Hell

Hell

Andy Hamilton has created one of the funniest series broadcast in recent times, Old Harry's Game it's called. In it he plays a reasonably relaxed Satan. One blessed with a sarcastic sense of humour. Hamilton's hell tries to match punishment (albeit the eternal torment end of the punishment spectrum) with the crime. So the popes, anti-abortion and anti-family planning as they are, live in a state of permanent eight months pregnancy.

SATAN: There's the pope-pit. See? Eight months pregnant, the lot of 'em.

NEWBOY: (Shocked) the popes are down here.

SATAN: (Equally shocked to be asked the question) naturally.

Now, the HMRC, armed with all sorts of software, computing power, and resources devoted to collecting taxes, somehow make Joe Public, armed with no time and no resources, responsible for ensuring his tax is paid to the penny. They have issued notice of proceedings to guys who, when they've asked “but, how much?” get the answer 50p. The DWP, and now the student loans are the same. They demand we supply information we can't easily find, when that information is what their brothers in laziness and ineptitude have issued in the first place.

You have to excuse me. I am a bit dim. This is my second language. This whole thing, apparently, isn't as bizarre as it seems to me as an outsider. Maybe it's one of those English peculiarities. Maybe it's how things are actually meant to be. Maybe, really, it's absolute rubbish and should not be tolerated.

So in my version of hell, the civil servants who do not serve will end up in the pit of sorting things out for yourself. After a working life of treating the public as an unpaid serf, and of depending on those that pay their wages to do their jobs for them because they can't be bothered, here they have to get their own tea, get their own files from the cabinets, and even go to a special supermarket where they have to stock their own shelves and there's only self-service checkouts and no-one carrying your shopping to your car.

In their pit are specially trained demons. American demons. Demanding American demons from New York, who will only accept the absolute tippest toppest most Rolls Royce of A1 customer service. If they get anything one degree less than that gold standard, then they do the usual things:

Nipple-snapping lobsters.

Hornets up the bottom.

Genital-eating alligators.

That sort of thing.

Austerity? What austerity?

To the MPs and all their apologists (who claim that without the pay increase people will be put off standing for Parliament): blah blah blah (that's you lot) blah austerity, cuts, belt tightening until 2018, blah blah (that's you – rubbish, aren't you, to tell the truth) payrise? 40%, £90,000 / year minimum plus benefits plus that as a pension. Cha-ching! No, you 'aint worth that. Not worth a rub.