Satire

London, UK, 10^th January 2022. The UK government announced today that it intends to formally withdraw from the World Trade Organization, and intends to only trade with other planets.

Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, said in the statement, “the current rules of the WTO are not fair to the great Planetary power of the United Kingdom, and continue to be an unwarranted infringement on UK sovereignty. We believe that trading with other planets will ultimately prove to be more economically powerful for the UK, and will place us in a leadership role in the Solar System.”

The statement continued to say that the UK government hopes to conclude a deal with Mars sometime in the next 10 years. “We expect to make contact with Martian overlords in the next 10 years, either by radio or by a personal visit. We have reached out to NASA to see if we can use one of their Mars rovers to deliver a message to the Martian government. We are excited by the unparalleled opportunities that this strategy provides. We have vegetation and water, they have lots of iron, judging by the color of the surface of the planet. “

Heaven, August 3^rd 2021: In a press release from Heaven, God, nearly 4000 years after the event, issued a belated apology for the Great Flood that required Noah to build a massive container ship to preserve the Earth’s animal species.

“Yeah, well, that was a boo-boo on my part”, he said, after stopping part-way through creating yet another variant of the Covid-19 virus. (“I decided to throw the whitecoats another curveball”, he said by way of explanation). “I left the shower on in the bathroom and went for a long weekend to party with Satan, and when I came back there was water everywhere. You should see the water bill for that month. Horrible. It could be worse though. I did tell that guy to build a boat and capture two of every living thing. Otherwise I would have had to make all of those animals from scratch, and I lost the CAD plans for some of them. Can you imagine how much time it takes to model a rhinoceros or a lobster? And it is just as well I had whistled up that volcano group, Ararat or whatever, when I built Asia Minor, or Noah would have been totally SOL, haha.“

Asked about the Plagues, God sighed. “Yeah, well, one of those was a SNAFU with the local Celestial Depot. Those DIY stores keep running out of pesticides in the Spring, ya know? Otherwise I might have been able to stop that locust thingy.”

God excused himself at that point. “Sorry, gotta go. I have to go sort out the earthquake and hurricane schedule. You guys are pissing all over the environment, so things are going to be a lot more hectic down there in the near future. “