Sterilise the poor and bring back the workhouse!
(unlurks)
Hi all
Does anyone remember the Government Spending Challenge website, which was briefly active last year before drowning in trolls? I accidentally became one of them after posting this, which I wrote for my own amusement as a pastiche of the right-wing posts which were getting more and more ludicrous:

by LH on July 11, 2010 at 10:53AM

This would make the implementation of numerous ideas on this site easier. Men and women (even married couples) were separated in workhouses, thus reducing the number of children produced. This would mean the child benefit bill could be reduced. Work was compulsory, punitively harsh, and continued even into old age for impoverished elderly people. This would make going into a workhouse unattractive compared to getting a job (we all know there are jobs available) - and stop people living on the state from having an endurable life.

Food could be controlled by the workhouse, which would halt the problems associated with permitting poor people access to cash to buy food. Children would come under the direct control of the state and should they fail after such an auspicious upbringing they could simply return to the workhouse.

Teenagers who drop out of education and cannot get jobs could be automatically admitted on their seventeenth birthday and trained to do a job. They could be forced to remain until they find work. Elderly people who cannot afford care homes could be admitted and live out the rest of their lives in semi-prisoners. Asylum seekers could join them.

How the idea could be implemented

It would only be necessary to build one at public expense, the rest could be built by inmate work gangs. To prevent the problem of generations of poor people, release could be conditional on getting sterilised.

... which unfortunately was taken seriously by a number of people, despite my almost immediate admission in the comments underneath that it was a joke in poor taste. The Guardian columnist Laurie Penny even linked to my post then to a screenshot of it, clearly believing it to be a serious suggestion.

The mods then added to the problem by removing my original post, making it impossible for anyone to check my apology or see that my other posts were less than serious.

I have kept copies of my other posts, as I'm vain and things were starting to get a bit silly, so if anyone wants me to I'll put them in the comments to prove that I shouldn't have been taken seriously.
(Edit- I missed out 'how the idea could be implemented'.)
(mesi explains things badly, Wed 25 May 2011, 21:15, 3 replies)

Yes! Post them!
And a link to Laurie Penny's article.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 26 May 2011, 9:14, closed)

Found the Grauniad article at least
Laurie Penny's Article

There's also a truncated screengrab here.

For what it's worth, I thought the OP's post is top notch trolling and much better than many of the examples that have infested this QOTW.

[Oh, and by the way, Leviticus' mention of A Modest Proposal is both worthy and apt. A quality piece].
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Thu 26 May 2011, 12:24, closed)

If you haven't already
you should read Jonathan Swift's classic satirical essay A Modest Proposal.

Read it here: www.art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Read about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

Swift: trolling the 18th Century
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Thu 26 May 2011, 11:24, closed)