Let Sanity Prevail

Some sports like to market themselves as a contact sport. Not rugby league.

The 13-man code rightly markets itself as a "collision" sport.

Strong, athletic players hurtling into collisions at high speed and in charged atmospheres. Tempers are occasionally going to rise as the intensity and will to win predominant in professional athletes takes hold.

There will be flash points, words will be exchanged and occasionally things will get physical beyond the boundaries of the laws. Fans, for the most part, love it and almost expect it. A good confrontation can lift the volume and passion in a crowd, particularly the next time the players involved come face to face during the game.

So why are the disciplinary bodies in both hemispheres seemingly hell bent on taking it out of the game? Leeds Rhinos player Ryan Bailey recently found himself suspended for having the temerity to throw one back when an opposition player took a swing at him, for example.

Let me clarify, I'm not advocating the cheap shot. The king hit. The sly elbow of Cassidy on Morley, or Boyd on Brohman. I'm talking about two fellas coming face to face and blows being traded before it all gets broken up.

When the sin bin was introduced back in the 1980s, that was one of its main purposes. Send both players off for ten minutes, let them calm down and then get back to the game. Now however it seems that anything that vaguely resembles a bout of fisticuffs is going to lead to you sitting out a game or two on the sidelines.

I get that the sport has a public image it wants to project to broadcasters, sponsors and the parents of potential young players as a safe environment for families to watch and play sport. That makes sense, and like I have said I'm as much in favour of getting rid of thuggery from the game as the next fan.

The occasional punch up though, is and always has been part and parcel of the game. To have players sitting in the stands rather than on the pitch as a result of a bit of handbags is tipping the balance too far, a rush to sanitisation overtaking sanity.

A little light relief

I'm conscious things have been terribly serious in this little corner of the Internet for a while now, so I thought I'd share with you a couple of songs, sketches, jokes old and new, with us around, you won't feel blue, so meet the gang... sorry, sidetracked there for a minute.

Ahem. Anyway, for your delectation may I first present...

Theresa (to the tune of "Delilah" by Tom Jones)

I saw your van every night as it passed by my window

I saw the words telling me to pick up the phone

You want me out of your country

But all I want is for you to just leave me alone

My, my, my Theresa.

Why, why, why Theresa?

Can’t you see, you may be Home Secretary

I’ve applied for asylum so why can’t you just let me be?

I get why you want rid of Hamza and Abu Qatada

You don’t want them here preaching their sermons of hate

I just came to escape persecution

So why do you treat me like an enemy of the state?

My, my, my Theresa.

Why, why, why Theresa?

Hear my song, no wonder feelings are strong

No matter the motive you couldn’t have got it more wrong

I see your men every morning at Kensal Rise station

Demanding the papers of anyone Asian or black

You claim to be guarding your borders

UKIP must have you worried so you’re going on the attack

My, my, my Theresa.

Why, why, why Theresa?

You’re too far right, it’s time to put up a fight

Forgive me Theresa, but you’re clearly not very bright

Forgive me Theresa, but you’re clearly not very bright.

Second on the bill, may I present as a tribute to the late Mel Smith...

I Believe (2013) - if you don't know the tune then the original can be found here

I believe Obama is trying to do his best.
I believe Bruce Willis still looks good in a vest
I believe Zimmerman's as innocent as Fred West
I believe, yes I believe

I believe the royal baby is going to be black
I believe Abu Qatada will be coming back
I believe Piers Morgan isn't a talentless hack
I believe, yes I believe

I believe we love our weather
That Bruce Forsyth will live for ever
And that Walford's a bit dull without...
Heather

I believe that there is beef in Findus pancakes
I believe that Tony Blair admits to his mistakes
I believe that Ed Milliband is better than Dave
And that even the Mexicans love that bloody wave

I believe everyone likes a vuvuzela
I believe that Simon Cowell's a lovely fella
I believe that nobody really knew about Savile
I believe Ed Snowden really hates air travel
And I believe the NHS is safe with Jeremy Hunt
But I can't believe David Cameron's not a ....

