Scotland’s Jesus and My Shit Life So Far 2-in-1 Collection. Frankie Boyle

when flogging stuff to the next government. Will any coalition ministers take up the challenge of trying to live on benefits? Well, after 2015 I suspect plenty of Lib Dems will.

      Of course, George Osborne is right and the only way to teach those bankers a lesson is to cut benefits. Just as the only way to fix the NHS is to leave a jar of beetroot outside the Stafford branch of WH Smith. The government says the shake-up in the benefits system is to make people less dependent on state handouts (and presumably a lot more dependent on drugs and alcohol). It wouldn’t surprise me if the Tories’ next big scheme was to create a network of tunnels that connected all the wishing wells across the country together, so all the pennies thrown in to grant children’s wishes could be collected in a central government vault that was then used to purchase MPs’ bed linen.

      I can’t believe that woman who was swindling £42,000 a year in benefits by claiming to have imaginary kids. It’s immoral. Call me old-fashioned but that line should only be used to make it easier to offload new partners you’ve lost interest in. Seriously, if you know someone cheating the benefit system you really must act without delay. A simple bit of blackmail and you could be getting half their claim.

      George Osborne exploited the anger and grief over the deaths of six children to further his case for welfare cuts. Bear in mind that if the welfare state were adequately funded social services might have had a chance to save these children. Mick Philpott and the Chancellor have more in common than you might imagine. They both live in houses with a snooker room paid for by taxpayers; both are hated by the public and if they were left unguarded on B Wing they’d both be stripped to the bone like an aromatic crispy duck at a late-night casino buffet.

      George Osborne has vowed to guide Britain through the looming threat of a double-dip recession. Straight into a triple-dip recession. Of course, a recession means more charities hassling us in the streets. I’d never make out a standing order for starving Africans. Donate the same amount on the same day each month and they’ll just get complacent. Far better to make sporadic visits and dance through their dusty village with a silver-topped cane throwing out coins and sherbet fountains. Or turn up on a random day being wheeled through their huts on a cart so they can suckle nutritional syrup from my giant, translucent prosthetic abdomen with cries of ‘Señor Abeja! Señor Abeja está aquí!’ (‘Mr Bee! Mr Bee is here!’).

      I should add, there’s not a single Third World village where people enjoy students turning up for a gap year. Just send them your airfare, you fucking grief tourists.

      The Chancellor has predicted six more years of pain. It’ll be more painful for some than others. Especially George Osborne. He won’t ever get an injection from a nurse that doesn’t hit a nerve. He’ll never again be able to pass through border control without getting a thorough cavity search. For the rest of his life even something as simple as wandering around a museum is going to be filled with misery, when he returns to the cloakroom to find someone has shat in his coat pocket. Why’s George so insistent that he stick to plan A? It’s like a bomb-disposal expert deciding on day one of his career that he’s only ever going to cut the black wire. I’m not going to question the expertise of a man who was a millionaire by the age of thirty (his age, coincidentally, when his trust fund paid out).

      He’s promised us free childcare and faster broadband – an ideal combination. If you’re at home in a tear-stained nest of job-rejection letters the last thing you need is a toddler walking in on you during a mood-boosting wank. Motorists won a victory when it was announced that the 3p rise in fuel duty has been scrapped. So no doubt people all over the country will be delighted that it’s now going to be slightly less expensive than they first thought to gas themselves this Christmas.

      I love the Budget. It’s great that we’ve set aside a time of year when a multi-millionaire tells us how much we should pay for fags and a pint. Everyone is agreed that Osborne’s Budget was far worse than we could have hoped for. I was hoping he was going to have an uncontrollable nose bleed that led to his death, slipping around on the floor of the House desperately trying to regain his footing like a dying cow, so I’ve got to say it was hugely disappointing. To be fair, the government has created loads more small businesses. Mainly by shrinking large ones.

      All around Britain families always have no idea if the Budget has made them better or worse off, but there’s a simple way of working it out – it’s worse. Last year Osborne got rid of the 50p tax rate for top earners, meaning they’re now only dodging a 45p tax rate. I’m not sure the poor would mind paying extra taxes. The trick would be to have Osborne and Cameron crank out a few Adele numbers, then nick it off them in a text vote.

      Osborne has employed what have been described as ‘stealth’ taxes on the elderly. Why the stealth? Remember these are old people; they have their televisions on so loud you could creep up on them in a Formula 1 car.