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Dawn Purvis, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, says that ‘the Labour government had a chance when they were putting through the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act [2008]. An amendment was put down to introduce the ‘67 Act but that didn’t happen. Leaders from the Northern Ireland Assembly wrote to the PM and said if they forced abortion into Northern Ireland it would damage the peace process. How can affording women reproductive rights threaten peace?’18

Westminster unfortunately took the Assembly’s threats seriously, rather than enjoying the irony that former supporters of terrorism have become ardent defenders of the ‘right to life’. Neither did they see the irony of the Department for International Development’s paper of October 2009, outlining their position on safe and unsafe abortion. It reads: ‘In countries where it is legal, DfID will support programmes that make safe abortion more accessible. In countries where it is illegal and mortality and morbidity is high, DfID will make the consequences of unsafe abortion more widely understood, and will consider supporting processes of legal and policy reform.’19

So the British government is willing to support the fight for abortion rights around the world – just not in Northern Ireland, the one place where they could make most progress really, really easily.

17

EVERYONE SHOULD BE

ENTITLED TO PHONE

IN WORK ONE DAY A

MONTH AND CLAIM

A ‘FUCK IT’ DAY OFF

IN BRITAIN WE lose an incredible 27 working hours per person per year as a result of thinking of excuses for not going to work.20 Inevitably, a distracted workforce lacking in focus and concentration has a direct effect on productivity and efficiency.21

Across Britain this amounts to significant reductions in profitability on a company level and a lowering of the Gross Domestic Product on a national level. This policy seeks to redress this by removing the obstacle to efficiency. Instead of wasting time thinking of ways to avoid work, we should simply provide employees with a viable and all-encompassing excuse: the ‘fuck it’ day.

Unlike the ‘duvet day’, the ‘fuck it’ day offers employees the option of leaving the house instead of remaining on the sofa, as there is no fear of being caught playing football or being found drunk in a pub at lunchtime.

What’s not to like?

18

EVERYONE SHOULD

BE GIVEN THE DAY OFF

ON THEIR BIRTHDAY

EVERYONE DESERVES THIS policy. Consider the occasions when we do get days off. We have bank holidays – and frankly, if ever there was an industry that deserves to have its nose to the grindstone, it is banking. We celebrate Jesus’s birthday and it’s not as if he’s around to have any cake. Then there is May Day, international workers’ day, where we celebrate working people by not working. There are even days off to remember Jesus’s death. We have holidays for all sorts of nonsense, while the one thing we don’t get to celebrate is our individual selves.

Any sane and decent land would give folk the day off on their birthday. We therefore declare any employer who opposes this policy to be a flint-hearted curmudgeon of such Dickensian proportions as to make Sir Fred Goodwin appear a kindly Quaker by comparison. We further declare that such a person will more than likely have shunned the joy of love, family and friends in an obsessive vision of work-obsessed tyranny. They will die alone, their final gasps will be to an empty room, and their laying to rest will see no tears or sorrow. And just to really rub it in, we will declare the day they die to be a public holiday.

NB: For those who ask, ‘What happens if your birthday is on a weekend? Can we get a weekday off in lieu?’ I reply, look, let’s just get the policy up and running, don’t take the piss just yet.

19

THERE SHOULD BE

SEPARATE LANES FOR

PEDESTRIANS BASED

ON THE SPEEDS THEY

WALK AT, RANGING

FROM A FAST LANE

FOR PEOPLE WHO

KNOW WHERE THEY

ARE GOING TO A HARD

SHOULDER FOR

WINDOW SHOPPERS

CITY-CENTRE CONGESTION is