And finally, a commercial presentation on behalf of our sponsors...

Do you enjoy taking long walks on warm summer evenings? 
The sound of traditional music?
Ornate embroidery on a large scale?
Want to meet others with similar interests? 
Then why not join us at Orange Dating?

Just listen to what some of our satisfied members had to say...

"After a hard day of marching, I used to be so sad coming home to a microwave meal for one. Through Orange Dating I found someone who I can share my life with. Plus it never hurts to have a second set of prints on a Molotov cocktail." - Ian P, Belfast

"As an obsessive knitter, I was forever turning out more balaclavas than I knew what to do with. Through Orange Dating I've met loads of new friends who are only too happy to model my designs, even on the warmest summer nights." - Mrs P, Belfast
So if you hate the Pope but love the smell of burning diesel, why not come march to a different beat?

Orange Dating - putting the sexy back in sectarianism!

Time to make a decision...

There has been some terrific cricket played, mainly by England, so far in this Ashes series.

The focus however has been less on the quality of the play, and more on the umpiring. In particular, the Decision Review System (DRS) has come in for some criticism.

For those who don't follow the sport, DRS is a system which permits the players to challenge umpiring decisions that they believe might be wrong. Each side gets a maximum of two reviews per innings, the incident being referred to an off-field umpire who can use technology to examine whether the on-field call was correct. If the review goes your way, it doesn't count as one of your two for the innings.

It's not a novel idea, a similar system exists in professional tennis. Both codes of rugby have a process where the on-field referee can ask for incidents to be reviewed to determine the correct decision. The main difference however, and where cricket stands alone, is that these sports use it to establish the correct decision. In cricket, there is a presumption that the on-field decision was correct unless there is overriding evidence to the contrary.

Therein, lies cricket's problem with technology. Other sports have been able to embrace the concept that sometimes their officials need help in getting it right, and that a game where officials get most of their decisions correct is a better one for players, spectators and sponsors alike.

Cricket however remains stuck in a bygone age of gentlemen and players, where the umpire's decision is always correct, even when it isn't. That it operates in this presumption is causing it untold problems, as is the insistence on no more than two unsuccessful referrals per innings.

The Australian first innings in the 3rd Test at Old Trafford provides a perfect example.

Australian batsman Usman Khawaja was given out caught behind. Khawaja asked for a review, believing he'd not hit it. The thermal imaging system known as "Hot Spot" showed no evidence of the ball striking the edge of the bat. There was a noise, but it was some way after the ball had passed the bat. So there was no evidence to suggest that Khawaja had hit the ball.

However, as the original decision was that Khawaja was out, in order for this to be overturned there needed to be clear evidence that he hadn't hit the ball, not clear evidence that he had. Result, the original decision was upheld and he was given out by the off-field umpire.

How was Khawaja meant to prove that he hadn't done something? The only thing that could possibly have saved him would have been if the ball had been shown to hit something else other than his bat. So a clearly incorrect decision was allowed to stand because of the presumption that the on-field umpire was correct.

The knock-on effect could be seen in England's innings. Tim Bresnan was given out caught behind off a ball that brushed the clothing rather than the edge of the bat. Yet Bresnan chose not to review. Was he influenced by the difficulty Khawaja had in trying to prove a negative and thought better of potentially wasting a review?

Later in the Australian innings, England appealed for an lbw decision against Steve Smith. The on-field decision was not out, and was clearly shown to be incorrect by subsequent replays. However, England had already used their two unsuccessful reviews in that innings on other marginal decisions, so they couldn't ask the off-field umpire to review and overturn the on-field decision. 

So what's the solution to the problems that DRS is creating? In my opinion, it isn't to scrap it. It picks up and corrects too many poor decisions to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The solution is two-fold. 

An automatic review of every dismissal. If a batsman is given out on the field, he shouldn't be limited by whether his team-mates have already used all the side's reviews earlier in the innings.

