Decision Flow: The Government’s Choices in Syria

I made this to help out our politicians as they decide how to act on Syria.

Good luck guys!

Government ‘quickly turning into Eastenders’

In what is being described as a canny PR move by the coalition government, the Tories and the Lib Dems have engaged in an argument so hysterical and ludicrous that the writers of the implausibly popular soap are said to be taking notes and are planning on weaving a similar story into a future plot line.

Clegg is somewhat irked by Gove

The kerfuffle started when chief education clown Michael Gove published a discreet notice in the Daily Mail indicating his intention to ‘take us back to the good old days’ by introducing a raft of sweeping reforms which he appears to have come up with by consulting the kind of bitter twisted old twazzock you find in a dingy pub at three in the afternoon telling anyone who’ll listen that “kids these days don’t know they’re born”.

Gove’s ‘reforms’, which promise to be as successful as the time Facebook floated on the stock market, chiefly comprise siphoning off children onto separate streams such as ‘this is what the inside of a factory looks like’ or ‘would you like fries with that?’ at the age of five if they have any of the following conditions:

1) An inability to have been born south of Hampstead Heath

2) Difficulty spelling the word ‘privilege’

3) A failure to recognise Margaret Thatcher as supreme overlord of creation

Gove has publicly shied away from phrases such as ‘proudly creating the underclass of tomorrow’ or ‘turning the inequality gap into the inequality chasm – get the grubby bastards away from us!’, but has privately had these and more tattooed upon his left buttock.

Other aspects of the changes include a return to sepia tone for all schools, increased pipe-smoking and child molestation for teachers, a marked decline in standards and the re-introduction of the term ‘Johnny Foreigner’, coupled with a healthy splash of racism, to truly bring back the golden age of British education.

Nick Clegg has reacted less than positively to the news. After releasing a statement which simply read “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”, the coalition’s best-used punching bag called a press conference in which he wept hysterically for over two hours, occasionally pausing to shriek that he was “going to slap that slag so hard”, before going on to defend spouse David Cameron in an impassioned and terrifying address:

“David doesn’t know anything about it. This Gove bitch has been sniffing around him for ages, trying to get at him, buying him little gifts and shit, and yeah they’ve been out for coffee and David kissed him WHEN HE WAS DRUNK which is obviously not cheating, but David didn’t know anything about the school thing. He told me. He promised. He said that he hadn’t even seen Michael in weeks and that the reason he didn’t come home last night and when he did he smelt like Michael’s perfume was because he’d been fishing all night and obviously fish smell just like Michael Gove’s perfume and it was a trout that gave him that lovebite. I believe him.

“David wouldn’t do that to me. HE LOVES ME. Tell the bitch that I will take him down and I don’t even care if I ruin my nails when I gouge his fucking eyes out.”

David Cameron has not at all suspiciously kept completely silent while Clegg has been going absolutely batshit, but Nick is starting to suspect something is up as David has become more ‘distant’ in lovemaking sessions.

Leading analysts, however, believe that the developments are all a stunt to win favour with the notoriously easily-pleased British public. Sarah Chalmers, of Djemba-Djemba Consulting, said: “The Tories are really winning voters over with this tacky display of nonsense. Support amongst people who would call their first child Wanker “because it’s funny” is up over 200%. All they need now is a dog that can walk on its hind legs and they’ll be unstoppable. Wait…dog on hind legs…Nick Clegg….SHIIIIIIIIIT.”

Cameron defends decision to create high-tech dystopia

The newly facially-hirsute PM, who has taken to calling himself ‘Joseph’, has hit back at claims that secret courts and the legal right of the government to access private communications on a whim might be just a tad sinister.

Sporting a huge, bushy moustache and a somewhat withered left arm, Mr Cameron defended his stance and promised on his mum’s life that it was all in our best interest. Speaking via head party spokeswoman Theresa May, whom Cameron lovingly refers to as “my anus”, he said: “PAEDOPHILES! TERRORISTS! TERRORIST PAEDOPHILES! CRIMINALS AND SUCH!”

All agreed it was a rousing speech, except one lady who didn’t, but she died in not-in-any-way-suspicious circumstances shortly afterward and then everybody definitely agreed was a rousing speech.                 

Mr Cameron is said to be "loving" his new top-lip topiary

A key government intelligence official has also been shedding light on how access to Skype calls and emails is going to help in the war on imaginary enemies:

“As we all know, 9/11 and 7/7 would not have been possible without Skype. In fact, I saw a piece of footage of Osama bin-Laden Skypeing his buddies the other day. He was all like “Hey dudes, what’s happening?” and they were like “Cool, bro, cool, we still on to blow up some shit next week?” and he was like “Yeah, for real man, shit’s gonna go DOWN!!”, and I believe that if the intelligence community could have accessed this call they would have wormed out that an attack was imminent.

