Government ministers are this morning putting the finishing touches to a plan which will see countries that use the English language as their means of communication being charged for it.
Countries such as the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada have got away without paying for their use of English for far too long, according to many senior Labour politicians, and the time has now come to address the problem.
A charge per capita is the favoured means of calculation of cost, and Chancellor Alistair, Darling has estimated that the new 'language tax', as it will provisionally be known, will generate more than £700billion in its first two years.
The news has not gone down well abroad however.
In the US, a White House spokesman dismissed the idea as "codswallop" even though he had no idea what codswallop was.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper shrugged his shoulders and explained that French was the preferred language spoken in much of Canada, and Australia's Kevin Rudd said:
"Strewth, Bruce! You don't know Christmas from Bourke Street, y' Pommy bastards!", which presumably means something, but as to what, we're not sure.
British PM Gordon Brown, who, although a Scot, will be exempt from the charge, as he is a swindling politician, hung his jaw open as he said:
"Many of these countries carve up the English language to such an extent that it is almost unrecognisable from the way in which it should be spoken. In these times of economic destabilisation, we need to secure funds from anywhere we can, and this is an excellent opportunity for us to do just that."