The second part of the solution may not be as palatable to cricket's administrators. It's time to end the automatic presumption that the on-field call was correct. Review each decision on its merits from first principles. Remove the "umpire's call" element on leg before wicket decisions, so that if a ball meets all the criteria in the laws for it to be given out, then it's out whether it is  a marginal call or plumb in front.

In other words, use technology in the way other sports have embraced it. To provide the correct decision. It may be too much for cricket's Corinthian attitudes, but it's the only way the game can take DRS forward with any confidence.

Graham Murray (1955-2013)

"Nice guys finish last."

Or so one school of thought would have us believe anyway. It doesn't have to be so, and if you want proof you could do much worse than look to Graham Murray.

Murray, who passed away in a Brisbane hospital following his second major heart attack in six months, was undoubtedly a nice guy. The tributes that have flowed in from around the rugby league community following his death have spoken only briefly about Murray the coach, focussing instead on Murray the person.

A man who valued honesty - to others, but most importantly to yourself - as the key to success. A man who wasted no time bearing grudges, to the point where he was out enjoying a drink with Bob Millward the day after the Illawarra chairman had sacked him as first grade coach. No bitter recriminations, no mud-slinging through tame journalists in the media. It just wasn't the Murray way.

Don't let the lack of focus on his professional life convince you that he couldn't coach though.

Wherever he went,  Murray left a positive footprint. First coach to win a trophy at Illawarra. World Club Challenge runner-up with the fledgling Hunter Mariners. First Leeds coach to win the Challenge Cup in 21 years. First coach to take the Roosters to a Grand Final in 25 years.

These are just the bare facts and achievements. What isn't as easily measurable is the culture change he left behind, and nowhere was this more obvious than at Headingley.

When Murray arrived at Leeds in 1998, the club was not so much a long time between drinks as dying of dehydration on the steps of the pub. It had spent money it didn't have trying - and failing - to keep up with the all conquering Wigan side of the 1990s and was being rebuilt by the team of Paul Caddick and Gary Hetherington.

The club had not been to a major final since the 1984 John Player Trophy win and hadn't won the Challenge Cup since 1978 or the Championship since 1972.

Not that Murray's impact was immediate. An opening game last second defeat to local rivals Castleford didn't do much to warm the Leeds fans towards the new man. What happened next however, most definitely did.

Murray put together a side, and a forward pack in particular, that took intensity and physicality to a new level. Led by the likes of Darren Fleary, Anthony Farrell, Barrie McDermott, Adrian Morley and Australian veteran Mark Glanville it played the game as hard, fast yet fair as the rules allowed. To the point where the RFL took the unprecedented step of writing to the club and asking it to "play nice" with the other boys.

It wasn't all just biff and barge however. Behind the scrum Murray could call on the mercurial talents of the young Iestyn Harris, the experience and direction of Daryl Powell and the magical handling of Brad Godden. Leeds were as capable of going around you as they were through you.

By the end of the season, Leeds were in the inaugural Super League Grand Final, losing narrowly to Wigan on a filthy night at Old Trafford. 1998 however, was just the appetiser to a very special main course.

The following year, Leeds made it to the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley. They had been here before in 1994 and 95, losing both times to Wigan. On this occasion they were to face the London Broncos, now featuring their tormentor on both those previous occasions in Martin Offiah.

From the fifty minute mark onwards, the result of the game was never really in doubt. Young winger Leroy Rivett scored four tries, Barrie McDermott threw an audacious sidestep in to score one of his own and Leeds ran up a record score in a Challenge Cup Final to claim the trophy for the first time in 21 years.

At the end of the season Murray returned home to Australia, but by the time he did so he had not only righted the ship at Leeds but pointed it squarely on a course that would see it become the dominant side of the last 10 years. His influence continues to be felt in the number of his former players who are coaching at a high level either in first grade or junior development.

A top coach, a great bloke and a sadly missed family member and friend to many. RIP Muzz, proof that being a nice guy doesn't stop you being a winner.

