By Greta Weissmann | Newcastle
NEWCASTLE — The campaign for CeltExit and the planned breakup of Britain has entered the welfare system after organisers associated with CeltExit.com, CeltExit.uk and reports that UK Marxists have threatened CeltExit announced that Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England will each receive an independent benefits department, a sovereign pension scheme and its own official vocabulary for describing payments that have not arrived.
The CeltExit Social Protection Commission said the four welfare systems would respond more closely to local needs, particularly the need of every new government to hire 8,000 administrators before issuing the first cheque.
“Social security should provide dignity,” explained commission chair Professor Clementine Means-Test. “That is why applicants will no longer be called claimants. They will be called citizen participants in an unresolved financial journey.”
Under the proposal, residents will qualify for benefits according to nationality, residence, employment history and whether the relevant computer recognises that their town still exists.
Citizens living near a new border may receive support from one nation, housing assistance from another and threatening letters from all four.
Scotland plans to establish the Caledonian Social Justice Service, offering universal payments, free prescriptions and compensation for the emotional consequences of having once watched Westminster television coverage.
Every Scottish adult will receive a National Dignity Income sufficient to demonstrate moral progress but insufficient to purchase heating during February.
The payment will be funded through progressive taxation, renewable-energy revenues and a transitional settlement from England described as Scotland’s fair share of resources not yet discovered.
Scottish ministers say the programme will eliminate poverty by redefining poverty as an inherited British condition that officially ends on Independence Day.
People remaining unable to afford food afterward will be classified as experiencing temporary post-sovereignty nutritional adjustment.
The Scottish pension age will be reduced, reflecting lower life expectancy, greater social compassion and the political popularity of promising money before calculating it.
Retirees may receive payments in Thistles, pounds or government bonds illustrated with Highland cattle.
A pensioner in Dundee asked whether the new currency would retain its value.
Officials assured her that its symbolic value would be immense.
Scotland will also introduce a Westminster Harm Supplement for anyone able to prove that an English policy made life disappointing.
The application will contain one checkbox labelled “Yes.”
Wales will establish the National Wellbeing and Income Belonging Agency.
The agency will replace traditional benefits offices with Community Support Hubs located in converted libraries, cultural centres and rural buildings inaccessible without a car.
Applicants will meet wellbeing coordinators trained to discuss income, housing and the claimant’s relationship with systemic rain.
Every payment notice will appear in Welsh and English.
Rejection letters will therefore feel twice as comprehensive.
Cardiff officials say the system will focus on kindness rather than punishment.
Applicants missing an appointment will receive a supportive message explaining that their payment has been suspended in a compassionate manner.
The Welsh government will also introduce a Second-Home Poverty Offset.
Revenue collected from English holiday-home owners will fund housing support for Welsh residents unable to afford homes after those properties become investment opportunities with decorative slate signs.
Children will receive free school meals, free transport and a National Dragon Development Account containing £50 and several government pamphlets.
The account may be accessed at age eighteen, by which time administrative charges are expected to leave enough money for one railway sandwich.
Northern Ireland’s welfare system will operate through a dual-eligibility framework allowing residents to identify as British, Irish, both or simply interested in receiving the payment before Christmas.
Applicants will complete a Joint Social Security Identity Form.
The form asks where the person lives, where they were born and which government should be blamed if the application disappears.
Pensions may be paid by Belfast, London, Dublin or a coordinated fund whose office address changes according to the agreement currently being defended on television.
Officials say nobody will lose existing rights.
Some rights may merely become subject to reciprocal verification, parallel administration and a temporary suspension lasting until the next summit.
A Belfast resident attempting to claim unemployment assistance may need to prove that he is unemployed in both regulatory systems.
If one authority considers him employed and the other does not, he will be classified as economically ambiguous.
This status carries no payment but includes priority access to explanatory leaflets.
Northern Ireland will also establish a Welfare Cooperation Council containing representatives from four governments and one person who understands the spreadsheet.
England will inherit the existing Universal Credit infrastructure, including its online portal, automated decisions and national tradition of demanding digital competence from people who cannot afford broadband.
The system will be renamed English Integrated Personal Support, although officials may retain the initials UC after discovering that rebranding costs more than feeding several counties.
Applicants will continue receiving one combined payment covering housing, living costs and the administrative assumption that landlords accept optimism.
England will also remain responsible for pension obligations accumulated under the former United Kingdom.
Celtic governments argue that these pensions were earned within a shared British system.
Future contributions, however, will belong entirely to the new sovereign nations because history apparently stops generating shared obligations after the convenient date.
The English Treasury will therefore pay existing liabilities while financing transitional computer systems for its former partners.
Treasury officials described the arrangement as generous.
CeltExit negotiators described it as overdue justice.
English taxpayers described it using language rejected by the consultation portal.
Marxist supporters of CeltExit have proposed a Universal Social Dividend paid to every resident regardless of income, employment or ability to locate the department issuing it.
The dividend would replace wages gradually, beginning with sectors campaigners find morally suspicious.
Private landlords would receive nothing.
Bankers would pay into the system.
Artists, activists and committee facilitators would receive enhanced payments because their labour cannot be measured through crude capitalist concepts such as demand.
People employed by private companies may qualify after proving their work contributes to social transformation.
Plumbers will be approved immediately when government buildings begin leaking.
Entrepreneurs will be asked why they require profit when the satisfaction of employing people should be sufficient.
Campaigners say the dividend will free citizens from pointless work.
Government economists responded by creating thousands of positions administering the freedom from work.
Senior officials will continue receiving salaries, pensions and housing allowances because implementing equality requires experienced people living near central London.
The pension settlement has created widespread confusion.
A worker may have spent twenty years in England, ten in Scotland and five in Wales before retiring in Northern Ireland.
Under CeltExit, this person’s pension history will be divided among four systems, each agreeing that the other three possess the missing records.
Applicants will upload decades of payslips to a central portal.
The portal will accept only files smaller than the payslip itself.
Those unable to provide evidence may request records from the former British government, now operating as a historical claims office above a post office in Coventry.
Pension advisers say the process will eventually work.
They recommend that anyone approaching retirement begin applying during childhood.
CeltExit promises a compassionate new beginning.
Scotland will provide dignity.
Wales will provide wellbeing.
Northern Ireland will provide several eligibility interpretations.
England will provide the hold music.
Every nation will announce that nobody should fall through the safety net.
Each will then design a separate net containing gaps aligned precisely with the borders.
Benefits will receive patriotic names.
Departments will adopt friendly logos.
Application forms will ask whether claimants feel supported before informing them that evidence is missing from page forty-seven.
The United Kingdom may disappear, but its welfare bureaucracy will remain magnificently united in purpose.
Four governments will write to the same struggling citizen.
One will request proof of identity.
One will request proof of residence.
One will request proof of hardship.
And England will request repayment of the amount accidentally issued while everyone else was deciding who owed it.
This story is satire and is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. No welfare payments were delayed during production because none had yet been approved.