Following the rousing success of selling the Royal Mail at a loss (whilst keeping the liability of employee pensions in the public sector), the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the Church of England is also to be put into the private sector.

George Osborne’s close friends have been urging him for some time to make the more profitable parts of the Anglican Church available to investors, and so, to sate their need for taking things of value and converting them into mere money, the Chancellor will be flogging off parts of the Church of England in several tranches over the coming months:

• All silver and gold goblets, plates, candlesticks and other items to be privatised at half their scrap metal value
• Cathedrals will be sold off as heritage centres, museums of generalised spirituality, or private homes to the more gothically-minded of Gideon’s chums
• Village churches will be available for purchase as private residences, allowing those who hate churches but insist on buying rectories which are disturbingly close to noise nuisance belltowers, organs and Sunday morning congregations to go one better and neutralise the whole annoying village church malarkey altogether
• General Synod will be sold off as a reality TV format
• Clergy pensions will stay in the public sector, but individual deacons and priests will be sold off to the private sector. They will still be bookable by members of the public to officiate at church services, assemblies, blessings and to offer private prayer but this will have to be done via call centres run by whichever merchant bank successfully buys the national stock of Anglican clergy
• The Archbishop of Canterbury will be privatised as an after-dinner speaker

A spokesperson for the God, St Peter, said, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money”