Intro.
Ohh. Like the old movies or records, our final tale is the a-side to the previous b-movie. It is the opposite side of the coin; our final tale is a doozy. The tales so far are nothing on this bad boy. I shall tell this myself; my words shall guide you. I do this not because I want to misguide you, though it may be! I am doing it this way because I cannot stand the subject in question. In the annals of shitary, this one takes the top prize. Sure, there are worse, but this one is a particular gripe. He hurt a friend, a human friend, and I cannot stand the fucker for that.
We have Colin, Jonathan, Dotty, Anon, and let’s call our next actor Saintly Steve, on the stage. Who will join them? Our final tale awaits.
We go back a decade or so, travelling back on the train of time. Our political shitstain was lumbering around on the backbenches like the dingleberry he was. Bald, a little hairy, smelly, and fucking useless. His political rise had happened some years before. His colleagues then realised, along with the electorate, what a waste of atoms he was and ditched him. He bobbled about like a buoy in a particularly shitty sea, dipping up and down collecting shite and delivering nothing. The world would have been better if he sank below the sealine and disappeared forever. However, obviously, he did not.
His party won the election with its new, electable leader, and he was again thrust into the public eye. The turd that refuses to flush. The black mould that you can’t paint over. The bloodstain that keeps reappearing; Poe’s tell-tale heart, boom-boom. All those would have been infinitely more desirable; alas, that was not how it unfurled. He sat on the benches with the green leather gripping his sweaty arse as the party leader approached, “Brian, I have a job for you,” he said. Brian sat and scratched his backside before sniffing his finger; meaty and musty, he thought. “Yeah? What is it?” he asked with all the interest of a young child being asked what they had done that day at school.
For all Brian’s faults, and they were many, his worse was that he was useless. Now, being useless in itself is not an issue. He could have been the DIY fanatic who fits a kitchen that would have suited the crooked man. He could have been that person on the Sunday league team who was hopeless. The last person to be picked during PE in school, he was the fucker that nobody wanted on their side. “I want you to run the DWP,” the leader said. Brian’s lips raised at either end, and his browny yellow nicotine-stained tooth entered our tale. The tooth’s colour stood out like the one dead match in a complete box or the upturned – lucky – ciggy in his packet. No, Brian’s problem was that he cared in his own way. He was useless, but, and the but is essential, he had never, until now, been in a position of power. It would not have mattered if it had been wonky DIY, shit sportsmanship, or numerous other things. Putting him in control of the DWP; giving him the power over the most vulnerable in the country was an explosion of shit that would cover many.
“We need to get these scroungers of the system,” the leader said. The party leader was a fuckwit himself, but he had the good sense to get others to do the dirty work. Like a Mafia don – without the charm, smarts, or intelligence – he would delegate the worst tasks to the party’s underlings. He would shield himself from the worse of the shit that hits fans, and others got the blame. It was a sly cunning and, in a way, bright, though not admirable. He knew the reforms would lead to problems; he knew that the blame, in time, would have to land somewhere. He was smart enough to keep out of the way. The buck stops here? Not for him. I’d call him a weasel, but that feels unfair on the furry mammals. This tale is about Brian, so I shall spend no more time on him. His time will come.
Brian set about his task with relish. He reformed the system; pushed and pulled people to do his bidding. He spent billions on a new computer setup. Designed the system to allow harsher sanctions and ensure everyone was assessed and given what the department deemed they deserved. The project overran; the budget expanded; the staff came and went like a double ended dildo in a lesbian porn flick. As we have discussed, the problem was that Brian was as useless as said dildo in a nunnery. Well, in the stereotypical nunnery anyway; the tales I could tell! The disabled were persecuted; they were found fit when doctors and health professionals knew they could not work. The needy were hassled about finding work; badgered all the time. Week by week, their online activity was checked; they had to look for work as a full-time job. The sick were scheduled for reassessments regularly, some as often as six months apart. Claim two things, as many sickness social security claimants do, then that’ll be two assessments. People were driven to the edge and then pushed over. Terminal cancer patients were told they were fit to work. The depressed hassled until they lost any will to live. No legs and arms? You can be a doorstop! Mental illness? Just pull yourself together, old chap(chappess), get over it! It is only a wheelchair; you can crawl up those stairs! Have some can-do spirit. That is the problem with you skivers; you are always looking for an excuse to take it easy!
Thousands, tens of thousands, some estimate that it was the hundreds of thousands that perished. Did Brian care? Nope. He cared not one jot. He had a job to do, and by God, he would do it! (Red herring?) He was not a bad person; he did care; he was just hopeless at any given task. He wanted his reforms to work; he wanted to help the most vulnerable. He just saw everyone as less than him; he saw other human beings below him. He had no reason to think that; he was the skidmark on the edge of the toilet bowl of life, so think that he did.
So we come to the tail end of our tale. We come to the epilogue. What happened to Brian? Was he hung, drawn, and quartered outside of parliament? Did his death total of between ten and a hundred and fifty thousand finally get him stood before a court? Did the twelve jury members finally get justice on this piece of squidgy brown discharge? No, he got away scot-free! But, we know there is more to death and life than that. Brian stood and waited to be weighed after his death. A devout Christian, he stood before the weight master and expected to be handed the keys to the pearly gates. The weight master smiled a grin almost as large as Brian’s had been after being offered the job of reforming the DWP. He looked, and his black eyes showed no emotion as he pointed downwards. The irony is that the weight master was just doing his job and doing it to the best of his ability. He had compassion; he cared about the souls. Brian did the job to the best of his ability, but he should never have been in the position to fuck it up.
The floor cracked below Brian’s feet, and he could feel the heat before seeing it. The weight master lived in the realm between worlds and made the choice. He decided if you go up or down, and for Brian, he was going down. Destined to live in my company for the rest of time; I can assure you a pleasure that will be all mine. “You were involved in the deaths of thousands,” the weight master said. “You turned a blind eye because you thought it was right.”
“I, I…” Brian stuttered, “was only doing my job,” he finished. The weight master chuckled. “You are not the first to claim that,” he said. “In life, you have to be the best you can be. You have to live, but also you knew what you were doing would have dire consequences, and yet you still continued.” Brian thought for a moment, it was possibly the most work his brain had done in forty years. He wanted to find an excuse; he needed to find a reason for what he had done. “The devil made me do it.”
The weight master’s smile vanished, and he looked down upon Brian. “Then you can go and speak to the Devil and ask him why.” The floor below Brian fell away, and he dropped from view. He would not be falling for long; the trip to Hell is shorter than you’d expect. The time you spend there is infinitely longer.
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