The Evening Haröld

The people of Syria have voted emphatically not to be massacred in a bloodthirsty bombing campaign, it was announced this morning.

Rather than restrict the vote to members of parliament, it was felt that the actual people who would be dying in the rubble ought to also have a say. Turnout was high, at 100%.

The referendum asked the simple question: “Do you want to be massacred by an ill-conceived show of Western indiscriminate aggression? (Yes or No).”

Voting seems to have been remarkably consistent across the sexes and age groups, with 100% of women under 30 voting “NO”, exactly the same figure as men over 80, children under 13, and indeed absolutely everybody else.

“It’s as if they didn’t want to be killed by bombing,” complained UK Prime Minister David Cameron today. “If you ask me, these results seem very suspicious – I find it hard to believe that no-one wanted to die in a mangled heap of concrete and metal. Really, Syria? No-one?”

Others criticised the Syrians for their naive grasp of defense policy, questioning whether the population had really thought this through from a global perspective.

“This decision is selfish in the extreme,” insisted Geoffrey Sang, spokesman for UK arms company BAE Systems. “If these people had any consideration whatsoever of my kitchen extension plans, they would have voted very differently. Well, on their own heads be it. Or not, annoyingly.”

A spokesperson for the “NO” campaign expressed little surprise at the outcome, saying: “We don’t want to die. It’s pretty simple. Death, no thanks. Dying, not any. Do you get it yet?”

“We’re pretty sure that this will now be the end of the matter – we’ve decided and that’s that.”

“You’d have to be a bit of a cunt to bomb us anyway, wouldn’t you?”