Iceland’s ruling coalition has collapsed, it was reported yesterday, making it the first government to fall victim to the economic crisis engulfing the world. Conservative prime minister Geir Haarde announced the resignation of his entire cabinet, following the failure of talks with coalition partners.
The whole Icelandic economy, which switched from fish to financial speculation overnight in the nineties, fell apart last year when the financial world suddenly realised it had blown all its money on a tiny island whose entire assets amounted to a flock of manky sheep and a volcano.
“In hindsight, perhaps it was just a little ambitious for a nation whose population could all fit inside a football stadium to think it was bursting at the seams with latent financial wizards capable of outsmarting the sharpest money-markets in the world,” admitted Mr Haarde. “Unfortunately, with hindsight, it appears we would have fared better if we’d stood back and let the sheep run our economy.”
As a consequence of its actions, Iceland is now caught in the grip of a currency crisis and rocketing unemployment, with daily protests mounted by enraged citizens.
Britain’s Gordon Brown, however, said he was confident that a similar collapse of government could not happen here.
“Resignation? How quaint,” he smiled, “Nobody resigns any more. You’d have to drag me kicking and screaming from office, because I’ll be clinging to the door frame by my fingernails, and you’d better believe it.”
“Of course, the other unique factor in the case of Iceland was that the population actually got up off their arses and rioted right in front of the parliament building,” he went on. “No chance of that happening here, of course. In the unlikely event of the British public dragging themselves away from footy and celebrity rubbish for long enough to mount a protest in Westminster, the Met would make short work of them thanks to all those new Tasers we coincidentally gave them a couple of months ago.”
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