It's Criminal

Chancellor 'Gorgeous' George Osborne is claiming the recently announced drop in recorded crime as another triumph for his economic policy of austerity.  "We've known for years that the police have been inflating the crime statistics for years by committing fake crimes so as to justify their existence and inflated pay packets," he told a meeting of Young Conservatives in Streatham.  "Thanks to my policy of cutting government spending across the board, police forces up and down the country have been forced to reduce the number of officers the employ.  Not surprisingly, with fewer Bobbies on the beat, crime rates have fallen dramatically!"  He later qualified his comments, following criticism from several Chief Constables, stating that he didn't believe that police officers were necessarily committing major crimes to inflate their statistics, just minor offences.  "Obviously, I'm not saying that they are out there committing murders - except in Tottenham, perhaps - and sex offences," he said in a statement issued by the Treasury.  "But everyone knows that they're always out there stealing people's phones and iPods - especially from black people under the guise of 'stop and search' - not to mention a fair bit of vandalism and housebreaking." 

Not everyone is convinced of Osborne's claims.  "This is clearly a case of our criminals underperforming," declares his Labour counterpart, Ed Balls.  "Like so many of our industries, crime is suffering from a lack of investment, affecting opportunities for new criminal activity, thanks to this government's disastrous economic policies."  However, the government has responded to these allegations by claiming that it is already addressing the problem of underperforming criminals, which it believes is an entirely separate issue. "Unlike the last Labour government - of which Mr Balls was a member - our response isn't to import huge numbers of foreign criminals from Eastern Europe," a spokesperson told the press.  "Instead, the coalition government is working on introducing whole new kinds of criminality - the real problem here is that criminals haven't kept up with changes in modern crime and remain stuck in the essentially Victorian criminal mindset of 'old' crimes like robbery, murder and larceny.  We need to completely modernise our crime!"  To this end, the spokesperson pointed out, Welfare and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith was busy creating whole new areas of criminal activity.  "Being poor, claiming benefits, even just having a spare room - these are just some of the innovative new forms of criminality  he's already introduced," the spokesperson enthused.  "Those are just the start - believe me, he's got many more up his sleeve!"