The Shit and the Plebian: The Scariest Hallowe'en Tale Ever Told

It is with the greatest trepidation that I commit these words to tremulous and spidery life; with an almost insupportable dread, in fact.  Hesitantly, and with many a shudder, however, I must confront the terror of the past few days if I am to be granted the merest fancy of surcease of the fear that wracks my once-sturdy constitution.  Dear Lord!  Did I really write "past few days"?  Such is the ordeal imprinted upon my soul, it seems inconceivable that it has been of such inconsequential duration - rather it seems that my suffering had its nascency in a primordial, Cthonic era, and has grown over millenia into its current, all-pervading maturation...Yeah; I've got the wind up something rotten, is what I'm saying - frankly, I'm shit-scared.
And who wouldn't be?  Hallowe'en is almost upon us, after all: what better time could there be for darkness to enter the spirit, for awful chimerae to prowl and roar throughout the caverns of the soul?  Small wonder that I'm driven to extreme, intense, introspection.  When a life-long liberal type - one who has given over his heart to any number of woolly-minded, cuddly notions - finds himself agreeing with a senior figure in a Conservative government, it's a bit of a shock; when he finds himself thinking that - in all honesty - the cunt isn't going far enough, it's bound to make him hit the Gothic prose pretty fucking hard.
The thing is, however, I'm having a hard time faulting the logic of Ian Duncan Smith: there; I said it.
His notion to "cap" various family benefits so as to accommodate only the two oldest children has been pretty universally damned by anybody and everybody who leans further leftwards than Elizaveth Bathory, but I can sort of see his point.
Clearly, IDS' spot of ideologically-based kite-flying was to some extent a Conference-season come-on to the Tory faithful - a seductive gambit that combined economic "common sense" with a scapegoating of the poorest members of society that your average Telegraph-rustling Middle Englander wouldn't resist even if they could, and as such represents Politics at its very worst, but for all that, there's a germ of wisdom amongst the scrounger-baiting. It's just a pity he couldn't have found a way of deterring the better-off from filling the fee-paying Academies of tomorrow to capacity - perhaps by levying a prohibitive tax on the purchase price of those hideous People Carriers?
Prominent amongst the chorus of well-meant disapproval for this proposed money-saver has been the refrain that it "infringes upon the Human Rights" of those in lower income groups to reproduce: having giving it some thought, I can't go along with this in the slightest, though.  For a start, it isn't - at least not in any literal sense; it's not as though he's suggesting that roaming patrols of Sex-Cops should be turned loose in Council estates to let rip with stern lectures through a megaphone and blasts from an ice-cold water-cannon at the first creak of bedsprings, is it?  No; if people want to churn out mini-mes willy-nilly, they're free so to do - they just won't get any State money for it.  Secondly, I don't see propagation as a Human Right; rather, it's a responsibility (the biggest there is, in fact) and an obligation - anyone seeing it as asserting some kind of inalienable prerogative, is on a wrong'un in no small measure.  I've never spawned myself - and certainly, at this point, I never shall.  Surprisingly, it's because I lack the arrogance to conjure into being a living creature; I just don't have the balls (if you'll pardon the expression) to whip up a nipper and expose them to this unholy shit-pit.  How do people do it?  Christ on codeine; most people wouldn't stick a kitten into a blender, yet each and every day, they casually usher tiny human beings down the chute into an environment that will have much the same effect as the whirling blades of a Cuisinart upon a cat - only it takes years rather than seconds, and costs a shitload of money.  It's essentially a selfish act; the most selfish act, in fact - a flourish of fuck-youism in the face of one's own mortality, and one whose consequences are met wholly by a blameless zygote.
Nevertheless, the human race must go on - apparently.  That being the case, it would be wrong - not to say unrealistic - to forbid breeding entirely.  Is it wrong, however, to disincentivise it?  I don't think so.
