Pump it

Dear Auntie I have just got back into work after a lengthy period of unemployment. I tried really hard and after about 50 interviews succeeded. Ironically, I now work for a private training company trying to get the long term unemployed back into jobs.

I am getting increasingly reactionary about some of the clients. They are comfortable about staying unemployed and make no effort to find work. I was particularly incensed by one man who has fathered seven kids from four women.

I think I have an eco-friendly approach to the problem. I am drawn to the 17th-century Dutch solution to idle youth. I like idea of the 'drowning cell' - a cistern that filled up with water. The miscreants had to work a pump to stop themselves from drowning. They had 15 minutes.

Many of my clients are so arsey that they would probably deliberately drown. However, I was wondering about the cell idea being an excellent alternative way to generate energy.

Wackford

Dear Wackford

Welcome to the Samuel Smiles Appreciation Society. As any well-read anarchist will tell you, the twin pillars of libertarian socialism are self help and mutual aid (followed by a nice pint and a spliff). The mutual bit is important; it means doing things together, for each other. Auntie's attitude has always been that if you're not prepared to help with the washing up you don't get to share in the meal. The cat has proved stubbornly resistant to this fundamental principle of domestic behaviour but everyone else seems to have settled down to it eventually.

It used to be so much simpler for socialists when only the idle rich could afford not to work.

Then we could amuse ourselves with thoughts of the capitalist class being sent to the coalface, or the aristocracy digging beetroot, when work was allocated after the revolution. Auntie has long since reserved swilling out the latrines in the Curry Field at Glastonbury for a particularly nasty teacher she had at primary school.

Now, though, there are idle, undeserving bastards everywhere. Can't even be bothered to turn out on a demo when there's a war on, most of them - though they still think they've got the right to whinge when the bombs start going off in their neighbourhood.

Start issuing the water pumps, Auntie says.