Government plans to introduce new book-based currency

The Government have announced an audacious plan to replace the British Pound with a new book-based currency.

The shock announcement came just weeks after Chancellor George Osborne’s most recent shambolic budget. After taking the United Kingdom to the brink of economic catastrophe through a series of ill-thought out neoliberal measures of privatisation, tax cuts for international conglomerate corporations and attacks on middle and low-income households, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has released a statement explaining that he sees books and literature as the only way to save the failing UK state.

“The British people have had to put up with a lot these past six years,” the Chancellor wrote. “And although I would say I have taken substantive action to make things easier for people, I am starting to recognise that we now need – more than ever before – new, innovative, some may even say drastic, measures and ideas to ‘stop the rot’ and make Britain great again.”

“As such, in order to ensure the British economy continues to grow and create jobs, and after consulting with various leading economists, we have decided to forge ahead with a new, literary-based currency,” Osborne continued. “Britain, after all, has given the world so many priceless works of literature – from Shakespeare through to J.K Rowling. It’s time we recognised that money, in its current form, isn’t serving the needs of the people, and replaced it with something that will enrichen the lives of everyone: books.”

The full details of what the new British currency will look like, or how it will function in practical terms, has yet to be revealed. One inside source close to the Cabinet told Nothing in the Rulebook they expect to see a quasi-bartering system introduced, while taking aspects of free-market economics and adapting them into something more cultural.

“Nobody likes money anyway,” our source said. “It’s boring and can get a bit of a weird smell. I’m sure people would be much happier to fill their wallets with book, script and poetry extracts rather than tiny bits of paper with pictures of old people on them.”

Prime Minister David Cameron said he welcomed the change in British currency.

“Forever more, the date of this announcement – April 1^st – will be known as a great day in British history,” the Prime Minister said. “Introducing a literary-based economy, built on the shoulders of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Golding, Orwell, Woolf and Hardy and so on, will help us pear down the deficit and support British workers.”

Some financial analysts, however, have voiced quiet concern over the plans.

“Replacing The Pound with a heap of books? Are they totally bonkers?” An incredulous colleague of economist Simon Wren Lewis said in response to the announcement. “First they ignore all rules of basic economics with their stubborn-minded pursuit of austerity, then they attack the incomes of the British people while giving tax cuts to a handful of their billionaire donors, and now this. I’ve never heard of a developed country using a book-based currency before, and quite frankly I am in no doubt that this will be yet another unmitigated disaster caused by the Conservative party.”

George Osborne dismissed criticisms of his plans as “the usual left-wing loonies getting on their high horse about what will be seen, in years to come, as the most financially astute idea in the history of economics.”

Analysis

Professor Wu says: “We have long agitated for the Conservative administration to recognise the value of books and literature, yet today’s announcement goes far beyond what we ever expected to achieve. We were originally just hoping that Osborne and co would stop slashing budgets for local libraries and start to invest in our culture, and schemes that promote the countless wonderful attributes of books and writing. But to have an entirely book-based economy? I personally can’t wait to use my first edition copy of Ulysses to pay down the mortgage on my flat. As David Cameron said, April 1^st, 2016 will be a day long remembered in the history of this country.”