut back, for the sake of strong and stable government I hereby offer a modest proposal to reduce the burden borne by the state, as follows.

Each week a different social housing project is to be put to the torch. When checks have been carried out to ensure that all residents are indeed low-wage earners, the building(s) shall be set on fire at a time when the inhabitants are asleep in their beds.

While there are bound to be a few Escapees, it is reasonable to assume that the ensuing Conflagration will cause most residents to Pass On; and their passing will be the cause of Double Savings to the Public Purse – first, benefit payments will be reduced in line with the reduced number of Tenants whose rent is subsidised; secondly, the medium term will see a Reduction in state-subsidised Funerals, since the buildings selected for incineration will also serve as Pop-Up Crematoria.

A different building will be selected for incineration as part of the national lottery each week. All Social Housing Projects in the UK will be allocated an ID number, and the ID of the chosen residence will correspond to the bonus ball number as revealed every Saturday evening during the national lottery Broadcast.

Selection by lottery will guarantee Diversity; incorporating the selection process within a nationwide Broadcast will position it as part of the Shared National Experience. read more

Shall we speak of the soft mouth, fine hair and eyes that don’t disclose?
Of the veiled wife and two children, known as ‘Abs’ and failing to qualify for TfL,
You for London – who’s having a laugh?
Of men only barbecues, bonding at the gym, and following the Arsenal.
Did you tear up when they won the Cup, or was it Sweet FA?
Hadn’t yet hired the van
Payment fails on the seven tonne truck
perhaps too far down the line by then.
Why mention that earlier life of fraud, fried chicken shops and no outlet for a free spirit,
Supposing that was you? What is there to speak of but your dumb savagery?
Eight minutes of inhumanity that drains your growing up of all significance.

But even butchers’ knives are sharpened on something beyond their ken
Pink ceramic 12 inch, home-made strap to wrap it on your wrist
What whetted yours, I wonder. To be heartless you must have lost heart – how?
The question’s not out of sympathy – too late for you and too early
The city’s wounds still raw, you’ll be lucky to receive a decent burial
The point is there are others who might flip the lid as you did
Unless we show we know them, better than they know themselves.

Jeremy Joseph Christian: the name needs saying with a flourish
As a flourish (without drawing undue attention to itself).

Not so the man who bears the name: all bulk and no substance
Jobless, homeless, restless; and his frequent ranting is normally of no consequence.

I wonder which version (of himself) he sees as himself?

In a courtroom in the state of Oregon earlier today, did he regard the charge of aggravated murder as the perfect gest of a whole-life pattern?

Headline in his head: White Supremacist Fulfils Destiny As Two Men Killed For Coming To The Aid Of Women Perceived As Muslim.

Or is he terribly surprised to see the new pattern forming around him?
(As prison guards centre themselves on the defendant in the dock)
Never been more than random before….

Headline: Chaotic Lifestyle Creates Senseless Violence

Or neither of the above? Because, as I sometimes fear,
This here may be a sadly mistaken attempt
To transpose real life into a register that isn’t quite right for it.

‘Oh God, My God, I am safe’, the Eritrean sings.
A fine voice and such good bones might make a model of him yet,
If strong enough for years of standing at the foot of Europe, waiting.

As the hazy cliffs of Sicily have jettisoned the threat of drowning,
Of ending up bagged up as salt-cured rag and bleached bone,
Now comes the more hazardous process, where process is the hazard
That has him under heel, grinds down good bones,
Sneers and sniffs at the magic dust of brave decisions.

The courage to get in the boat; or to jump ship – Brexit.
Bumptious bumpkins breaking Britain’s delicate brokerage.
Better, they felt, than being un-London and unloved.

Once in a lifetime, no going back. Already the brokers have begun again.
Two years’ talks and that’s just the start. Negotiation,
Negotiation, negotiation – that’s what they stand for, an end in itself.
So here we are, where there’s no there, there. The centre, cynically,
Need not break nor hold – only hold back the Eritreans.

A Soldier Featured In The Battle of the Somme, The First-Ever War Film, Looks Back At The Camera And The Generals Still Standing Behind It 100 Years Later

‘You lookin’ at me?’, his eyes are saying, his

Shoulders draped with a comrade’s shelled-out body.

Dead or alive I brought him with me, I’d miss

Him madly every night, never sleeping if he were left out there like nothing much.

Go back and use the earth as camouflage, you declare

Bury myself as good as, without saying it as such.

Must be the passage of time. Didn’t know you cared enough to sever

Self from interest; still less spare a thought for mine.

Nonetheless I will agree it’s better later than never.

But first do describe to me the rest of your century.

The one I missed because I died for nothing much.

Only tell me, since you started it, how did you end this purgatory?

Gargoyle, homunculus, the Gove’s not like the rest of us.

Shining face, pin-sharp eyes, mind as keen as Coke.

But where does he keep his adult appetites? Perhaps pocketed still in the fogey old suits he adopted at school.

Thirty years on, the unlikely prospect of Big Ideas for Grown-Ups framed by the Honourable Member for Manikin – howzat?

Tory leadership contender Michael Gove MP is out and proud to be an intellectual. Also, he seems to credit voters with a maturity that is denied them by many other public figures.

Speaking as he would be spoken to, thinking as he would wish to be thought of, Gove provides a personification of adulthood which poses a direct challenge to the Great Regression – 50 years of treating each other like children; leaving the individual infantilised and often only half-formed.

Ironic, then, that adulthood is being enacted by an apparently eternal schoolboy, aka the ‘pipsqueak’.

Or, to bring us back to the possibility of growing up, maybe it had to be someone who bypassed the adolescent rites of passage which successive generations since the 1960s have somehow made into a life’s work.