Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

The Gracious Address: 2007-08

The unofficial version

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, we will take forward policies to respond to the rising aspirations of the people of the United Kingdom for a change of government; to ensure security for all members of the government; and to entrust more power to Parliament and the people, with a strong emphasis on Parliament.

We will continue to take money from your pocket to spend not as you would want, nor as we would want, but on that which we think you ought to want.

We will continue to throw money down the mine shaft that is the British education system. Institutes of learning will become day-release prisons for the feckless and the criminal. Employment will not be encouraged, but businesses will be subsidised to take on the illiterate and the innumerate in a cruel parody of apprenticeship.

We will continue to stoke the fires of the property market by controlling housing policy from Westminster.

We will continue to manage the health of the British people from Westminster, in particular by adding another layer of management to the NHS, and further regulation of what British women may do with their bodies.

We will regulate what constitutes the socially acceptable balance between work and family life, by destroying employment and removing the incentive to work.

We will seize monies from bank accounts without the permission of the account holders.

We will require small businesses to paper over the cracks in state social care by offering pensions. Consequently wages will be reduced, and employers will provide good pensions in principle, but no jobs in practice

We will tax the British people (by proxy) on their carbon emmisions, regardless of their productivity, dither over nuclear power and plough more money into economically unviable methods of power generation.

We will control traffic and public transport from Westminster. The sound of a meter flag dropping in a Taxi in Tredegar will reverberate around the Palace of Westminster.

We will work with self-appointed community leaders, legitimising the judgement of people not on the content of their character but on the colour of their skin.

We will pass another Criminal Justice Bill, creating new laws whilst failing to enforce existing ones.

We will define what it is to be British.

We will end common-law traditions of citizen-policing and turn Constabularies into Gendarmeries. Internment will become standard policy.

We will pursue policies to secure a stable and strong economy, with low inflation, sound public finances, and high levels of employment. We will pursue them, but never catch them. In the interim, entreprenuers and businesses will be expected create enough opportunity and productivity to pay off the debts accrued by the Government on your behalf.

We will take control of banking.

A Bill will be introduced to reduce regulatory burdens on business. [Note, I include this logical fallacy unedited, as satire would be superfluous.]

We are committed to openness and accountability, and to a strong Parliament able to hold the Government properly to account. Your accountability, we mean, not ours.

We will continue to allow representatives of Scotland to vote on matters pertaining only to the English and Welsh.

We will fund our parties with your money.

Estimates for the public services will be laid before you. They will be wrong.

We will continue the net transfer of money from the people of England and Wales to Scotland.

We will continue to transfer power from the individual to local government; from local to national government; from national to supranational government; from supranational to international government.

We will pay lip service to reducing global poverty, whilst subsiding our unproductive food producers to lower world prices, and maintaing strong trade barriers to prevent Africa from selling its goods in our country.

We will continue to work with the Government of Iraq to deliver security, political reconciliation and economic reconstruction. They may even return our phone calls this year.

We will continue to support the government of Afghanistan, regardless of their views on the rights of women and homosexuals.

We will start a war to stop a war.

We will maintain Britain's strong commitment to reaching a lasting peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, despite our natural inclination to support one side of the conflict more than the other.

Other measures will be laid before you, subject to the front pages of the major national newspapers, and BBC Radio 4's Today program.

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels.

For comparison:

Queen's Speech: 2006-07

Queen's Speech: 2005-06

Queen's Speech: 2004-05

And for the history buff:

Archive of Queen's Speech 1994-2006