Lies, Damned Lies and Politics

Let's face it, none of us genuinely think that politicians are telling us the whole truth all of the time. While the field of political communications may not be quite the bloodbath portrayed in "The Thick Of It" and "In The Loop", it's fair to assume that some figures receive massages that not even the most blatant of MPs would put on their expenses.

From the Iraq war "45 minutes" to Grant Shapps "a third of government spending is on welfare", there are plenty of examples out there of politicians playing around with numbers for support - in much the same way as a drunk seeks out a lamppost.

This week however has seen a couple of special examples of the art.

The Department of Health briefed the media ahead of the publication of the report into eleven failing NHS Trusts by clinical director Sir Bruce Keogh. This led to the widespread reporting of a figure of 13,000 "excess" deaths in the Trusts investigated. It's fair to assume that this briefing and in particular the 13,000 excess deaths figure went on with Ministerial approval.

And yet, Keogh himself has come out and dismissed the mortality rates used to come up with this 13,000 figure as "meaningless". It simply was not possible, in his opinion, to extrapolate a figure of excess deaths from his statistics with any degree of accuracy.

Now I don't much care for Sir Bruce. His actions in the debate on children's heart surgery in Leeds showed that he's not above using irrelevant statistics to justify his own ideology and opinions.

It seems in this case that he has kicked a stool out from under the Health Secretary's claims.  Keogh's rebuttal however, has received nothing like the same coverage in the media as the distorted statistics that prompted it in the first place.

If you think that's a bit of poor form, just wait. You haven't seen anything yet.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (he of the rent-free living in his father in law's country mansion) stated that 8,000 people who otherwise wouldn't have taken up work had done so as a result of the pilot of the new benefits cap.

This claim was referred to the Office for National Statistics, who decided that there was no "causal link between the benefits cap and people moving into work". In other words, that he made the numbers up. So what does IDS do? Apologise? Keep quiet and hope it goes away? Oh no, not him.

He came out on yesterday's "Today" programme on Radio 4 with probably the most bare-faced pile of codswallop I've heard in a long time. Read on, and prepare for your jaw dropping...

"You cannot absolutely prove those two things are connected – you cannot disprove what I said. I believe this to be right. I believe we are already seeing people going back to work who were not going back to work until this group were capped."

Get a load of that. He made a statement and it was pointed out to him that there was no evidence to back it up. However, he believes what he said to be right. Facts. Schmacts. Who needs evidence based assessment and research when you can just believe stuff and it becomes true? It's the political equivalent of Dorothy putting on her ruby slippers, clicking her heels three times and telling us there are no lies like politicians lies.

So why does it matter? Why are we so bothered? The lies have been exposed now, it's not like anyone is going to keep believing them outside of IDS's own fantasy world, is it?

In a poll conducted by IPSOS-MORI last month on a representative sample of over 1,000 adults, they were quizzed on what they thought they knew about public services, welfare, immigration and a number of other topics.

A couple of alarming results jumped out.

In response to the question "In your opinion, what proportion of girls under the age of 16 get pregnant in Britain every year", the mean response was 15%. That would be more than one in seven. The actual figure of course is much lower, at 0.6%.

To the question "Of every £100 spent on the welfare budget, how much do you think is claimed fraudulently?" the mean response was £24. That would account for a quarter of the welfare budget being given out to people who are not entitled to it. The actual figure? No surprise to realise it is much lower at 0.7%. So for every £100, only 70p is down to fraud.

Across the whole spectrum of the survey, things were shown to be not as "bad" as the public perceived them to be. The percentage of the UK population that were immigrants, black or Asian, Muslim - all much lower than the responses suggested. 

So why do we have such a distorted opinion of what is happening in our own country? I refer the honourable reader to the answer I gave some moments earlier. A government determined to place ideology ahead of evidence and a media either too complicit or casual to care.

Time to put down the Kool-Aid, before it's too late.


