NASA Search For Intelligent Life In Jeopardy

As NASA prepares to test launch its latest rocket, there were doubts expressed yesterday as to whether its intended mission – to search for intelligent life in the British political system – was a colossal waste of time and money.

[Photo taken by NASA probe launched into the recent Labour conference showing a complete absence of intelligent life]

Over the years there have been a few tantalising hints that the British political scene may once have – a long time a go – harboured intelligent life, but looking at the barren intellectual landscape it now presents to us, many find that very difficult to believe. NASA has taken it upon itself, however, to investigate these signs and to settle - for once and all - if it is possible for intellectually coherent beings to survive in the near-vacuum of what passes for modern day political thought.

As a NASA spokesperson said:

We launched a number of probes, one into each of the recent Party Political Conferences in the hope of detecting any signs that the political parties had any detectable signs of intelligence. We knew it was a long shot as party conferences are usually the last place anyone would expect to detect any signs of intelligence, but by then we were getting desperate for anything, anything at all, that could justify us continuing with the project.

After all, with the rate Britain is plummeting down the league tables from everything from individual freedom to – quite possibly – the Subbuteo world championships – times are indeed getting desperate, and – if the country is to survive as anything other than a place on the map – something needs to be done, and done quickly – to get some one with even the vaguest idea of knowing what they are doing back in change of the place before it goes completely tits-up.

The NASA probe sent crashing into the Labour party conference discovered little more beyond the Labour party’s ongoing project to make everything illegal they can’t tax, and to tax everything they can’t – yet – make illegal. The only signs of life found by the probe were footprints from Labour’s bureaucratic centralising dinosaur, apparently living on long after it should have become extinct through being weighed down by its own internal contradictions and its society-destroying perverse incentives.

Unwilling to let it touch down, in fear it could become contaminated by the deadly alien spores it is rumoured to emit, NASA kept its probe safely in orbit around the Conservative Party conference, where – to the surprise of many it did pick up some – rather ambiguous - signals. Up until recently it has been assumed that the Tory conference was a totally unsuitable place for any form of intelligent life to flourish, beyond the basic reflex knee-jerk response to any mention of ‘hanging and flogging.’

However, some maverick scientists within NASA have claimed that there was some hope of finding intelligence within the Conservative party, but hopes are diminishing especially after the latest probe beamed back reports of an outbreak of publicity-seeking tokenism of the worst sort: namely all-women short lists, exactly the opposite of anything resembling intelligent life by turning politics into even less relevance; a sort of Benetton or Coke-cola advert with nice smiley representatives of all the sexes, sexual orientations, races, hairstyles and choice of knitwear in the country in a big shiny happy people snog-fest.

As one political journalist said:

When people want politicians to be ‘more representative’ they do not want this pick ‘n’ mix selection of all the various diversities, they want politicians who have some idea, some notion, however vague and ill-informed of what it is like to live in this over-regulated, over-taxed, over health and safety obsessed kingdom of the petty-minded over-officious bureaucratic box ticking mentality that chokes all the point, purpose and joy out of life with a kind of gleeful bloody-mindedness interested solely in its own ever-increasing expansion and vital self-importance.

On its way back from somewhere far more interesting, another NASA probe briefly flew past the Liberal Democrats conference. Interestingly (nearly), in the far distant past, this party once showed signs of evolving some sense of individual liberty and responsibility as the basis for a political philosophy. However, exposure to some of the more toxic elements of socialism and a bout of some rather unpleasant interbreeding with the Labour party, led to the then Liberal party taking up weave your own lentilism, windfarms, sandals married to an abiding interest in unsuitable beards and excessive amounts of un-seasonal knitwear. This was – of course - a complete evolutionary dead end. Little of any worth has been heard from any of their conferences recently, and, consequently, political scientists are tentatively coming to the conclusion that this species may soon become extinct.

UPDATE:

A NASA spokesstarchild has just made the following statement to the world’s press:

Frankly we believe this mission to seek out intelligent life in the British political system is a complete and utter waste of time, money and resources and it will be cancelled forthwith. Instead, today I announce a new mission for NASA, where we are going to explore space: the final frontier. Where the voyages of the starship Enterprise will undertake five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no man has gone before and introduce all those lives and civilisations to the wonders of the Obamagasm… at gun-point, if necessary. Thank you.