That All-Purpose Apology In Full

In the light of the massive £550,000 libel settlement paid out by Express Newspapers for publishing a complete load, falsely suggesting that the McCanns might have bumped off their own daughter, the Nev Filter would like to take this opportunity to prostrate itself in abject abasement, in the earnest hope of avoiding a similar fate on any number of fronts.

We would like to clarify the following points:

The Airbus A380 is not a fuel-guzzling insult to the entire planet; will not be restricted to a small number of airports willing to spend hundreds of millions upgrading their facilities to handle it; and will most assuredly not cause a media frenzy of unprecedented proportions if one should one day drop out of the sky and kill an unprecedented number of hapless travellers.

The Ministry of Defence does not waste vast sums of taxpayers’ money on equipment designed to fight a war that ended nearly 20 years ago; regards the safety and long-term welfare of its troops as its paramount duty; and is very keen to have any of its rare failings exposed to the harshest public scrutiny on order that it may humbly learn from its mistakes and ensure that they are never repeated.

The Metropolitan Police did not execute an innocent Brazilian electrician by emptying their guns into his head in full view in a busy public space; and were certainly not so badly supervised that they nearly shot a separate team of their own officers, who were certainly not holding him down at the time.

The poor and disadvantaged are not easy targets for government ministers eager to compete for the tender affections of the writers of the Daily Mail leader columns. They are, of course, all feckless, workshy loafers who hurtle around in brand-new BMWs, live in palatial 14-bedroomed council houses and whose only source of back pain comes from staggering out of the Jobcentre hauling suitcases full of benefits which are gaily flung at them by smiling, solicitous officials from the ever-bountiful Department for Work and Pensions.

We at the Nev Filter apologise unreservedly for our cynical – and, it goes without saying, utterly unfounded – lies and misrepresentations, which we sorrowfully admit were made for the sole purpose of fomenting mayhem, anarchy and bloody revolution on the streets of Britain by whipping up the notorious rent-a-mob expatriates of the Canary Islands into an unstoppable army of murderous, howling lunatics. Sorry.