The 0.42% Apocalypse

A Voyage to the Dinner Table Concerning the Great Terror of the Decimal Point

I recently returned from a harrowing expedition to the uncharted territories of the Parental Dining Room, a land governed by ancient customs and rigid superstitious beliefs. There, amidst the debris of cracker pulls and turkey bones, I encountered the local Chieftain—my father—in the throes of a great geopolitical panic. His face possessed the hue of a distressed beetroot as he recited the sacred texts of the tabloid press, warning that the Kingdom was facing imminent financial ruin at the hands of an invading horde of Big-Endians (aka immigrants) currently living in unbridled luxury at the taxpayer's expense.

To the indigenous mind of the dinner table conservative, these invaders are the architects of our national decline, draining the treasury to fund a decadent lifestyle of room service caviar and endless Fortnite delivered via complimentary PlayStations. It is a compelling narrative, largely because it adheres to what scholars of linguistic manipulation term the "Ideological Square": emphasize their bad actions, and emphasize our victimhood. Yet, as a traveller possessing both a calculator and a tenuous grasp of reality, I was forced to conclude that the Chieftain was suffering from a severe case of Malinformation—a weaponised delusion designed by elites to make giants fear dwarfs.

If one were to step back and view the Kingdom’s ledger through a telescope rather than the Chieftain’s magnifying glass, the comedy of this terror becomes apparent. It is true that the Imperial Treasury spent some £5.4 billion on the asylum system in the last fiscal year. To a Lilliputian, this sum is a mountain that blocks out the sun. Yet, set against the Total Managed Expenditure of the realm—a behemoth weighing in at £1,279 billion—this terrifying expenditure is revealed to be a mere 0.42% of our resources. We are a nation shrieking that a mouse is nibbling at our grain supply, while completely ignoring the sixty-billion-pound military elephant currently eating the barn itself.

The absurdity deepens exponentially when one examines the fabled "luxury" accorded to these so-called guests. The High Heels and Low Heels of Westminster debate the morality of putting these people in hotels, creating visions of spa days and Egyptian cotton sheets. The truth is far grimmer. The typical asylum seeker, trapped in legal limbo and forbidden from working, is bestowed with a weekly allowance of £9.58. In the fantastical economy of my father’s mind, this sum purchases gaming consoles; in modern Britain, it would struggle to procure even a second-hand controller. These hotels are holding pens where malnutrition and isolation are the primary amenities.

But if the money is not buying PlayStations for refugees, where has it gone? Herein lies the grandest deception of the Elite Discourse, peddled by figures like Nigel Farage, who stand like ringmasters directing the public gaze downward toward the dinghy, so it never looks upward toward the boardroom.

The billions are not being wasted on the poor; they are being efficiently funnelled to the true Brobdingnagians of this tale: the corporate giants Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings. These are the entities holding the lucrative government contracts to manage this misery. While the Chieftain argues over the price of a refugee's pot noodle, these three behemoths quietly scooped up £383 million in pure profit between 2019 and 2024.

The tragedy of the Christmas feast, therefore, is not merely the casual racism served alongside the sprouts. It is the spectacularly misdirected rage. The Chieftain is furious at the guests in the hotel, entirely unaware that the hotel owners have already looted the safe, stolen the silver, and convinced him to blame the people locked in the basement.