Tax revenue is tax revenue, but apparently, SOME have suggested the line be drawn in the sandbox once and for all.
Chinese state employees have this week been ordered to do their patriotic duty to support the local economy - by lighting up a cigarette - and no ifs or ‘butts’.
In Wankin province the order has come down from above that employees of all local government departments, organisations, service centers and corporations must consume at least 23,000 cartons of cigarettes this year.
This Numpty Dumpty government edict translates into 400 cartons for most departments and state companies, and 140 cartons for each school child over the age of five.
In a law which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “the state picks up the tab”, cadres of the party faithful are required to smoke local brands, and anyone caught puffing on imported US ciggies could face a mandatory sentence of twelve months in one of the Middle Kingdom’s numerous Smiley Face organ donor prisons.
The smoking diktat by Beijing’s ruling geriatric Oligarchs aims to boost the regional economy by encouraging more consumption of local cigarettes – and being a non-smoker will not be accepted as an excuse for non-compliance.
Each work unit in the local government has to produce a monthly smoko plan, which outlines rates of consumption by employees.
This plan will be closely monitored, and if the bureaucrats and civil servants – and their children – and their children’s children - fail to smoke the required amount, their department risks losing out on its share of the full smoking allowance of four million yuan (around ten dollars) to spend on luxury goods such as toilet paper and Tampax at the State-run Yuan-Stretcher stores.
During one Big Brother inspection at the Kafka Institute of Paranoia in April, party apparatchik Mr Bay Liff was rooting through waste paper baskets in the staff room and found three butts from cigarettes made in other countries.
The headmaster was given thirty lashes then tarred and feathered as a warning to other teachers and erring landless peasant types.
The contraband cigarette supplier, a certain Ray Ling, a renown fence and criminal type, was ordered to donate both kidneys to the People’s Transplant Clinic.
China has more smokers than any other country, with 850 million puffing away regularly. A million die of smoking-related diseases every year - which many prefer to dying of starvation.
The government has introduced more pro-smoking measures recently to try and encourage people to smoke, such as introducing ‘Fag-Friendly’ areas in schools and running advertising campaigns to encourage children to smoke more and eat less.
Anti-smoking radical Yu Can Too was recently arrested while posting what police officials termed as ‘propaganda notices’ around colleges and government offices urging people to ‘kick the habit’ and take up practicing Falun Gong for the betterment of their physical and spiritual well-beings.
Mr.Too was convicted of subversive activities and sentenced to five years of re-education at the Happy Days guano mining pit in Tibet
Conversely, a Ministry for Ill-Health spokesman, Mr Fuk Yew Tu, told the Daily Shitraker “Encouraging smoking is a good population control strategy – the more men smoke their sperm is less fertile – and smokers die younger so we save on health bills and the drain on our natural resources. It all contributes to our carbon credit cap and trade exchange fund being in the black.”
