In the land of Enmore, the government got to worrying one day. “Crime Up Again” was the headline, and a government doesn’t stay a government for long, in a democracy, with that sort of bad press.

So the cabinet got together and decided what to do about it. The solution, proposed by the Prime Minister himself, was radical, farfetched and yet somehow strangely obvious. Like desperate men are wont to, they leapt upon it with a vengeance. “Put a stop to all this violence”. The government could certainly be seen do be doing something now! Nobody could complain if it was a measure to protect the precious children, could they?

Soon the cry was taken up by every paper. Every TV station carried the campaign. The Prime Minister himself made a speech about it. “Read my Lips: No More violence”. It was a very good speech, and it made him very popular, and he went home very pleased about it.

So the newspapers stopped reporting violent crime. The TV stations banned all the nasty programs. And the computer games. Ah, yes. Those nasty computer games were eviscerated they were. All your shoot em ups and beat em ups and in fact anything that had a bang or a scream or a bad bad word were taken up and dumped in the trash and squished till the iron screamed in protest.

And then, just to be sure, they were squished some more. The children were protected from this filth.

A plus for the Prime Minister and the cabinet was that they didn’t have to report crime statistics any more. So they couldn’t go up. And that made everyone sleep easier.

It wasn’t all peaches and cream. A few people stood up and said, “But you can’t get rid of violence? What happens without that outlet?” and other terribly nasty things that were just not with the program.

But the PM, or fat controller to give him a friendly and more jolly mien, ignored all that. These voices were a minority, and not helping at all. Besides, the campaign was a sure fire vote winner, and votes are terribly important.

Next, those terrible prisoners found their cells were painted pink because some research said that pink was calming, but then they stopped the research because it had proved something, and who needs to carry on research after that?

So the prisoners had pink rooms. Instead of making number plates, there were more cleanup crews (in pink jumpsuits of course) and they had to plant more flowers. Which made the place look prettier and everyone agreed it was nicer than before.

New computer games were written, and everyone had to play them. “Feed the cute little rabbit” and such. Though if you didn’t, nothing bad happened and the rabbit didn’t die. So it wasn’t a very popular game. But it was taught to the precious children in classes, so they all learned to feed the cute little bunny rabbit, to the detriment of their ABC.

After the computer games, they were told that other games had to be nonviolent as well. Competitive sports were canned when it occurred to the fat jolly controller that supporting a team often led to violence. Everyone in Enmore was behind this apart from a small dissenting few voices that tried to say “Erm, But what do we do of a Saturday night without the football?”

But the fat controller wasn’t listening. So football ended. And people played “fuzzy bunny” instead; or they got together for a good game of Monopoly. But this got neighbors and the family together of a weekend, and many thought this was a good thing.

Until that is, the fat controller said that a monopoly was a bad thing, and why are people being so competitive all the time, and couldn’t we all just get along?

So Monopoly was thrown out of the country, to the ire of Parker Bros, and “Caring Sharing Co-op” took its place instead. There was muted enthusiasm for this, but hey, it’s for the good of the precious children isn’t it? So it was put up with, and most everyone had a copy of the game gathering dust somewhere.

Eventually, much to the delight of the fat controller, there weren’t any dissenting voices any more. Dissent leads to violence, and we can’t have any of that. So the people that shouted and screamed and were violent were quietly taken away and persuaded not to. This meant everyone had a far more pleasant day.

Before you knew it, everyone had outlets of nice games and things to do, and everyone was happy about it, and smiled to everyone all the time, because if you didn’t then certain people in the employ of the government began asking awkward questions and well, it was far far easier to smile than to answer those sorts of questions.

So it went for a few years, and the children were protected from all that was nasty, and the fat controller was re-elected as prime minister, and he went home a very happy man. And the people at the voting booths that asked all the voters if they were happy under the fat controller were just as surprised as everyone else that he won the election, but they too went home very happy indeed. After all, didn’t everyone?

And after years of investing all their nice feelings in nice games, and not having anywhere to have an outlet for their nasty naughty aggressive feelings, all the children grew up… nice. And they knew to carefully report any behavior that wasn’t nice, so the questioning people could come round and have a word.

Just to check that everyone was happy, of course.

Eventually though, the cabinet got into a bit of a snit about all this, arguing that perhaps, just perhaps they had overdone things. The fat controller was horrified. Arguing? At his table? He didn’t let it happen again, that was for sure. It quite spoiled his day. He sent the cabinet home without any supper.

The army was disbanded, because they didn’t need an army, that couldn’t learn to curb violence. Though the fat controller privately felt that he still needed some police, but kept that a bit hushed up so that people didn’t worry about it. It was definitely a good thing. All that money wasted on arms!

Some of the people that used to be in the army weren’t altogether delighted, but wisely decided that discretion was the better part of valor in this case.

But the week after that when the next country over invaded, and threw out the government, and brought in their wretched cigarettes and oh so horribly violent movies and video games and books, everyone was terribly terribly shocked. But nobody minded much after a bit.

Except possibly the fat controller – but they gave him a nice trial and a lovely public execution, which was only fair.

He drew a nice crowd too. After all, there wasn’t a much to watch on TV, as they said to one another during the proceedings.