If you're interested, the topline results of the IPSOS-MORI survey "Perils of Perception" can be found at http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-mori-rss-kings-perils-of-perception-topline.pdf

The Voice of a Nation

Last night saw the final of the UK version of singing contest "The Voice", won in the end by partially sighted Northern Irish singer Andrea Begley. The final had also featured the quirky voice of Leah McFall, the Salfordian answer to Garth Brooks in Mike Ward and Matt Henry, who can now look forward to a career as a Will.i.am lookalike if nothing else.

The show came in for some grief early in its run, when last year's winner and former holiday camp performer Leanne Mitchell saw her debut album fail to make much of a dent in the charts. Mitchell had been something of a middle-of-the-road ballad singer, the kind you would find doing turns in clubs up and down the country on any given Saturday night.

The same format worked this year for Begley, who looked at her most uncomfortable when asked to perform an up tempo duet with her coach Danny O'Donoghue and his band The Script. Give her anything slow and emotional though and she was note perfect, even managing to make an Evanescence song sound like something you would hear being played in the background of a Werthers Originals advert.

For a large part of this series, viewers had little input into who went forward to the next round of the show, with those decisions being in the hands of the coaches. Only in the later stages did the viewers get their say, and in the most part their decisions seemed fairly reasonable and sensible.

McFall in particular looked a nailed-on finalist from the early stages, with a spine-chilling version of Minnie Ripperton's "Loving You" a particular highlight. Perhaps on another show she may well have won, but those who seek success on The Voice seemingly need to appeal to a certain kind of market. It's something that seems to be a common theme running through a number of such shows.

The final of Britain's Got Talent this year was won by a Hungarian shadow theatre troupe, while X Factor turned out a steady stream of the anodyne - culminating in the eventual winner James Arthur whose tattoos and history of homelessness at least gave him some character that his personality couldn't.

The link between the three shows? Their time in the television schedule.

Both X Factor and The Voice make significant amounts of noise about finding credible, successful artists for the future. How realistic an expectation is that though, for a television talent show that relies on members of the public to pick its winners? 

If you were to draw a Venn diagram of the audience for these shows and the record buying public, there would most likely be a very small area of crossover. The majority of "new" music is bought by a younger age group, who at 8:15 on a Saturday night are unlikely to be at home in front of their television, phone in hand and ready to vote.

So the acts which are successful in these shows are ones that appeal to a more mature audience, one that is more likely to be voting not solely on the basis of whose records they would buy, but on who they like as much for personality as for music.

In these days of Youtube, social media and music editing software you can run on a home PC, genuine talent will find a way to get out there, get seen and get signed by record companies. In the same way that there are very few talented young footballers missed by professional clubs, there scouting networks of the major record labels don't miss much in terms of young musicians.

Perhaps it's time television ditched shows like X Factor and The Voice which promise to make stars out of hopeful amateurs and exploit their emotions for our viewing pleasure and advertising/telephone revenues? Maybe. Or at least just drop the act that they are doing it for our benefit.

Justice For Sale

I know you're all good, law-abiding folk out there, but imagine this scenario.

You were assaulted in the street. In response, you turned around and gave your assailant a good hiding, at which point the police have turned up and arrested you despite your pleas that it was self defence.

You already have a solicitor that has dealt with your family for years on other non-criminal matters, knows you well and is suitably qualified and experienced to present the case for your defence in court.

However, you can't afford to pay him due to your present financial circumstances, and will need to claim legal aid.

Your solicitor is happy to do the work for legal aid rates. You're a repeat customer, he's got every incentive to work as hard as he possibly can for you in the knowledge you'll come back next time you want some legal work doing.

As you're claiming legal aid however, you can't use your trusted, respected family solicitor. Instead, you have to go through a subsidiary of a national haulage firm, which has won the contract to allocate clients to legal aid solicitors.

The one they allocate you to is 30 miles away in the nearest big city. You incur costs and spend a lot of time travelling back and forth to meetings. They don't know you, have no idea about your previous character or any interest in you being a repeat customer.

