Jeremy Hunt today announced the immediate introduction of a new Police force to ensure all citizens behave in a frugal manner during the present period of Austerity.
With parallels being pointed towards Iran's Morality Police, who enforce the countries religion-based laws with a fearsome strictness, there was concern that a similar trend may occur. Reports were already emerging this afternoon of the new protocols in action, with the fashionable hipster "Brewdog" pub in London Bridge one of the first targets.
"I'd met the lads at lunchtime for our 'Dads do Drinks' Wednesdays we always have, " explained Tom Barner-Warnes (44) from Shoreditch, "and as we were getting our second Colombian Double Casked IPA, suddenly there was a full-on police raid, they kicked the door down and stormed the entire bar. Took all our iPhones, Apple watches, all our top end jewellery and even my Nike Super Air Max 3 trainers, which I'd just bought in a sale at Debenhams for only 600 pounds. We were informed that such items were not in line with austerity. Everyone was given a Nokia 3210 with 5 pounds Pay as You Go on it and two cans of Carlsberg. I almost went into shock."
"It was properly heavy handed." complained an equally miffed Sam Starmer-Bedwood (38) who had been the same establishment. "I said 'you can't do that, it's a breach of my human rights' as he whisked away my Apple Mac Book air Pro and gave me a ZX Spectrum in return. At which point he told me most of the Austerity police were hand-picked children of the West Midlands Crime Squad from the 1970's and then headbutted me."
"As the Chancellor said, there will be difficult decisions that must be made" explained a Conservative spokesman this evening. "While we currently have deployed the Austerity police to London, we plan to expand it to cover much of the South of England. While we are considering full country coverage, right now, we can't see there being much need for it north of Watford."
Being Chancellor of the Exchequer is really easy, nothing like as tricky as people were making it out to be, Jeremy Hunt has said to have confided, after nearly a week in the job.
‘He was expecting it to require some kind of knowledge of monetary policy and the complex relationship between expansionary fiscal instruments and their impacts upon inflation and interest rates’, said a source close to Hunt.
‘But it turns out all he needs to do is just reverse every decision that Truss and Kwarteng made, using a deep and solemn voice’, continue the spokesperson. ‘Simple as that. A bit like ‘Simon Says’ but it’s ‘Jeremy Says’ and the markets are the ones putting their hands on their heads. Or something like that.
'He actually keeps a little list in his pocket and just ticks each policy off as he announces the exact opposite with that smarmy grin of his’.
‘And everyone is lapping it up, even though all the cutbacks and savings he's making are really fictional savings on things only just put in place in the mini-budget by that pair of buffoons three weeks ago’.
‘Of course, once he's finished with the U-turns, he can move on to announcing his own fantastic set of policies for the good of the country – like he did when he was at Health.
‘The whole country is loving it. We heard a voter declare that Trussonomics was dead, and we could now look forward to Total Hunt.’
‘At least we think that’s what they said’.