People of all socio-economic levels pump out their protoplasm fairly recklessly; either because they can afford to, or because they don't think about it over-much.  Just because one can do something, does it necessarily follow that they ought to?  Really, what benefit is there in having more than two kids?  Do the proud parents-to-be think that their friends are beset with an insatiable hunger to hear yet a third variation on their anecdotes about a sleepless night that ended with a facefull of sprog-spew?  Are their own lives so empty and devoid of purpose that they can only feel truly alive when they're going through the Mr Men books yet again?  Is it a case of "third time's the charm", and on the latest go-round, the grisly, protracted ordeal of showing a toddler how to put its shoes on or refrain from sticking a sweetie into the DVD player will become a joyous, glorious lark?  Again; I don't see it.  Put simply: we've got enough people in the world as it is; what do you think your DNA has to offer the gene-pool in large quantities?  I can't imagine many couples shuddering in post-coital delight and drowsily reflecting upon how they've just beast-with-two-backed themselves an eventual cure for AIDS, can you?
The other objections to IDS scheme barely merit mention: "what about religious or cultural norms?"  Well; what about them?  While the late Mr Christ may have been right when he said that "In my Father's house are many mansions", but that doesn't alter the fact that down here, affordable homes (both in the form of social housing and in the private sector) are getting rarer than people who weren't diddled by celebrities in the 1970s - there may not be many mansions, but there are a fair few two-bed semis that cost about the same.  
We live in an age of paradoxically shrinking resources and ever-greater consumerism, with everybody wanting (or at least being told pretty convincingly that they want) a lot more from a lot less: why exacerbate it?  The era of the immense, sprawling family should be over; no longer should anybody (whatever their income) feel entitled to found yet another dynasty - even if they can afford it personally, the world can't.
To conclude, I shall borrow freely from the wisdom of another egregious demagogue with a flair for Mail-reading morality:  when addressing the human jetsam that wash up upon his stage, Jeremy Kyle often harangues them with the admonition to "man up, get a job, and put something on the end of it".  "Manning up" is pretty relative, of course, while getting a job is still something of a stumbling-block for many; putting something on the end of it, however, is something that anybody can do - and bloody well should do, at that.
Of course; having partially-agreed with both Ian Duncan Smith and Jeremy Kyle, I see little point in anything other than a quick and painless death: it's to be hoped that the sight of my corpse dangling in the front hall will  provide a suitably Hallowe'eny frisson for trick-or-treating kids - just as long as there's not too many of the little bastards.

Oh, What A Lovely Fraud!

Paschendaele, 1917: Death and Night stand sentinel over the scarred, embattled earth.  Shells burst in screaming fire above the battlefield, illuminating untold horrors: here, a single, severed hand clutching at nothing; a vicious tangle of bloodied barbed wire glitters with black rubies; a horse splayed in mud, sightless eyes bulging and grotesque behind a gas-mask.
Huddled in a trench, sharing cigarettes and the slow torture of ever-present fear, are two men: Sgt Dawson and Pvt White.  For them, the worst of the fighting has yet to come; for now, they must watch, worry, and wait; wait for a bullet, a shell, a bayonet - hopefully any of these will come the way of the cunt who's in the next trench aimlessly blowing long, plaintive notes upon a harmonica without ever getting anywhere near a melody.  The sergeant looks at his comrade: the boy is barely seventeen; frozen and absurd in his youth and an outsized army greatcoat.
"Chin up, lad," he tells him.
"Why?" asks Pvt White, "'Cos it'll all be over by Christmas?"
"It might be, Chalkie," Dawson nods slowly, "some Christmas, anyway - they weren't very specific as to the year, if I remember right..."
White throws his cigarette into a puddle; a pinprick of red light arcing through the night to fizzle and die in filth serving as an allegory for anyone inclined to see it.
"What's it all for though, Sarge?  That's what I want to know."
"We're not supposed to ask, son: King's Regulations - and," his voice drops to a whisper as though he's about to utter something improper "it's in a poem an' all."
Pvt White rubs his tired, reddened eyes with a muddy hand and sighs.
"I s'pose not, Sarge," he replies wearily.  "I just wish that ... I dunno; I just want it all to be for something.  I've seen three blokes I grew up with torn apart by bullets - actually torn apart - and for what? Can't you tell me that anything good is going to come from all this?  Can't you?"  By the end of this, White's voice has risen to a high, desperate screech.  Dawson has heard that tone before; knows it for pure fear and the death of hope.  He smiles a rueful, old campaigner's smile: finally, he thinks, I can do something for the boy.
