In the wake of disastrous new unemployment figures which show a 17-year high, David Cameron has announced a radical government initiative to revise the tried and tested English tradition of abusing and deriding the French in order to tackle the worsening crisis.
Explaining the thinking behind the new policy, the Prime Minister said he had tried blaming bad weather on the appalling unemployment statistics, but that it had failed to have any effect on the public’s overwhelmingly negative opinion of him:
We have commissioned polling experts to conduct a detailed and long-term study of public opinion and they have discovered an indisputable correlation between laying into foreigners and improvements in the approval ratings of politicians. That’s why in this time of serious crisis in my personal ratings, we have decided to divert attention from the dire economic situation by bashing as many foreigners as possible.
The new research suggests there may be a previously unexplained correlation between berating of foreigners by English politicians, particularly the French, and public opinion. The figures suggests the same effect may also be true of abusing Germans.
A spokesperson for the opposition Labour leader, Ed Miliband said their own research also suggested there may be a connection between slagging off other nationalities and public opinion during a crisis:
Mr Miliband is extremely worried and concerned about high youth unemployment and in particular why his own low leadership ratings are not improving because of it. That is why we are seriously considering a change of direction in our policies to tackle the economic problems by sneering at the French even more than the government are doing, as well as looking at seriously increasing our reviling of anything in the least bit German. Our own research suggests mentioning corrupt Italians and poor Romanians may also have the same positive effect on our standings in the polls, so we’re considering having a go at them too.
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Please feel free to comment – you don’t need to register and I’m extremely minimal with the moderating – so fire away:
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Pride's Purge 
An All Party Committee will shortly publish briefings to encourage Private Eye and other organs to switch to Johnny Foreigner bashing and Spitting Image will be recommissioned in order to provoke televisual laughter at anyone foreign. An E-notice will be published listing the targets that must be avoided for obvious financial reasons such as the Saudis and the Chinese. The broadcasters will, of course will issued with guidelines and Michael Stipe will be asked if R.E.M.’s song “Shiny Happy People” can be adapted fiord the 21st century to reinforce the notion that the English are jolly nice people whose trenchant wit never means any harm to anyone except foreigners.
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Did you notice what happened a few hours after you wrote this? The governor of the Banque de France, Christian Noyer, gave an interview in which he said that the agencies thinking of downgrading France’s sovereign should downgrade the UK’s first. As the Zerohedge blog described it, it was “the head of one central bank doing all he can to throw another central bank under a bus”. So your humour has a point, but I think you got the target wrong.
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Gordon.
You think I should target the governor of the French Central Bank instead of our own Prime Minister for doing nothing to reduce UK unemployment?
That’s almost as good as blaming the bad weather.
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All the European banks will be dreading (and making money from) Standard & Poor’s next pronouncement – the global money flow goes far beyond solitary national government influence, Cameron’s isolationist stance helps none except the international gamblers
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