Not only that, but whatever your plea or the outcome of any court case, they get paid exactly the same amount. So if they can persuade you to plead guilty and thereby cut out the need for a trial, they have a bigger profit margin on the job.

All in all, a pretty unsatisfactory state of affairs wouldn't you agree? Well that's the future that awaits if the Ministry of Justice gets its way and introduces PCT (Price Competitive Tendering) for criminal legal aid work.

Legal firms will be forced to bid for a small number of legal aid contracts in their area. Any that are unsuccessful or choose not to bid will not be permitted to undertake legal criminal aid work. This is expected to reduce the number of firms available to do this kind of work from around 1,600 to as few as 400 for the whole of the country.

It will create wastelands in areas where there are no successful bidders such as rural locations. For speakers of minority languages it could leave them with no legal aid solicitor who actually speaks their language within a reasonable travelling distance.

Smaller firms will find themselves pushed into a "merge or die" scenario if they want to continue delivering criminal legal aid work. Stobart Solicitors, a subsidiary of the Stobart haulage group has already expressed an interest in bidding. No doubt the usual suspects when it comes to public sector contracting rounds - G4S, for example - will be submitting expensively prepared, professional bids from their experienced in-house contracting teams.

Are these the types of organisations you want representing you in court?

Those firms that are successful will be faced with no guarantees of work. What work they do get will be at a reduced fee per case. A successful bid could well end up crippling some firms. What happens then in terms of providing representation in that locality?

The Ministry of Justice would have us believe that the current UK legal aid system is bloated and is not providing "value for money". It cites as its evidence "lawyers earning hundreds of thousands of pounds from two or three cases", when in fact the average criminal defence solicitor in the UK earns between £20k and £45k per year and is often required to work weekends, nights and bank holidays for no extra reward.

Make no bones about it, if the Ministry of Justice manages to get these proposals through the consultation stage and implemented - there will be no phased roll out, no pilot schemes to evaluate its success, just straight from one system to the other - then it won't just stop at criminal legal aid work. It has already said as much. The civil and family courts will be next in line, with the potential for this system to be rolled out in other areas. How do you fancy having your GP chosen for you by a regional panel which has no interest in what is right or convenient for your welfare?

Much as I am loathe to quote her, Margaret Thatcher - never one to promote the public sector or the private - once said that ‘any country or Government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law’.

Putting out justice to the highest bidder is the first step in that process.

If you haven't done so already, please let the Ministry of Justice know how you feel about the proposed changes and the potential removal of your right to select your legal advocate. Sign the petition now at:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/48628

Life's Ups and Downs

The debate has started again in rugby league circles about the merits of automatic promotion and relegation to Super League. The end to the football season, with all its last minute drama, delight and despair has no doubt stirred its believers into action.

There is no debate that do-or-die games, with something hinging on the outcome for both sides, create drama and draw crowds. The last one I can remember of the pre-franchise era in rugby league pitched local neighbours Wakefield and Castleford against each other, in a winner-takes-all showdown full of excitement in front of a large attendance.

There's one significant difference in the outcomes of promotion and relegation between rugby league and many other professional sports however, which presents a fly in the ointment to the automatic P&R brigade.

In football, if a team is relegated from the Premier League it drops down to the Championship. Clubs in the Championship are run in much the same way. They receive substantial - albeit smaller - television revenues. All their staff, both on field and off, are still full time and well paid. The rules don't differ in terms of how much they can spend on wages or how many overseas players they have.

The relegated or promoted clubs can essentially carry on doing business in the same way they had in the previous season. None of this applies to rugby league.

Revenues in the Championship are tiny in comparison to Super League. In most cases well below the level that is needed to fund a full time squad. Hence the reason that most of the teams at that level are part time. So any club that comes down from Super League finds itself having to make major changes on and off the field in the way it is structured.

