By Request

I'm going all political, by request, in a new feature which might be called something snappy like Bastard of the Week. Although, in fairness, it's unlikely anyone will suggest a bigger bastard than this person for some time.

Iain Duncan Smith or 'IDS' as he is apparently known, as if that in some way makes him seem cool and not just a typo when attempting to abbreviate irritable bowel syndrome is today's target.

I could just have typed “Iain Duncan Smith, what a fucktrumpet” and then left it at that, but where would the fun be then?

I've done several minutes of lengthy research into his background for this piece. Literally most stones have been left unturned.

He was a Scots Guard when he was younger. Excellent, but what's one of those? I couldn't be bothered to find out so I'll just assume that it's some kind of Caledonian deodorant and that his dad owned the factory and gave him a part time job there while he was a student. Curiously, Smith claimed to have studied at a university in Italy and this information was displayed on the Tories' website before the BBC revealed it to be a damned lie. Oops! Another claim that he was "educated at Dunchurch College of Management" also turned out to be an instance that should have set his pants ablaze.

We mustn't forget he was once leader of the reverse-Robin Hood machine that is the Conservative Party. He was unpopular as he “lacked charisma”, but in 2010 Catholic propaganda rag, The Tablet, named him as one of Britain's most influential Catholics. Does this mean he looked the other way whilst robed men did despicable things with young boys? I'm not saying that, but I'm also not not saying it either. That should be blurry enough to avoid any legal trouble.

So, what else? He apparently founded something called the centre-right Centre for Social Justice. You might want to take a few moments to laugh at the absurdity of that.

Not that his position as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions as any less ridiculous. The Department for Work and Pensions will spend £1.6bn over three years assessing people to see if they are fit for work and declaring them fit even if they aren't (rumours of people being declared fit for work despite having heart attacks during their assessments or arriving in a wheelchair missing both legs and being asked “what's wrong with you?” are probably far less outlandish than they seem) in order to save substantially less than the actual cost. An absolute shambles of an operation with an absolute shambles of a man at the helm.

And remember his overly-enthusiastic fist-pump celebration when George Osborne promised a living wage? Yes, that was of course genuine and in no way done for effect. I imagine he was actually celebrating a text he'd just received from Fortnum and Mason: “Your order of foie gras and poor people's tears has been shipped.”

If you want further reasons to dislike Dunc, then remember that he once described disabled people as “abnormal” and also said this of disabled workers: “Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee?”

He also quoted the Nazi slogan above the gates of Auschwitz - Arbeit Macht Frei - when he said about the government’s workfare programme that “work actually helps free people.”

All the quotes attributed to Smith here are real, unlike the shameful tactics used used by his Department for Work and Pensions who made up quotes from supposed "benefit claimants" that appeared in a leaflet about the sanctions system.

But that's probably what we should expect from a man whose boss is a huge fan of pigs in blankets where the pig is the blanket and... oh, come on, you know what I'm talking about.

So, Iain Duncan Smith, you are our Bastard of the Week and will probably be the bastard of every week for the foreseeable future.