Government sets targets for your further retardation as a human being

In what they describe as 'a natural move forward' from the policies of the previous government and the one before that, the coalition government have for the first time set measurable targets for your further retardation as a meaningful person and rounded human being.

The policy is a continuation of the 'measurable outcomes' tendency within the public sector which aims to ape the private sector in providing goals that can be monitored as a measure of success. The government has ambitious plans to expand the idea to measure your personal level of retardation.

The Prime Minister's spokesman explains: "This announcement is a result of the realisation by the Prime Minister David Cameron that all the other goals and targets set by previous governments, while implying that everyone involved in the public sector was a great sucking void of principles without values or self-motivation, and while successfully becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in many cases, stripping all idea of public service out of the public sector and infantilising everyone involved in creating what we at Coalition High Command laughingly call 'the public good', that all these previous goals and targets were in fact a very roundabout way of achieving our goal of making everyone as empty and morally retarded as ourselves."

The idea behind the policy is that it is always best to set the most direct target possible in pursuit of a given goal. "We think we've got it right this time," said the Prime Minister's spokesman. "The retardation of your development as a human being will now supersede all other government targets. And we're taking it out into the wider world. This will eventually apply to everyone. Your pub conversations need to be brought into line with this target just as much as your child's education or the work of a nurse or Local Authority administrator."

When pressed on the measurability of the target the spokesman explained that it will be monitored using a 'basket or small bucket of measures', all of which will have a weighted impact on your Personal Vacancy Scale (PVS). "Ideally we want people to, for example, see a complete moral equivalence between an unfair decision by the judges on Britain's Got Talent and the government starting a war in a country that doesn't threaten us in any way." He hastened to point out that this is only an indicator. "The target is, when asked what your target is, you would ideally say it is to fulfil your targets. It is, you might say, a meta-target, the target to end all targets."

In the first year the target will be to move all public sector workers up the Personal Vacancy Scale by four percentage points, with the target doubling in each subsequent year and applying to everyone in the country before the next election. When asked whether the new target might have an effect on staff morale, the spokesman explained that the new target would do away with morale entirely. "Morale is not a measurable outcome," he explained. "Nor is motivation, nor compassion, nor ideals. They simply don't register on your PVS, except possibly as negative marks. Do you see where we're going with this? We really are a radical government and we are fixing this country good and proper, like we promised when we were elected. With this new target you will soon stop asking questions like that as you progress towards being as devoid of ideals and substance as we are."