The UK's Treasury department opened an interactive website in the hopes of receiving suggestions from the public on handling fiscal policy. The site was well publicized by finance minister, George Osborne, who sincerely hoped some of the suggestions would help deal with the record deficit, budget cuts, and other fiscal problems. To its credit, the Treasury site received a handful of useful suggestions, such as using cats on treadmills to generate electricity and levying a windfall tax on people named "Steve," but the interactive forums were eventually closed due to complaints from minorities who claimed many of the "suggestions" were hate speech.
The interactive features were no longer available as of July 16th; a message stated, "The site has been subject to a small number of malicious attacks so we unfortunately had to pause the interactive features for now." The site is still accepting suggestions, but they will no longer be immediately published. A list of some of the truly useful suggestions has been compiled and made available.
© C Harris Lynn, 2010
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