Iain Duncan Smith “Poor people should beg for their benefits like barking seals”

Poor people will be required to sit on podiums, dive through hoops and perform other assorted tricks in order to receive benefit cheques which they will then catch in their mouths, according to Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Mr Duncan Smith, it is believed, ‘had an epiphany’ after taking himself on a publicly funded trip to Sea World, Orlando. “I had some tough thinking to do on how to stop paying tax credits, so I thought the best thing to do would be to make use of my expense account and go to the various theme parks in Orlando, go on all the rides and wait for inspiration. I was most impressed by the live seal show. These seals didn’t have a something for nothing culture and they knew that they should entertain people in order to get their ‘benefit’. Though not required to they would take it upon themselves to clap their flippers together and make funny noises. It’s a perfect system and that’s why we’re going to be asking benefit claimants over here to do exactly the same.”

Independent columnist and arch nemesis of Mr Duncan Smith, Owen Jones has been critical of the new proposed legislation. “The public” he told us “are becoming sick and tired of a benefit system based on Duncan Smith’s animal observations. Already we’ve had suggestions that housing benefit be stopped as poor people can simply spin their own web like spiders. Similarly his idea, after attending Crufts, that poor people should smarten themselves up and enter themselves for competitions is simply not evidence based.”

Mr Duncan Smith however has vowed that he will be pressing ahead with proposed changes. “There’s always a chance that this may not work as well as hoped. If that’s the case I’m just going to have to take more publicly funded trips to theme parks.”