Similarly, any club stepping up from the Championship to Super League needs to find the investment to recruit a large number of new players, revamp its marketing and commercial side and make the transition from a part time to a full time competition. Assuming they don't get to know that they are promoted until October and that the season starts again in February, that means four months to entirely change the nature of their business.

The current franchising system is not perfect. It will not provide a cure to the kind of poor, short-term management that plagues many clubs both inside and outside Super League. That's an issue that those responsible for running the clubs need to get their heads around.

What it will do however - and has already done - is encourage outside investment into clubs from owners who can be sure that for the next three years their major income streams are guaranteed. It will also ensure that they can invest in their infrastructure - stadiums, youth structures, marketing - safe in the knowledge that doing so will increase their chances of staying in Super League and not be jeopardised by a sudden slump in playing form.

On-field competition in sport is its lifeblood. It's the reason it exists. Yet despite that, sport is also a business. If it neglects the solid structures it needs to survive, what happens on the field becomes the least of its worries.

For rugby league clubs to survive, they need that solidity and certainty - not the knife edge existence that promotion and relegation brings.

Getting Britain Working

Iain Duncan Smith is poised to announce a radical new plan to reduce both the benefits bill and the NHS waiting lists in one.

The Work and Pensions Secretary's new initiative will see the long-term unemployed being forced to consent to their organs being used for transplants, or risk having their benefits reduced.

Sources within Whitehall have expressed their concern at the amount of time patients are spending on waiting lists for organ transplants and the amount their ongoing care in the meantime costs the NHS.

A DWP spokesman told us, "It seems ludicrous that at a time when Britain needs everyone to be striving rather than skiving, that there are perfectly functioning organs being wasted in the bodies of those whose prime ambition is to be awake in time for Jeremy Kyle."

"It makes sense for those organs to be removed and put to work in the bodies of decent, hard-working British people so they can provide for their decent, hard-working British families."

"This will result in significant savings from the benefits budget as a result of the donors no longer being eligible - mainly due to being dead - while also reducing the amount of time recipients have to wait for organs."

"Those who refuse to have their organs redistributed in this way will face having their benefits reduced. While we appreciate this may lead to them dying of malnutrition or hypothermia, clearly this will have the unintended side effect of freeing up their organs earlier than we would otherwise have expected."

"In order to avoid placing undue strain on the NHS by increasing the number of transplants it performs, we will of course be contracting these operations out to private sector partners."

Response within Westminster to the leaked proposals has been mixed, with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg describing them as "really not very nice at all", while UKIP's Nigel Farage has expressed concern that the organs may be taken by Bulgarians and Romanians who come into the country simply for the purpose of obtaining kidneys they can sell at a profit back home.

This Is A Commercial Presentation

(Scene: An idyllic summers day. An old, grey man walks slowly through a typical English flower garden, idly pruning as he passes. Songbirds provide the soundtrack. As he approaches the camera he looks up, smiles and begins to speak)

"Hello. My name is John Major. You might remember me from being Prime Minister, and sleeping with Edwina Currie. I know, me neither."

"In this difficult global economic climate, when you get to my age you start to worry about whether your loved ones are going to have enough money to take care of things once you're gone."

"That's where the Westminster 50-Plus Plan comes in. For a small monthly contribution of a percentage of your soul, we can ensure that when you do die your loved ones will have your entire funeral expenses paid for by the state irrespective of the cost involved."

"There are no complicated forms to fill in, no medical examinations to take. You just need to be a former Prime Minister with a successful military campaign behind you."

(Cut to video - images of Churchill's funeral)

"Contact us now for a no-obligation quote, and we'll give you a full military guard of honour just for applying."

"Don't leave it to chance that people will remember that you used to be Prime Minister and bury you accordingly. Take out the Westminster 50-Plus Plan today, and you too can be buried like that bloody woman."

(Man's wife enters from left, bearing a dish full of garden peas as voice over begins...)

Voice over man: "The value of your reputation as Prime Minister can go down as well as up. You may put a lot more into the job than you get back in terms of posthumous recognition."

(Ends)