Government Fears New Epidemic Outbreak

Late yesterday, a spokeswoman for the UK government issued the following statement to a gathering of political journalists in the Downing Street briefing room:

The current Labour government has, of course, made the UK the successful modern society it now is through our increasing use of legislation to take control of people’s daily lives. However, there are still some people out there who insist on using the frankly outdated, un-egalitarian and individualistic notion of what they call ‘Common Sense’.

This quaint reliance on their own abilities to sort out various aspects of their lives without reference to government best practice guidelines has got to stop. Frankly, who knows where it will lead if people do start thinking for themselves? Luckily, though, there is very little evidence that the majority of our citizens want, or need, to think for themselves… yet.

Although, sometimes, an episode of Common Sense can be quite mild and over quickly, in most cases it runs counter to, or even flatly contradicts, official UK government policy. Therefore we in the government must do all in our power to make sure that any outbreak of Common Sense is quickly isolated, quarantined and treated with powerful doses of hysterical tabloid headlines and reality TV shows until the patient is medically cleared of showing any kind of sense whatsoever.

The spokeswoman then went on to announce that soon the government would be issuing a leaflet to every household in the country outlining the dangers of Common Sense, how to detect the symptoms of thinking for oneself and who to contact should the householder, or anyone in their family, suddenly start thinking for themselves.

The Conservative opposition strongly condemned the government’s action saying:

There can be no justification for this inference in people’s private lives, unless, of course, we thought of it first. However, there is strong evidence that uncontrolled use of Common Sense can – indeed - be dangerous, especially if people start applying it to the political process, where it is right that governments should work to stamp it out.

After all, it is going to be our turn to have a go at being the government soon. Therefore, any uncontrolled severe outbreak of Common Sense could seriously put that in jeopardy, which wouldn’t be fair.