“The same is true of paedophiles. It is a little known fact that 103% of paedophiles use email to set up their dastardly child wrong-rings. Take this transcript I read today, which I would not have been privy to before these great new laws allowed me to indiscriminately invade people’s lives”:

Dear John,

Thanks for the BBQ, it was great. Me and the wife had a lovely day. Are we still meeting up on Monday to abuse children?

Paul

The counter-arguments to this tiresome bullshit have been made far more eloquently and forcefully than I could hope to, so I won’t go over that ground, but it’s just so depressing that we live in a world where a government in a free country has the temerity to openly spy on the public and then claim it’s all to protect us. Nobody is buying it, not even Nick Clegg is buying this one, yet it’ll most likely come to pass anyway. Welcome to democracy.

What can we do? I’ve come up with four predictably ridiculous solutions that might not work, but might piss some people off:

1) Include the words “P.S. If you’re reading this, I’m behind you” in every online communication you make. That way, if somebody is reading it they’ll be driven to a paranoid mental breakdown by the end of the first week.

2) After two months of the “P.S. I’m behind you” game, go to Thames House and actually get behind whoever comes out and whisper “I told you I was behind you” in their ear. Warning: May result in death.

3) Include a random interlude in whatever you write. You should have seen it, his head came clean off with one swing of that spoon. Anyone snooping on it won’t have any idea what’s going on, and you’ll be safe in the knowledge that you’re a hilarious prankster.

4) Demand that the government eschew clothes from now on and assign each of them a detail of 200 members of the public to follow them constantly. If they’re honest people with nothing to hide they have nothing to fear from this, which is what they’re so fond of telling us. Let’s see how they like it when they’re under scrutiny 24/7. Claim that the nudity aspect is just an extension of their own legislation, as we want to make sure they aren’t carrying bombs, guns, knives or indecent images of children. If they’re honest people who have nothing to hide then why should they have a problem with forced nudity and occasional cavity searches?

Freedom. Don’t ya just love it?

P.S. If you’re reading this, I’m behind you.

Cameron to Sell Ice to Eskimos

Or Inuits. Whichever you prefer.

The Prime Minister has taken it upon himself this week to go about privatising literally anything he can think of, in an ill-advised attempt to gain empathy with the working class by becoming a reincarnation of Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses.

Starting with the news that your hernia operation will be carried out by the highest bidder (if you have rich enemies and a dodgy heart I advise keeping the need for a bypass very quiet indeed…) and finishing with a masterful plan which consisted of the words ‘MONEY’ and ‘BIRCH’ scrawled onto a page three hundred times, the PM is showing the classic signs of going absolutely bat-shit crazy.

I’ll maybe leave the NHS stuff to another time. Largely because I don’t want to give myself an aneurysm and have it fixed by a self-made farmer from Truro who “always fancied myself as a bit of a surgeoner my handsome. Now, where’s them shears?”

Focusing on the tall leafy things then, first thing to say is what on earth happened at that cabinet meeting?

“Right guys, we’ve made progress. We’ve sold the NHS, we’ve sold them down the river on education, we’re selling the post office…I don’t know, I just think we need something else to really make this a fire-sale…wait. Fire…forest fire. Forests!”

An idea is born. I call it ‘oakpocalypse’. I don’t think it’ll catch on.

As I understand it, the government has 150,000 hectares of prime British woodland just sitting there not making money. Someone obviously told them that money doesn’t grow on trees and they’ve gone and run with that notion spectacularly. So they’re going to flog them on the proviso that the buyers can’t chop the lot down.

If private buyers can’t chop the lot down, i.e. develop it, then the immediate question of’who the fuck will buy a forest?’ springs to mind. What possible use could any person or group have with a large number of protected trees?

I can see a couple of reasons why you might buy in:

1) Carbon credits – Trees suck up CO2. Companies pump out CO2. Companies have to stop pumping out CO2. Companies buy trees. Simples. Obviously this will mean that woodland bought by companies will be off limits to the public; can’t have Johnny Public stomping round eating picnics and ruining the carbon sinks can we?

2) Profit – Fence it off, charge entry. Enjoy the ever-dwindling gifts of nature for only £3.50 per day.

3) Because you can – You just know some oligarch would do it just to use ‘Would you like to come and see my wood?’ as a chat up line.

Government spokespeople are claiming that they envisage the main buyers as community groups and local people, which really rubs the salt in. Effectively their grand plan is to take public property, something which has always been free and, as the title would suggest, public, and sell it back to us. Then let us pay for the upkeep.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s generally known as a con.