All politicians fuck off and die. Your own mediocrity and deathly personalities are a worse punishment than anything I can think of, and believe me I've tried

(This was an impromptu scrawl on the front page from earlier this year when they started putting the pictures on the back of cig packets; I have decided to preserve it for posterity due to its fugitive beauty)


That dying bloke on the back of cigarette packets, did he grow that moustache to try and distract attention from the tumour, or grow the tumour to try and distract attention from the moustache?

Was there an audition? Do his family get royalties? Did he leave kids somewhere who will keep seeing pictures of their dying dad and his tumour in the hands of strangers?

Am I charming enough to persuade the woman in the shop to sort through the cig packets for me and only give me the ones with the pictures of the poorly baby?

Is there a psychic or spiritual price to be paid for hoping for a picture of a poorly baby? What do I get for living in a country where when I want to enjoy myself I have to hope to be given a picture of a poorly baby rather than a man dying of cancer? What are the psychic or spiritual consequences for a country where that kind of obscenity is disseminated by law? What kind of vile, sick, twisted bastard thinks that's an improvement of the world? Will the Tories remove the pictures if they come to power or will they think of something worse? Who can I vote for who will treat me like a grown-up? What are the mental consequences of continually living in a smaller and smaller space, ignoring more and more of the world, shrugging off every new encroachment of vileness and spite, keeping your head down and your self to your self and never throwing a Molotov cocktail?

Is there a health price to be paid (stress, blood pressure, ulcers, depression) for living in a country run by and partly populated by poisonous little killjoys like Health Secretary Alan Johnson? Do the Alan Johnsons have souls? Are their souls uglier than any tumour? Do they have cancer of the soul? Will God punish Alan Johnson for making the world an uglier and more unpleasant place? When Alan Johnson dies will God shove a hedgehog up his arse for every person he forced to carry pictures of tumours around with them? Are there twenty million hedgehogs in Heaven or would God have to send out for some? At some point would God just start taking the shitty used hedgehogs that had already been forced up through Alan Johnson's alimentary canal and out of his mouth and shoving them up his arse again? What did the hedgehogs do to deserve that? Are hedgehogs capable of sin? Will God have mercy on the hedgehogs?

When I die will I finally be allowed to smoke in peace? Are people allowed to enjoy themselves in Heaven or are there Alan Johnsons there? They only want to keep us alive so we can't escape from them.


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