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Coming Soon: Stephen King’s Autumn Statement

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Horror fans are eagerly awaiting the latest adaption by Stephen King, called ‘Autumn Statement’.


The film is a psychological thriller, in which an entire country is overcome by depression, gloom, despondency, and suicidal thoughts, all caused by a menacing and shape-shifting monster called the Autumn Statement.


Film critic and grossly overweight popcorn destroyer, Arthur Howse, is sure that the film will become a classic. ‘It scares the shit out of everyone. Young people trying to find somewhere to live or find a job. Young families who need childcare. Householders in big and expensive houses. Old people who need to eat, or keep warm. Farmers.  Motorists. This film scares all of them. I’ve seen it four times and I haven’t slept since.


‘The great trick is that the film threatens so many terrible things – bad things that will affect hospitals, banks, businesses, charities, sick people, healthy people, workers, students – everyone in fact. Hellfire, the Autumn Statement even threatens the dead – undermining their dying wishes and taxing them retrospectively, so that they can’t help their children and their dependents. It’s mental torture. And it’s brilliant stuff.


‘The tension is heightened because there is no way to fight the Autumn Statement. It’s a monstrous terror that lives in the shadows. It's everywhere.  It's all around you.  Everyone is talking about it, but no-one knows what to do.  If you think you can cope with one of its proposals, then two new terrifying ideas will immediately spring up to scare you rigid and keep you awake at night. The film promises you a slow and horrifying death, as your loved ones die around you from untreated illnesses, your possessions are slowly taken from you, you lose your job, all certainties about your future are undermined, and your money and assets are slowly drained away.


‘No one can defeat the Autumn Statement. There is no escape.



Editor's note: Autumn Statement is the fourth film in Stephen King’s ‘Black Economy’ franchise. The first three films are called Black Hole, National Insurance, and Winter Fuel Payment.  



Image credit: perchance AI

U Turns are the new straight lines

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The government has consulted geometric mathematicians to conclude that the economy isn't Euclidian but is hyperbolic, like the universe is (probably). In a hyperbolic universe a straight line is curved and parallel lines intersect, so mirroring fiscal policy on a geometry that makes little or no sense to anyone observing what we think of as real life makes an enormous amount of sense to everyone in the Chancellor's team.


'A U turn in policy isn't the negative the opposition like to say it is, it's simply an alternative application of what we said the policy would be, just in the opposite direction,' said a spokesperson. 'If it's good enough for the universe, it's good enough for us,' he added. 'When I say us, I mean Rachel. I don't understand any of this,' he admitted, off the record. Which in a hyperbolic universe is almost certainly on the record. His name, off the record, is Keir, but don't repeat that.



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