A major rethink of the coalition’s deficit reduction plan is underway after UN lawyers discovered a forgotten clause in the Declaration of Human Rights, enshrining forever the entitlement of all to have a two week holiday abroad irrespective of the economic challenges threatening their standard of living.
The full legal status of the right was confirmed in response to a middle England backlash following last week’s spending review. As domestic budget meetings were held up and down the country it had emerged that many households had refused to ringfence the holiday budget and left the autumn fortnight in Alicante very much ‘on the table’. The government received a flood of complaints from householders reporting that in spite of the Treasury-issue presentation showing that when all the slices of the orange had been eaten by orange-eating overheads people there were no extra oranges available to feed to the orange-eating frivolity people, their families were just not buying it.
Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the clause had been discovered after UN staff had found the document propping up a desk leg after a 40-year hunt. “Turns out article 24 bangs on in quite some detail about the abject misery of the onset of winter, and the inalienable right to an all-inclusive last minute deal in the sun for half-term to maintain a basic level of civilised society. My government agrees that no citizen of this country should have to face the demeaning humiliation of announcing to a group of friends in Costa that they’re ‘not able to go away anywhere this year’. The situation is grim, but I mean, come on, we’re not totally fucked”.