The thick end of government policy

We should beware of what makes us laugh

Today’s Times newspaper carries a report that comedy writer Armando Iannucci is to be recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours this weekend. The article by Chief Political Correspondent Aubrey Allegretti goes on to report that Iannucci finds great humour in recent government policy. Iannucci recently tweeted (X’ed) that one of the Conservative Party’s manifesto pledges has previously featured as a plotline in his satirical comedy The Thick of It.

You’d think that, between Mr Allegretti and Mr Iannucci, one of them would have worked out by now life’s essential truth that all government policy starts out as comedy gold.

Take Income Tax. It didn’t exist before 1799. Before that, if your salary was £10 per month, your employer paid you £10 per month. The following extract is from The Thick of It Christmas Special, 1798.

BOSS: Happy New Year. Here’s your £8 salary.

STAFF: No, Boss. I’m on £10. And very grateful for it.

BOSS: Yeah. £10 is your salary. So I pay you £8. It’s the new law.

STAFF: What law?

BOSS: S’called “tax”.

STAFF: Tacks?

BOSS: No, tax. The £2 you used to get from me is now called tax.

STAFF: So you keep £2 of mine to pay for your tacks? And it’s legal?

BOSS: No, mate. I give it to the King’s Review and Custard.

STAFF: The King’s what?

BOSS: Sorry [reading] “His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”

STAFF: What’s customs?

BOSS: VAT.

STAFF: That?

BOSS: No, VAT.

STAFF: What’s that?

BOSS (shouting): It’s “VAT”. V-A-T.

STAFF: I know: “VAT”. What’s that?

BOSS: It’s when they don’t just take 20% off everything I pay you. They also add 20% on to the price of everything you buy.

OK, not nearly funny enough, or sweary enough, to have been written by the great Iannucci. But hopefully you get my point.

And if domestic fires weren’t a source of great tragedy, there would be comedy gold in the way modern fire policy has evolved.

Twenty years ago, I moved into a block of flats which has a fire alarm. We were told that, if we heard the alarm, we should evacuate. (No sh*t, Sherlock, I thought. How old-fashioned I was.)

Ten years later, the building’s management announced that, if we hear the fire alarm, we should stay put. Residents couldn’t believe it, but management insisted it was safer to keep the front door closed and stay inside. Today that is the accepted wisdom, as strange as it sounded when we first heard the policy.

Jump forward ten years to this week. A fire consultant recommended to my landlord that, in future, the building’s alarm should be silent. The sounders “only serve to confuse residents”, he said in a report. A silent alarm will “strengthen the stay-put evacuation strategy.”

I asked how people would know to stay put if they can’t hear an alarm. I was told the idea is to stay put whenever you can’t hear an alarm. (No way, Sherlock. When I’ve finished writing this, I need to go out and get a life.)

So, imagine: I’m on my way out. There is a fire on the floor above me. The alarm is silent, so I am oblivious. I press the lift-call button, but nothing happens. The fire alarm may be silent but it has sent a signal to put the lift out of action because no one should use the lift in a fire.

I wait by the lift doors. Still oblivious to the existence of a fire on the floor above.

My neighbour comes out of his apartment. I tell him the lift isn’t working and we chat about how useless the building management is.¹

We chat a little more and then decide to walk downstairs just as a couple of burly fire officers rush up the stairs.

“Is this a drill”, I ask.

“No, it’s a fire. You’re supposed to stay in your flat.”

“Shall we go back inside?”, I ask.

“No, you can’t go back. You’ll have to evacuate now.”

My neighbour and I start to walk down the stairs. Another two fire officers rush up towards us. Even more burly than the first two. The stairs aren’t designed to handle two people going down and two more going up at the same time. Especially not when two of the four have helmets, breathing apparatus and axes.

“Maybe this is why they wanted us to stay in our flats”, I think to myself as one of the two fire officers shouts at us: “You’re supposed to stay put in a fire. Don’t you read the instructions?”

One day, perhaps, the world will make sense. In the meantime, the difference between satire and cutting-edge policy is just a matter of timing.

1. Actually, I live on the ground floor and, as regular readers will know, the apartment block I live in is owned by the residents and I am on the company’s board.