PERHAPS there is enlightenment at the source of Tory plans to help us all die at our work-stations. As families have cracked and become scattered, the notion of communities reaching within themselves to provide succour for the old and infirm is no longer extant.

Loneliness stalks the elderly and the rest of us shuffle uncomfortably, our eyes fixed to the floor when we learn that a neighbour has been dead behind a door for many weeks.

Now, courtesy of the Centre for Social Justice, it needn’t be like that. Their report into working codgers has advised that the state pension age be raised to 75. With the diurnal march of medical science there is infinite scope for the bar to be raised higher still.

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Instead of a lonely death amidst Just-Eat detritus, we can now look forward to a meaningful demise surrounded by work-mates and mouse-mats.

For a week (two if you’ve reached your monthly target) the management will permit flowers to be placed around your swivel chair. Perhaps there could be a simple humanist prayer ceremony (suitably inclusive and religiously non-binary) and Prosecco dispensed from plastic cups. “I’ll be late home tonight, honey: there’s a works expiry do.”

As the drinks flow cheeky selfies could be taken with the newly-deceased and appear instantly on social media. “After his 12-hour shift Bob was in need of a breather lol.)

Isn’t it amazing what you can achieve when you’re under pressure? Brexit has become the mother of social invention. The Tories claim that having the opportunity to die at work will prevent “state dependence, social marginalisation and personal destitution”.

And why the fuss? The new retirement age displays joined-up thinking by the Tories and is the logical next step in a suite of policies that reflect the desire to be lean and nimble in the post-Brexit era.

The first of these was the bedroom tax, which gave poor people that little nudge they needed to down-size their accommodation choices. As our weather patterns become more extreme and winters become harsher it helps to be heating only one room rather than two. Amidst the gloom of Brexit the BBC last week provided us with some encouraging news about the way that shipping containers are being fitted out to solve the homelessness problem.

Curiously, the BBC reporter omitted what was obvious to the rest of us: what a great way this is to deal with any challenges encountered with the bedroom tax. Just bundle all your rooms into one: Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your auntie.

Then there was the progressive two child tax credit policy introduced by the Department of Work and Pensions. Thus, tax benefits would be cut for more than two children in a family unless the mother can prove she was raped or had non-consensual sex when that child was conceived.

Let’s face it; poor people are simply having too many children and the rest of us are paying for it. If a woman from a deprived community doesn’t want the ignominy of having to prove her child wasn’t conceived in a loving and secure environment then maybe she’ll think twice about having more than two.

This means that there will be more children from affluent families and fewer from poor ones. Result! Affluent children are less likely to require intervention by the social services and poor people can get by more manageably with just the two mouths to feed.

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The third instalment of the Tories Programme for Eugenics in the post-Brexit era is Universal Tax credits and it’s already leading to happy outcomes. Many more disabled claimants are having “health and work conversations” with their local DWP and this has seen remarkable increases in happiness.

There you are with your one leg and your portable defibrillator and a letter from your consultant telling you not to get ahead of yourself when planning your summer holidays. Not unnaturally, you feel somewhat downcast.

Now, for the first time since the amputation you are being told that actually you are indeed fit for work. I really don’t think you can over-estimate the sense of restored pride this can engender in a broken soul.

You might think your working days are over but here’s the government not only counselling you through such negative thoughts but actually providing you with an incentive to get on your bike and pedal (very slowly) to work.

The UK Government’s Project Yellowhammer showed we must all have to rally round and put our thinking caps on once more. This report suggested there will be food, medicine and fuel shortages as the supply chain grinds to a halt.

But who’s to say that a generation of heightened poverty and sickness, especially if most of the burden is borne by those who have fewer life expectations, isn’t a price worth paying? In exchange we’ll be able to stop dodgy foreign types coming here and stealing all our low-paid, unprotected and zero-hours jobs. Our wealth creators will be permitted extra scope to pay more realistic wages and deal with workplace curmudgeons without all that EU interference. Nevertheless we must all still buckle up for a bumpy ride.

Thus far, this enlightened Tory administration has provided a pathway back to work for very sick and disabled people. They are proposing an end to lonely deaths by replacing them with warm and appreciated workplace deaths.

I’d urge them now to consider the opposite end of the age and health scale and provide working opportunities for young children. Why waste years of education on the indolent children of poor people in deprived communities when they could be earning a crust doing construction work or cleaning offices?

They’d only be looking for a few quid to get their frozen fish fingers and enough to get the bus into town for a Saturday shop-lifting foray.

I’m reminded once more of the BBC’s wonderful dramatization of Little Dorrit, the uplifting Charles Dickens novel about poverty and deprivation in Victorian London. Didn’t that workhouse where Amy Dorrit’s dad was forced to live look just stunning?

There’s more than a few of these disused old factories lying around our inner cities and we’re going to have lots of debt and homelessness after Brexit. Just saying …

From the cradle to the grave: the Tories will get you there quicker.