Straw Bans Laughter in Jail

The Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, has axed a comedy workshop held in Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire, after it emerged that some prisoners taking the course may have cracked a smile or two when they were meant to be suffering the unceasing torments demanded by the righteous vengeance of society.

“Prisons should be places of punishment and reform, and providing educational, training and constructive pursuits is an essential part of this,” he said. “But the types of courses available, and the manner in which they are delivered, must be appropriate in every prison.”

“There is a crucial test,” he continued. “Will the tabloids holler if they get wind of it? In this case the answer is undoubtedly ‘of course they fucking will’ - so, regardless of the fact that comedians working the circuit are not generally known for their heinous criminal activities, this course has been cancelled and will be replaced by a giant, useless treadmill, covered in grease, to which prisoners will be chained for sixteen hours a day. And horsewhipped. Happy now?”

The BBC, meanwhile, has apologised for the comedy series ‘Porridge’, which Mr Straw says gives the false impression that, on occasion, things may take place in the day-to-day activities within a prison which could give rise to an occasional wry smile on the face of a prisoner. DVDs of the series, starring the notorious criminal mastermind Ronnie Barker, have been pulled from retailers’ shelves and destroyed, along with the master tapes.

The BBC says it is working on a new series - provisionally called ‘Gang-Buggered Bastards of Belmarsh‘ - which it hopes will permanently de-glamorise life inside, in the eyes of the viewing public.

Tax Giveaway - Everything Must Go

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, is widely tipped to abolish taxes altogether in Monday’s pre-Budget report.

Treasury insiders claim that Mr Darling has carved ‘Fuck It’ in large letters across the famous red briefcase with a Stanley knife, and is to embark upon a reckless scheme in which all forms of taxation - personal and corporate, direct and indirect, stealthy and bleeding obvious - will be scrapped with immediate effect. Furthermore, tax rebates will be available to everybody on a first-come, first-served basis until the nation’s reserves are drained to zero.

“The hope is that people will use this windfall to spend like there’s no tomorrow - which, in economic terms, is pretty much the case,” said a source close to Mr Darling. “After that, God only knows what will happen. Something’s bound to turn up, though. Always does.”

The Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, fresh from his man-of-the-people voice-training classes, sounded a critical note of caution, however.

“Jesus H. fucking Christ on a frigging unicycle,” he shouted. “With tits.”

Formula One Heading For Messy Divorce

Speculation continues to surround Formula One’s dictator-for-life Bernie Ecclestone, after he claimed to be surprised by his wife’s announcement that she was seeking a divorce. Ecclestone and his wife Slavica have reportedly been working from separate offices at the beginning of November.

Divorce experts - or, as they are sometimes known, solicitors - are predicting that a divorce settlement could break records, although only if the laws governing divorce are repeatedly altered throughout the course of the proceedings in order to penalise anyone who looks like they might be winning.

Mrs Ecclestone, a former frost giant from Croatia, is expected to file for divorce on the grounds of her gnome-sized husband’s unreasonable behaviour. McLaren, Williams and a host of other teams not beginning with F are said to be queuing up to support her claim.

It is widely expected that she will walk away from her 23-year marriage with Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Australia, Brazil and Monaco, leaving her husband with nothing but Singapore, Bahrain, China and Malaysia.

Motorsport’s legendary Murray Walker, however, predicts that years of happy fairytale romance lie ahead for the Ecclestones.

Labour Pledge To Abolish Judges

A leading Labour Party policymaker, Jim Murphy, has prioritised the sacking of the Strictly Come Dancing judges as the only way to steer the nation through the worst global recession in decades.

The former NUS president told viewers of BBC1’s Question Time that underperforming slacker John Sergeant was truly representative of modern Britain - utterly useless, well past his prime and generally a bit too full of himself, yet a source of pride and inspiration to many - while the evil, scheming judges were emblematic of the stock markets, unscrupulous mortgage lenders and al-Qaeda.

“I haven’t really thought this one through,” admitted the cherub-faced Scottish Secretary, “But I know a bandwagon when I see one, and if there should happen to be a snap election - in June, say - then the electorate should know that a vote for Labour means giving the finger to the Strictly Come Dancing Judges.”

“Unless everyone’s forgotten all about it by then, of course,” he added. “In which case we’ll support the most stereotypically camp housemate in Big Brother.”

