The government has announced a plan to pay 10% of certain state benefits in vegetables. This will include child benefit, universal credit, state pension and widows bereavement allowance.
A spokesman said, ‘This change will be a win-win. Benefit recipients will not be tempted to fritter away their money on booze, fags or lottery tickets. They will receive healthy food that will improve their diet and their health. The predicted health benefits of all that extra fibre are enormous. We are forecasting that this will dramatically reduce demands on the NHS.
'We expect the media to have fun with this new policy – ‘bean there, done that’, ‘taking the pea’, ‘just lettuce live our lives’, ‘home swede home’, 'marrow minded', 'celery sacrifice', 'stick and carrot', and so forth – but we are deadly serious. This is a practical, pragmatic, sensible and wholesome alternative to bad ideas like a meat tax, a sugar tax, a fat tax or a fat cat tax.
'All the vegetable supplied with be seasonal British vegetables – no weird foreign stuff. Recipients will receive a wide variety of British veg., but in winter they can expect to receive a lot of turnips. We are planning to issue recipe leaflets for wholesome British meals like turnip madras, turnip risotto, and swede and sour turnip, for example.’