Friday 15th August 2003: Political == Satire
Recently, for want of anything better to do, I went trawling through the web servers of HM Government in search of anything interesting, incriminating, or dangerous. I had hoped to find something like instructions for tasking the Armed Forces from a remote location, or at least the cleaning & refurbishment manual for John Prescott, but alas, I was to be disappointed. I did, however, find the following:
Labour Government '02 SP1
Since the release of Labour Government '02, a number of bugs and other issues have come to the attention of the Creators. Here are listed a number of the most prominent problems addressed in the SP1 upgrade; however, this is not an exhaustive list.
Problem: Labour Government '02 will not install, or is not successfully initialised and elected!
Workaround: Whilst Labour Government '02 will successfully install on top of LG '97, owners of Labour Party '96 or earlier will find the two products are incompatible. Users must remove all supporting programs installed with LP96 to avoid policy conflicts.
Problem: When using Dossier '02, and Spin is deselected, I am presented with the error message "Your joke is both unoriginal and unfunny."
Workaround: As of January 2003, all jokes revolving around weapons dossiers will generate this error message. We recommend that you move to making fun of the National Health Service, education, transport, or any other government department.
Problem: In the event of a terrorist attack, Secretary of Defence XP may exit with a General Protection Fault.
Workaround: Admit that I'm the funniest man alive.
Problem: My copy of LG '02 reports that the Opposition could not be found, or was considered laughable.
Workaround: This is an intended feature; indeed, LG '02 cannot possibly function without a laughable Opposition. If this bothers you, we recommend you purchase Lib Dem 200x, Nationalists 2: We Hate the Darkies, or a variety of other no-hoper pastimes.
Problem: my Government has been stolen by the EU Commision on Human Rights!
Workaround: We made it clear when the product was sold, that the product violated certain EU conventions. Read the disclaimer.
Problem: Labour Government seems to behave in exactly the same way as my previously-installed copy of Tories '92. Has there been a conflict?
Workaround: Look you, I don't want to be rude about this, but you can just fuck right off. Can you see any similarity between John Major and our new innovative Blairite Interface? What's that, you can't? Well do excuse us whilst we gloat.
Problem: My copy of Government's opening screen has displayed Tony Blair being sodomised by George Bush for the last 6 months! Is this some sick joke?
Workaround: Yes. We are, of course, masters of mortal comedy.
Problem: My copy of Government seems to use my CD drive to fire discs at adjacent computers. Is this normal?
Workaround: Yes, we're also masters of the art of metaphor. Bite me. Um. Us.