Very Late News: Racist Party Members Face Threats and Intimidation

Members of Germany’s National Socialist Party, speaking through a time warp created by a top-secret Black Forest research station in 1945, have told the Nev Filter that they are living in fear of intimidation and violence, after their names and addresses were leaked on the internet.

“I’m peeping out of a basement vent opposite the Chancellery, in the heart of Berlin,” said Martin, “Even as I speak, there’s Red Army hooligans swarming all over the building, pulling down our beautiful eagle emblems and waving their foreign flags from the rooftop. And would you believe it, some vindictive bastard in a tank’s gone and driven it all over my flash new Merc. I’m looking at a fucking enormous repair bill for that.”

The party’s membership list is said to include details of secret police officers, teachers working in re-education camps and doctors conducting ground-breaking medical research involving lampshades.

“I’ve been hiding in an underground bunker with me lovely Aryan girlfriend all day,” complained Adolf, whose name and details feature prominently in the leaked document. “I’m getting phone calls from all me mates, saying heil me an’ all that bollocks, but they’re about to be strung up from the nearest lamp-post. There’s bloody foreigners everywhere you look, I‘m telling‘ yer. Russians, Yanks, Brits, you name it - it‘s like an invasion round here. I’ve just heard that, right now, there’s a truckload of seppos pissing it up in me holiday home in the mountains, what me and my old pal Hermann spent a right packet doing up. I’m a bag of nerves, straight up, an’ that‘s the truth. I swear, if it goes on any longer I might get all narky, marry the missus, poison the both of us, grab a gun and do meself an injury. It’ll be all over the papers, I can see it now: Evil Scum Harass Lonely Austrian Immigrant Into Suicide Pact. How will that look, eh? This country‘s gone to the dogs, innit?”

Woman Buggers Up Simple Repair Job

A daft cow has made a complete balls-up of a simple DIY repair job on the International Space Station, said US space agency NASA today.

The outdoor job - a piece of piss involving the ball joint on a solar array system, according to NASA technicians - was cocked up beyond belief when the clumsy bint, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, started singing and doing a silly zero-gravity dance, and knocked a tool-bag into the depths of space.

When the dozy bitch returned to the airlock, moaning that she had broken a fingernail extension, the other astronauts on the space station wasted no time in telling her to stick to cooking and hoovering - and made it abundantly clear that in future she should leave the technical stuff to the blokes, who had an aptitude for that kind of thing.

According to mission controllers, Ms Stefanyshyn-Piper then burst into tears, locked herself in the zero-G toilet and refused to come out.

“Time of the month,” shrugged fellow-astronaut Steve Bowen, as he cracked open a tube of beer and strapped himself to the sofa for an uninterrupted evening of sport on the telly.

“Why Is Nobody Buying Our Wallowing, Bloated Gas-Guzzlers?” Plead US Car Manufacturers

Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have told a Senate hearing that unless $25bn of US taxpayers’ money finds its way into their bank accounts by Friday, the world will undoubtedly come to a fiery end.

The ‘Big Three’ deny that mismanagement has caused the current crisis in the American car market, blaming the global credit crunch instead for their financial woes.

“Washington has no idea how goddamned difficult it is to sell a car to a nation of three hundred million assholes who all believe in their God-given right to live miles from their places of work and leisure, and would rather drive three thousand miles across a featureless desert than entertain, even for a moment, the godless commie heresy of using the railroad network,” said Hiram N Firam, a spokesman for the stricken industry.

“We’ve tried everything to attract the typical US buyer,” he told senators. “We’ve put tracks and turrets on our SUVs, added a verandah and a hurricane basement to our people carriers, even built a second storey with a widow’s walk feature onto our pickups - but it’s all to no avail. You’d think, with the little people worrying about losing their homes, cars so unnecessarily vast that you could comfortably house a family of six in them and still rent out a box-room to a gun-crazed loner would be selling like hot cakes. But no, these unpatriotic bastards keep driving around in that beat-up old Toyota they got last year.”

“What we really need is a nuclear war with Japan,” he added. “But 25 billion greenbacks ought to tide us over till then.”

Brown Urges Tories to ‘Get Sensible’

Gordon Brown has denounced the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, for saying cruel and unkind things about the pound, and demanded that Tory leader David Cameron remove him immediately from the Conservative front bench and replace him with Captain Sensible.

