In a surprise move the government announced a series of offsetting policies.
Michael Gove moved to close down Oxford, Cambridge and Durham Universities but offset these losses by opening a large number of nurseries for children.
Education charities said ‘It could work, you know’.
Sports Minister, Helen Grant, announced that no-one over the age of 16 would play Football or Rugby for England for the next 10 years (the English cricket team disbanded itself over the last few weeks) but that extra coaching would be given to under-fives.
Sports charities said ‘The 6-Nations might be a bit of a battle between men and boys, and the World Cup in Brazil will be interesting, but the government is taking a truly strategic approach here. Of course, our generation will see no benefit at all in this, but then we weren’t going to win anything anyway so let’s not make a fuss.’.
Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, announced that all old masters would be removed from museums and that the Elgin marbles would be immediately repatriated to Greece as we are ‘no longer interested in all that old stuff’. Likewise, there will be no more performances allowed of music written more than a century ago. However, One Direction will receive government backing for their next album.
Arts charities said ‘What a relief. I never understood what people saw in all that old stuff – we were always pretending to be interested in it because that seemed to be where the money was.’. But in a surprise example of criticising the government also said ‘We think they should have set the bar at 50 years not 100 – we hardly need to hear the Beatles any longer, do we?’.
Owen Paterson said ‘No beetles in my wood, nor badgers; actually, no wood anymore. But may I show you this High Speed Train route and housing estate where the wood used to be?’ as he walked past a field full of serried rows of dying Ash saplings .
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As always satire will bring this government tumbling down.
When will any of our leaders “Get” anything, as they consistently claim that they do? Maybe they are simply trying to drive us into a state of despair and defeatism – thanks to people like you Mark there will always be some to continue the fight.
Unfortunately, Canada is destroying the contents of its universities’ libraries in part to limit the role of environmental science in policy decision-making. http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Library/
It would be nice to suppose that Paterson was a lone voice of imbecility but clearly there are many politicians around the world vying for the supremacy in the environmental vandalism stakes.
Surely we don’t need all the cathedrals and castles set in beautiful grounds. Good source of building materials? So devastated about threat to ancient woods. Whatever next.
Personally I have always been very suspicious of capital projects in areas such as football; let’s rebuild Wembly with a stadium fit for the 25th century, packed to the brim with corporate hospitality suites, where well-to-do business folk can entertain their chums and brag about stuff, may be plan their next trip to the moors for a bag of a thousand birds, total cost to the taxpayer 230 million.
Surely it’s better to have football worth watching, spend the 230 million on playing fields in urban areas, so kids can practice kicking a ball and watch the fruit of this in pre-existing stadia?