"I'll tell you what good is going to come from it all, Chalkie," he says, easily.  "Though you'll 'ave to wait a bit, mind."
White looks at his sergeant, eyes wide with yearning.  He - and millions of other young men - need this answer.
"Yes," Dawson muses, "You'll 'ave to wait about an 'undred years, but believe you me, boy - it'll be worth it."
The private can't imagine a hundred years; can't even envision a tomorrow, in fact.  He lost the belief in a world without slime, horror, and carnage the day he lost his best friend.  Something in Sgt Dawson's tone is strangely soothing, however...
"In abaht an 'undred years," Dawson continues, "one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers that our Great Nation has ever had is going to pledge £50m of public money to a commemorative celebration of this war - now what d'you say to that?"
Tragically, a direct hit from a German mortar ended this conversation rather abruptly (while leaving the whining harmonica-player unhurt, nobody will be pleased to learn).  It therefore falls upon me (assuming I have the temerity - which I have) to respond on the terrified infantryman's behalf.
Broadly speaking, Mr Cameron can shove his Flanderspalooza up his arse.  Though by now - after a Royal Wedding, a Jubilee, and the hideously extended Sports Day we've all sat through - it should come as no surprise that the Government are pulling the old "bread and circuses" trick yet again, there really is something about this particular Crusty Cob that seems unusually indigestible.
Even assuming that it's possible to engage the whole population in thought about the Great War without trivialising its squalor and foulness by having Jedward knock out a hi-energy pop cover of "It's A Long Way To Tipperary" or drafting in the cast of The Only Way Is To Be A Self-Serving, Half-Witted Living Monument To Crass Vanity With A Tenuous Grasp On Reality to intone the poems of Rupert Brooke over footage of those iconic white crosses - and that's an assumption I'm pretty reluctant to make - what will be the point of any of it?
The point of it all is depressingly obvious if you give it even half a moment's thought: a colossal, months-long Party Political Broadcast for the Conservative Party paid for buy the taxpayer.  For what was World War One except a Tory war?  Alright; the historical fact is that it was a war that Britain entered into under a Liberal government, but let's not quibble over semantics: the values of WWI were pretty Tory, were they not?  Empire-building, influence and trade in the Balkans, xenophobia, and a callous disregard for the lives of innumerable Tommies - it had it all. And these are the things that we'll be urged to remember by unctuous commentators as we look at Cameron leaning his sculpted-Spam face down to confer a sickly grin upon the skeletal form of any Ypres veteran they can dig up for the Big Day.  Oh, there'll be the usual cant about "bravery and sacrifice" I suppose; it's all very inspiring to talk about that sort of thing - especially if you don't dwell too much on exactly who made the sacrifices, how avoidable they could have been had Edwardian Britain not been so fired-up with bellicose jingoism and capitalist greed, and just who actually benefited most from the countless acres of mutilated flesh and the thousands of tottering, broken figures screaming the rest of their lives away in mental hospitals that were the physical realities of these noble sentiments.
Of all the conflicts to have scarred the globe in recent history, The Great War is easily the most dreadful, pointless, and hideous: there was no ideology about it other than greed; it didn't even have the dubious provenance of being a "religious" war (on which all sorts of people are awfully keen) - yet it is to be marked in 2014 with a festival of flag-waving, hypocrisy, and propaganda, and an almost hypnotic insistence on the British Public's decency and courage as evidenced by the fact that they're happy to march forward unto their doom - be it in the form of German machine-guns, enforced redundancy, or an Atos assessment.
Yeah; it might cost a bit - but if there's one thing we've learned in the past couple of years, you really can't put a price on Britain's taste for their own servility or for what they're told is "prestige".  Does anyone else have a lump in their throat yet?  Don't worry: you will; a chunk of stale bread tasting of death and shit just like the ones those promised "homes fit for heroes" got to chow down on in the 1920s - and their descendants have been fed on ever since.