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Two robbers had independently accosted a traveller on a public highway.

"If you allow me to rob you," said the first, "I will spend most of it on you, one way or another."

"If you permit me to rob you," said the second, "I will also give it back, but I would take less."

"Impossible!" declared the first, "If I robbed you of so little, I should not be able to live!"

Ultimately the traveller declined to be robbed by either politician, and instead invested his money in a finance company.

A group of frogs chose a stork as their leader, recognising its obvious qualities of strong leadership. With time, however, they grew tired of the stork and some began to consider its habit of devouring them alive an unjustified intrusion into their private lives. So an election was held, where the incumbent stork ran against a fox.

"I promise not to eat as much as the stork," said the fox, "Also, I am cuter, and I am not the stork."

The fox was duly elected. True to his word, he only ate half of every frog, leaving the rest for the rats.

Asked for an opinion on a planned plant closure, a redundant freezing worker responded, "Well, we're all quite gutted."

"And how do you think I feel?" enquired the sheep.

The leaders of a minor party were announcing their plan for the economy.

"How many points does your plan have?" asked the journalists.

"Twenty," replied the leaders.

The journalists politely declined to cover the story, as they were not prepared to remove their shoes and socks.

A traveller observed a politician flogging his environment policy beside the road.

"Why do you hate your policy so?" asked the traveller.

"On the contrary," said the politician, "I am entirely in favour it."

Judging the politician by his actions, the traveller moved on. Shortly thereafter, the poor policy finally expired, and the politician was able to proudly display it without any risk of its going forward.

Passing a political meeting, a thoughtful gentleman heard a candidate complaining that the Government should have cut taxes when times were good and they could afford it.

"Surely," the gentleman thought quietly to himself, "by that reasoning taxes should also be raised in the bad times."

The gentleman was then promptly run over by a bus, as he was too good for this world.

A financier, about to offer a destitute man a high-interest loan, was accosted by his conscience, which he greeted as a stranger. "Why should you rob this man?" asked the conscience, "Think of your shareholders!"

And so the chastised financier took the money for himself.

A politician, on receiving his just reward in the afterlife, was distressed to discover that hell was a closed economy.

He immediately arranged for the privatisation of the furnaces and the contracting out of the flames.

"Oh!" cried the Devil as damned souls and demons fled across the open borders by the score, "Hell will soon be empty!"

"You forget," said the politician, "that I have been enacting my policies among the living for decades. Expect an dramatic increase in immigration."

In gratitude, the Devil made the politician Chief Subsidiser of Private Infrastructure Companies.

Two policy farmers at market, arguing over the merits of their respective environment policies, decided to choose a winner by direct competition. They mounted their policies and, after several false starts, spurred them into action. The race was tightly contested and the two policies were soon moving at an astonishing rate. Eventually they vanished over the horizon in a puff of emissions.

The crowd broke into spontaneous applause at this decisive turn of speed, but one onlooker was less impressed.

"I wonder if they also go forward?" she wondered.

A woman with augmented breasts secured a job reading the news on television.

"So it's true," she thought, "Interest rates are related to inflation."

A rabbit was walking through the forest when he was set upon by a hungry bear.

"I declare an inquiry into bears!" exclaimed the rabbit.

While being devoured, the rabbit contemplated the folly of following the example of parliamentarians.

A campaigning editor brought a man to law for setting fire to one of his newspapers.

"This man is charged with arson?" enquired the judge.

"No your honour," said the editor, "a matter of demarcation. Using newsprint to generate more heat than light is my prerogative."

An applicant attempted to bribe an immigration official.

"The influence of the department cannot be bought!" declared the shocked official.

"Although," the official added after a pause, "it can be married into or swapped for manual labour."

But the applicant had already left for a country whose corruption is less complex. And so another skilled migrant was lost to New Zealand.

A citizen, contemplating a body hanging from a gibbet, observed its tendency to swing in the breeze, so that whichever direction the wind blew, so swung the corpse. The citizen watched with interest until satisfied that this was a consistent pattern and not a mere fluke.

"Well I don't know who he is," said the citizen, "but he has my vote."