“My Right Honourable friend, that defeatist little shit Osborne, has done untold damage to the British economy with his doom-laden posturing,” thundered the prime minister in the House of Commons yesterday. “What this country needs is somebody relentlessly upbeat, as typified by the former guitarist with punk legends The Damned, whose chirpy cover of the song ‘Happy Talk’ wakes me up every morning, and has made me the cheery soul you all know and love. And I’m sure his jaunty red beret would go down well with the core Tory voters, who‘d probably think he was some kind of war veteran or something.”

A spokesman for the 54-year-old Captain said: “Wot?”

US Outlaws Captain Jack Sparrow

The US government has added the Walt Disney Corporation to its list of terrorist organisations, as latter-day buccaneers inspired by its smash hit “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie franchise anchored their latest prize, the giant oil tanker Sirius Star, off the coast of war-torn Somalia.

“The time for talking is over,” said President George W Bush. “These films consitute nothing less than a terrorist training manual. As I speak, Disney employees are being rounded up and sent to Gunatanamo Bay, where they will no doubt appreciate the bright colours of the detainees’ uniforms. Anyone who has rented, bought or downloaded any of these evil films is advised to wait in their homes until federal agents arrive to arrest them. We’ve been patient up until now - after all, Condy and I crapped ourselves laughing when that shipment of Russian tanks got captured without a shot being fired - but now these evil pirates have their hooks on our lovely, lovely oil, and that makes me really pissed.”

Asked whether a more viable solution might be to utilise a small part of the world’s largest floating arsenal to mount some kind of meaningful patrols in the dangerous coastal waters off East Africa - perhaps using some of those huge aircraft carriers whose hangars were bulging with AWACS radar planes, assault helicopters and strike bombers - to make the world‘s oceans safe for international commerce, the President placed his fingers in his ears and sang loudly.

Urban Awards Show Marred By Horrific Outbreak of Music

Shocked guests have been talking about the horrifying moment when an ugly act of senseless music broke out in the middle of the Urban Violence Awards at London’s O2 Arena last night. 

Eye-witnesses told investigating police they weren’t actually there and this racist interrogation constituted harassment, but a homey who happened to be in the vicinity told them that a group of about thirty people suddenly jumped up and started rapping.

“One of my hoes caught it all, right in both ears,” said a shaken MC C. “The beats must have come straight at her, and she’s pretty shaken up. I had to slap the bitch twice before she stopped tapping her foot.”

“Still, I got an award for it,” he added. “Word.”

“The company I work for, Intensify Death, were just presenting an award for Least-Provoked Termination of a Promising Life,” said Brixton drug-earl PS/3. “Our man was just about to go on stage and present this award when this happened. The irony is that Intensify Death is a project that tries to spread the message to murderous gang members of Britain’s inner cities that packing an iPod really isn’t cool at all, so this is really disappointing.”

Some guests have criticised security at the venue, saying that if they had known they could take knives, guns and hand-grenades into the event then the singers would have been silenced immediately.

Baby P Killers Lambast Haringey Council

The three murderers found guilty of murdering 17-month-old baby P have hit out at Haringey Council’s social workers, blaming them for the toddler’s horrific, protracted death.

“The social have got blood on their hands,” said the child’s stepfather. “Unlike me and his mate - my girlfriend always made sure we washed it all off every time we beat her son black and blue.”

Meanwhile, the government announced plans to prevent any similar tragedies from ever happening again by forcing social workers to intervene earlier in domestic abuse cases, at least until the Daily Mail fills its front page with the headline “NOW INTERFERING SOCIAL WORKERS CAN STEAL YOUR KIDS”.

Amazing Images of Another World Published

Astronomers have released stunning photographs of another planet, light years away from Earth.

The digitally-enhanced pictures depict hazy shapes circling a fading star. The dim star, known to astronomers as NBG-60, or Prince Charles, is very old, and unable to shed much light on anything. The circling objects, which have been named Camilla, Wills and Harry, are said to be inhospitable and composed of nothing but gas.

“Their behaviour is quite unlike anything you’d find on in our solar system,” said NASA‘s space sciences chief, Ed Weiler. “There’s no indication of planetary recession at all. These distant objects just revolve serenely in their little circles, completely unaffected by events on planet Earth.”

Asked if Prince Charles exhibited any traces of real life, Mr Weiler replied: “Not as we know it.”