Eratosphere - New Statesman -- fiscal cliff winners

No 4261
Set by Leonora Casement
The “fiscal cliff” threatening the US was avoided thanks to swift action taken by Congress, which agreed to a deal to avoid the worst of the Budget Control Act of 2011, scheduled to take effect at the end of 2012. We asked for a child’s description and explanation of what a fiscal cliff is . . . and how to avoid it.

This week’s winners
Weird, some of you. The winners get £20 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead.

Walking, talking, living doll
Fiscal Cliff is a very rich and very wise old man who lives in Barbados and has always known the best things to do with his money. A long time ago, he worked out how dangerous it was to use sunbeds and how expensive self-tanning products were going to be in the future. He also realised how costly it would be to keep going on summer holidays or to get divorced. So he bought a large villa on a sunny island and played with his “living doll” all the time.
During the 1960s and 1970s, when his friends were buying drugs and alcohol, mainly to attract and entertain young women, he played it safe by concentrating on what he was good at: his personal grooming. To avoid meeting him, don’t look in pop-up shops selling calendars near Christmas and never go to Wimbledon if it is raining.
John Griffiths-Colby

Top rate of taxis
A fiscal cliff is a place where the ground drops sharply away in “grudge-it” terms. In America, it’s where you find taxis and also fossils (probably). Americans worry about being out of balance on top of this cliff. It’s something to do with the e-coli and is important because what happens in America can infect the whole world. My dad says the Republicans are fossils and won’t let the taxis pass. That’s so clever. Why can’t we have fossils like that in Lyme Regis?
Anyway, the precedent wants to increase taxis for rich people and just make a few cuts in spending that won’t hurt the poor people. These cuts are called “grudging equestrianism” probably because a lot of people will have to ride hobby horses as a result. To avoid the cliff, I think you can just go the other way and make adults save but raise children’s pocket money.
M E Ault

Falling down
A cliff is a big thing like a wall of rock. Some famous ones are the white cliffs of Dover. People who are sad or have terrible problems or are simply daft occasionally jump off them.
“Fiscal” means something to do with money, so someone might jump off a fiscal cliff because he has run out of cash. My dad is always running out of cash and my mum says it’s because of the betting shops and the booze. But he doesn’t jump off cliffs, although he did fall down in the street the other day just outside the Nag’s Head and my mum often tells him to go take a running jump. Fortunately, we don’t live anywhere near Dover.
There was once a big fiscal problem in America known as the “Wall Street Crash” and many bankers jumped, although in those days they weren’t called fiscal cliffs but “skyscrapers”.
Brian Allgar

A fish called Cliff
My fish is called Cliff and is a very nice pet to have because he can never run away and I don’t have to take him for walks and I can look at him all day in his pond and he loves me. He is a golden colour and I sing him songs and give him his favourite food to eat. I call him Cliff because this is a nice and sensible name and not stupid like Connor’s fish Goldie or Kaylie’s fish Spottie. My dad, he had a fish called Molesworth once and that’s also a cool name.
If you don’t want a fish called Cliff, it’s simple: you just don’t go to the shop and buy one or you don’t go to the fair and win one in a plastic bag. What a silly question!
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead

Publicans and Demon Cats
If you shop and shop and shop all the time in China, you find yourself on top of the “physical cliff”. The physical cliff is as high as 12 trillion clams and two tribes live on top of it, the Publicans and the Demon Cats. The Publicans like guns and God and drive round in very long cars and worry about the gays. The Demon Cats are all Muslims and live on government Wi-Fi and want to take the guns from the Publicans so they can take over the world and force everyone to be healthy. The Publicans and Demon Cats dare each other to get as close as they can to the edge of the cliff before we all fall off. You can win extra time in the game if you can pretend the edge isn’t there. It’s a scary game. Can we stop playing now?
Mark Brandon