Yuck yuck yuck

If any of you have seen ads for a recent horror film called The Human Centipede, where a psychotic doctor kidnaps people and stitches them together, mouth to ass, you'll have a vague understanding of my dream last night, where a selection of men who I don't know in real life, including Stephen Fry, engaged in a bizarre - and totally unsexual - gay orgy thing where each of them had erect penises about 18 inches long and I had to help feed these monstrous apendages into the next guy's bum, until they made a chain of three or four. They were literally bending them into S-shapes to see if it would fit into the next one's lower intestine. More bizarre, this was happening in broad daylight, on a wooden platform constructed up a tree. I mean. I think I should give up hope of ever being normal.

Last night, Kate and I went to see a play at the National called Or You Could Kiss Me, which sent me to sleep after less than ten minutes. Kate woke me up about an hour in and said she wasn't enjoying it and that she was happy to leave. So we did. The joy of £10 tickets. It was, I suppose, a nice idea, but Kate summed it up as 'crappy gay puppets'. Which would have explained my dream, but there was no gay sex and no huge penises. Just two old guys in South Africa trying to cope with death and the breakdown of their relationship. It was a bit worthy. The makers of War Horse don't need to fret too much.

And now it's today and the UK is being rocked with all the details of Chancellor George Osborne's extensive Spending Review, which basically means he is ecstatically slashing the state back, involving the loss of half a million civil service jobs and another half million private sector jobs that will be cut due to decreased contracting. So that's one in sixty people who are currently working who will now be unemployed. Nice going. And housing benefit cut, and disability benefit, and university to be more expensive, and less funding for culture, and and and. And the right says a) the cuts are inevitable and b) this is the fairest way to dole them out and c) that these evil benefit cheats are stealing from all of us.

And I - and all those on the left - say that yes, we need to find money - but not so soon, and not this way. Where is the evidence of the wealthiest taking a hit too? Why are there still tax breaks for huge corporations? Why are non-doms allowed to squirrel their money away in offshore accounts? We say that the cuts are massively unfair on the people who need money the most. And that benefit cheats aren't nearly as big a problem as they're made out to be - just a useful scapegoat to 'justify' demolishing the welfare state and preferencing those who are already wealthy.

Seriously. What kind of society do the Tories think this is going to create? We're already in a recession. Chuck in another million unemployed - jobs which cannot be picked up by the private sector or the Big Society, because - yes - we're in a recession. And chuck in loads more people losing their homes because their housing benefit gets cut. And those who were on disability benefit also losing their payout after a year out of work, who are then added to the pile of those looking for a non-existent job. How is this going to help this country improve?

My question is not rhetorical. HOW do David and George think that their actions are going to ameliorate the lives of the majority of UK citizens? They don't. They admit it's going to be tough. They say that it's going to be unpleasant for everyone, but that we're all in it together. Unadulterated claptrap. [Ooh. Claptrap, making its LLFF debut, if I'm not mistaken.] They are slashing the welfare state, taking things back to the old days of rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer, increasing the income gap, making sure that their own bank balances remain unscathed, and keeping themselves lined up for cushty jobs in the City when they quit government. It's unfair, sad and worrying. (Click the link for a sinister New Statesman article).

And where are the LibDems in all this? Clegg patted Osborne on the back after he made his cuts announcement. I hope everyone else who voted yellow in May felt the bile rise. I certainly did. What a disgrace. I'd rather be Stephen Fry's personal penis feeder than keep schtum on this.