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Next stop Oblivion!

Scrubbo [“Death’s the best option”], a suburb of Eego, a northern metropolis succeeded with its bid to secure capital investment from Human Reprocessing Ltd [HURL] to build a euthanasia complex, previously backed by the Government.

The arguments for the HURL project were sound. It would bring in 1000’s of jobs. The area would be ‘re-generated.’ Strays and un-chipped animals would be cleared from the streets. Even more surveillance cameras would be installed to make people feel safe. Those who did nothing wrong would have nothing to fear. Like, drugs, alcohol, passive smoking and junk television, debt in moderation was a good thing. Those without ‘sufficient’ debt could rectify their situation in one night at the local gambling room.

Government spokespeople had long been losing credibility by over-using the tried and failed method of being over-assertive when promising action. The more you were in the ‘public eye’, the more chance you had of actually being accountable for your empty rhetoric.

The kind of expressions:

“We shall do all we can to remedy this appalling position. We are taking steps to resolve the matter as we speak.”

At local level, apart from the scrutiny of zealous regional hacks, promises of action could create a smokescreen behind which you could virtually disappear.

A brainwashed, micro-chipped, cowed, dispensable population of ‘useless eaters’ was the long-term goal of those who ran the system. From when time began, those in power walked a very fine line between suppressing their contempt for ‘ordinary’ people, and typically spouting ‘the electorate is very sophisticated’, people are our greatest asset’, and ‘parents know best’ when they believed the complete opposite.

Occasionally the truth came out, but was dismissed as the rantings of ‘lovable buffoons’ like Phil the Greek [Prince Philip], Silvio Berlusconi and Freddie Shepherd [Newcastle Football Club Chairman who once famously said ‘Newcastle women are dogs’].

Because of sustained programming from birth, the majority of the population would admit in their more private moments, that they were at the bottom of a very tall ladder.

Legislation which covered race, gender, religion and age had gone some way to giving useless eaters a few crumbs, but top management at HURL were acutely aware of how to ‘present’ their case in order to avoid doing a Timothy Yeo, Jeffrey Archer, Peter Mandelson, Anthea Turner and– watch this space, Jade Goody.

Yes, the time taken to being found out as a cheat, liar, publicity-obsessed bimbo and racist dummy and rehabilitation was growing shorter by the day. But HURL could take that risk.

Euthanasia was doing the rounds. Every so often a case would arise which split public opinion.

It was a tricky subject. All hardened bigots would love to see the subjects of their hatred got rid of, but secretly worried that as the source of their hatred was themselves, ‘the powers that be’ might come for them first.

No-one had found a way to vote for or promote euthanasia without thinking turkeys don’t vote for Xmas.

At least they hadn’t until HURL emerged.

The trick was this. What are the sure-fire political buzz words in the UK? We have ‘the most powerful man on the planet’ George Bush with his command of no more than 50 words just repeating the same old s*** ad nauseam. Other political leaders were more articulate, but the process was the same.

• Re-generation, Development, Jobs

• Power back to the people, People aren’t stupid

• Hard working families

• Education, The National Health Service, Emergency Services, ‘Our Boys’ [Armed Forces]

HURL’s strategy was to appeal to the basest instinct of the majority of the cowed population, and let the agencies of manipulation do the rest.

Occasionally, rumblings of discontent would surface. Recent coverage of the floods in the UK was patchy at beset, when the flooding occurred in the north. Indeed some towns were almost completely ignored. When it occurred in the richer midlands and south, coverage was almost 24/7.

Another ‘back-burner’, over-population, often became de-railed when obscenely rich upper-class twits who had fathered several children started to pontificate. Yes euthanasia was a tricky one.

Yet to paraphrase Goethe, boldness has genius, power, and magic in it, so HURL, backed by the Government, was going for it.

Scrubbo was as ripe as a chemically swollen plum. High unemployment. Drugs, prostitutes, too much waste land on one of the key routes into Eego. Former ‘left-wing firebrands’ who had sold out were its MP’s. A blossoming gun culture and plenty of non-existent no-go areas. A mixture of good and bad [the one we never talk about] ‘diversity.’ Indeed many of the surrounding Eego suburbs would have voted for nuclear testing if ‘they’ had convinced ‘them’ any radiation effects would be confined to Scrubbo.

And last but not least, the SCrubbo Residents Association [SCAR-the Chair was dyslexic] who wanted some real [the non-John Reid variety] action.

An incendiary mix.

Out of the blue, Scrubbo had ‘won’ its bid for HURL’s euthanasia complex, against all the odds, as Tosson the favourite had already drafted plans to throw ‘bed blockers’ [elderly patients who cost too much to care for in the community, and had been forgotten about on some hospital wards] off the top of its very tall tower.

Many ‘thinking liberals’ had decided state-sponsored euthanasia was a step too far, and so lobbied for the deferral of the scheme. At least until they had made provision for themselves and their families to be declared exempt from the scheme.

Tosson’s representatives were ‘incandescent with rage.’ This was a rare admission by the media, as this phrase had remained dormant since Margaret Thatcher’s drunken slide into occasional obscurity.

However, as HURL’s primary means of ‘dispatching’ was burning, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising after all.

For a few nights, Tosson and Scrubbo dominated the ‘news.’

‘Our people have been betrayed,’ spluttered Gordon Grommet, [Tosson South, Lab.]. “We have a high population of bed blockers, dossers, wasters, drunks, homeless, asylum seekers and Ritalin-dependent wuckers * who were poised like athletes in the starting blocks to offer themselves up for the greater good.”

‘Poppycock,” countered his ‘parliamentary colleague’ Dick Doings [Scrubbo Centre, Lab.]. “Our less-than-fortunate non-voters are far more deserving of a clean end.”

Hacks had been briefed not to press people on the term ‘clean end’ just in case it gave the game away.

In the run-up to HURL’s ‘charm offensive’ several deceased celebrities had been dug up, stuffed and had computer animated voice boxes fitted.

“If only HURL had been around in my day. Instead I had to slum it with a heroin overdose. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.”

Were typical themes uttered by celebrity cadavers. Since the smoking ban had become law in the UK, it had occasionally been announced that 60-a-day gaspers who expired from lung cancer had actually smoked during [most of] their lifetimes. And this had spilled over into being far more explicit on the nature of celebrity death.

But all to no avail.

The plan for 12 super euthanasia centres had hit the buffers. Dr Jekyll, head honcho at HURL was misty-eyed when he denounced the short-sightedness of the government’s new policy.

Jekyll bore more than a passing resemblance to Doings, a point lost on all but the neo-conspiracy theorists, who now had their own TV channel, which required you to have your microchip removed to watch.

No-one knew what had caused the government u-turn. Despite a number of useless Secretaries’s of State for Mayhem, Wasting, Snorting and Dissembling being bribed to get HURL in, the clamour for the removal of this particular section of ‘useless eaters’ had seemed irresistible.

What would remain secret for 50 years under the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ was that the resurrected celebrities had conspired with SCAR to come back and scupper the whole deal. What was transmitted via the voice boxes was drowned out by the real message which went straight to the heart:

“Wake up and re-claim your spiritual reality, leaving this incarnation is vested jointly in only yourselves and God.”

JS, July 2007.

* wuckers is a term I coined many years ago to describe the anti-social phase teenagers pass through [some never come out]. I heard a group of kids practising swearing, using their favourite word. The acoustics of the field turned the obvious word from f*** to ‘wuck.’