Getting the new year going on a note at once light and dark, the little list below offers a few of the favourite things I should like to see what’s left of our country achieving during 2011. In the unlikely event that you are possessed of supernatural powers, gentle reader, or that you intend to become the next dictator of Britain and you wish to give me a little present…
1. All education legislation subsequent to the 1944 Act will be repealed.
2. Wolves will be reintroduced into the forests of Britain.
3. Smoking will be banned in all public places and allowed in private only if all present are consenting adults.
4. The production of newspapers will be illegal unless a licence is obtained from the Archbishop of Canterbury certifying the moral fitness of the owners, editors, and journalists involved.
5. All teachers will receive an immediate one hundred percent increase in salary (conditional only upon passing a test in the use of the colon and semicolon).
6. All British citizens over the age of sixty will be issued with a bottle of good sherry once per week at government expense.
7. The salary of the Prime Minister will be fixed by law as not exceeding the average salary of a nurse in a British hospital (the Prime Minister being free to increase nurses’ salaries substantially, should he feel such a move to be in the public interest).
8. The salary of all bank executives will be cut to one tenth of present levels.
9. All Members of Parliament will be obliged to submit to a bi-election (or, should you prefer more pedantry and less punning, gentle reader, then a by-election; or, should you prefer more punning and less precision, gentle reader, then a bye-election; or, should you prefer language that just whacks you in the face, gentle reader, then a bye-bye-election) in the event of voting contrary to an election promise.
10. The photographing of the person previously known as Tony Blair will be made illegal under national and international law; concurrently, all reference to and use of the name Tony Blair will be banned – to be replaced by the more correct name Tony Thatcher-Blair.
11. Local councils will be obliged to establish and maintain in every village and in every locality of every town (as a minimum) a post office cum general store and a grocer’s shop – which, in addition to groceries, must sell locally produced fruit and vegetables and bread baked daily on the premises. All goods will be sold at prices paralleling those in the hideous institutions known as supermarkets (see below) to customers who arrive on foot (delivery arrangements to be made for the sick, elderly, and disabled), and at twice those prices for those arriving by car. In the event that the bread on offer is not of a pleasing texture, lacks flavour, or is insufficiently crusty, the chairman of the council will lose office.
12. The term head teacher will be abolished by law.
13. The taking of any decision or the public voicing of any opinion on grounds of Political Correctness will be made illegal (the penalty to be exile from the United Kingdom).
14. It will be illegal for any commercial organisation to have any influence upon or connection with any school, beyond the anonymous and wholly unconditional donation of money.
15. Varying rates of VAT will be applied to goods, based on the distance they have travelled to reach Her Majesty’s shores. The rate will be zero for items produced within this country and using native materials.
16. Any persons caught using jargon, management speak, or other forms of gobbledegook will be condemned to silence for a year.
17. It will be illegal to produce, distribute, or offer for sale any article covered by or contained within any form of cellophane wrapping or any type of plastic bag (unless specified by doctors for medical purposes).
18. British television companies will be fined a million pounds in the event that they broadcast any episode of any Australian soap opera.
19. It will be illegal for solicitors, barristers, and accountants to earn more than teachers, doctors, and lecturers.
20. All computer games will be banned.
21. The Ministry of Education will be prohibited in perpetuity from giving itself any name other than the Ministry of Education.
22. Prospective members of the government will be subjected to a short academic examination in order to qualify for entry to the cabinet room: just a simple little exercise of the sort that a pupil in a scholarship set at a good British school would have handled habitually fifty years ago – such as translating some dozen or so lines of Shakespeare into Latin.
23. The payment of money to any person for the playing of sport will be banned by law: sport will be sport.
24. Any headmasters or headmistresses who have used the word delivery to mean teaching at any point in their careers, or who have used the term focus as a noun (other than with reference to cameras or the human eye), will be removed from office.
25. A statue of Thomas Tomkins will be erected at public expense outside Worcester Cathedral, facing the statue of Sir Edward Elgar.
26. All headmasters and headmistresses will be required to re-qualify for office by passing a viva voce examination to ensure that they are scholars and gentlemen (or scholars and ladies) and not ‘managers’ in the wrong profession. (A typical question would be ‘What lessons can we draw for education today from our reading of King Alfred’s preface to Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis?’)
27. All Americanisation will be returned to the United States of America with the compliments of Great Britain.
28. Musicians giving live performances of works composed before 1750 will be provided with government grants enabling them to reduce the cost of tickets by half, and all instruments they require will be paid for out of the public purse.
29. Income tax will be paid at half the current rates by those engaged in the public service; income tax will be paid at twice the current rates by those engaged in making money.
30. A statue of Margaret Thatcher will be erected in every town in Great Britain, bearing the slogan My name is Ignoramus: look on my works, ye British, and despair; such statues to be manufactured from recycled plastic.
31. The salary of an ordinary Member of Parliament will be determined each month so as to replicate exactly the average wage in Britain during the previous month.
32. Admission to all theatres and concert halls will be free to all persons in full-time education (but see item one above) and all persons over sixty years of age, at government expense.
33. Churches will receive a grant of a thousand pounds for every service conducted at which no words are uttered that are not taken from BCP 1662 or the King James Bible (and at which hymns, if any at all, are from the English Hymnal); the single and obvious exception is that words sung by the choir may of course be Latin – or Greek, in the case of the Kyrie.
34. Members of Parliament will be subjected to a brief physical examination to determine which are in fact human beings and which are air-brushed plastic androids: the latter to be excluded from the House. (Plans are being made to deal with the large number of empty seats that will inevitably result…)
35. Headmasters and headmistresses of schools will forfeit salary for one month if their pupils are seen (whether in school or elsewhere in school uniform) with ties loosened, top buttons undone, or shirts not tucked in.
36. In order to become a bishop of the Church of England in future, it will be necessary for the applicant to be possessed of both a mind and a heart, and so to be capable of applying logic to morality. (Needless to say, whether the applicant be male or female, straight or gay, black or white, left-handed or right-handed will be entirely irrelevant.)
37. Copies of the novels of Trollope will be available, at government expense, to all loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen, on demand.
38. The use of Christian names between people who have not been introduced will be banned by law.
39. No programmes will be broadcast to television receivers before six o’clock in the evening.
40. All supermarkets will be abolished: the property and other assets of the owning companies will be seized and used to finance community development.
You may ask, gentle reader (and, indeed, if you are still gently reading at this point, gentle reader, then I humbly thank you), whether I am serious about the wolves… (I won’t insult you by suggesting you might doubt my utter seriousness as regards any of the rest.) Yes, I am quite serious about the wolves – though they are merely an example. I do not think it likely that I shall see such a thing actually occurring during this year, but then I think it far more likely that I shall see wolves roaming free in Britain than that I shall see Britain governed by educated, humane, sensible people, blessed with both integrity and intelligence. Wolves seem to me by far the more likely prospect.
The Barchester Times 