Strange days: Europe's got space talent

(Creative writing)

Central government in Iona (countries formerly known as Britain, Northern Ireland and Eire) was now operating on a hand to mouth basis. People employed in public service were rarely paid and many took to moonlighting and even more were open to at least passive if not active fraud. For example tax inspectors would turn a blind eye to unrealistic accounts and lawyers were ever ready to vary a will in favour of a client.

Collection of income tax had all but collapsed following a government decision to treat all public employees as self employed as a way to avoid the crippling costs of providing public service pensions leaving only the occasionally paid out and means tested state pension.

The government had tried to plug the short fall in in its income stream of public finances by issuing Bonds at seemingly ever increasing rates of interest (ever increasing because they were tied to the Bank rate which itself continued to rise year on year). No-one now believed that these Bonds would ever be repaid and even the interest payments were soon beyond the reach of the Treasury despite repeated devaluations of the iEuro.

So it was no surprise that reality VidTV became a form of voluntary taxation with the money from voting via mobes, twwitts, emails, back and redberries being used to fund essential projects and services. At first ti was merely things like specialist hospital services often in competition with one another and of course breast cancer and children's services always won. So when the iEuro Space Station asked to appear on 'Europes got talent' no-one expected them to win or to attract over one million iEuros. And this was to feed them and keep them generally supplied for the next year otherwise the station would have fallen out of the sky!

Their appeal to the viewers, listeners and feelers (those with the very latest tactile servers) was so poignant and the quality of their space videos and graphics was nothing short of stunning. And of course the sheer hum- and tact-ability of their retro disco song 'I'm a spacebeing yes I am' loosely based on the 1970s Monty Python Song 'I';m a lumberjack and I'm OK' won the day for them.