Wednesday 30 December 2009

'3,000mph Trains? Sure, Why Not?' Shrugs Transport Secretary

Speaking from the top of his shiny head, Lord Adonis today announced an exciting futuristic vision in which everybody was whizzing round Britain at 3,000mph on special anti-gravity trains.

"In the future - either next week on in the year one billion - all trains will be ten miles long, carry a million passengers and draw their power from a star in a carbon-neutral pocket universe," declared the transport secretary brightly. "Here, hand me my crayons and I'll draw it for you."

As he scrawled, the visionary minister went on to explain that the rail network of the future could easily be financed by minting really big coins worth a hundred million thousand pounds each.

"As people travel longer and longer distances to work, they will think nothing of a daily commute from the Outer Hebrides," he gushed excitedly. "Because they will only just have settled into their hover-chair and downloaded the Daily Telepath directly into their second brains, and they'll be at the City of London Spaceport - where a teleport taxi will instantaneously whisk their molecules directly to their desk-podules."

"It's completely brilliant," he added. "Aren't I a clever boy? I need to go to the bathroom."

The Association of Train Operating Companies are said to be carefully studying Lord Adonis' mainly-orange plans on the walls of his play area, but have already issued a press statement declaring that they welcome any improvements to the infrastructure of the rail network, as long as they don't have to pay a penny towards them.

Brown Watching 'With Interest' As Canada Ends Democratic Experiment

Canada's Conservative prime minister, Stephen Hitler, has suspended parliamentary democracy in the vast North American country until March, by which time he will have stuffed its Senate with his loyal henchmen.

"We want to make sure not only that the economy stays on track, but also that we are preparing for future growth, prosperity and the return to balanced budgets," screamed Mr Hitler's spokesman. "And it goes without saying that none of this can ever come about within the constraints of a multi-party democratic framework."

Political observers were quick to note that planned ending of the prorogation of the nation's parliament will coincide neatly with the closing of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

"Between now and March, every Canadian's mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only - namely, whether their plank-wearing skid merchants are better than everyone else's plank-wearing skid merchants," said one seasoned hack. "Mr Hitler could sit stark naked in a corner of their log cabin molesting their pet wolf, and they wouldn't care."

Mysteriously, Gordon Brown has so far refrained from issuing an outraged condemnation of the Canadian leader's undemocratic suspension of representative government.

Tuesday 29 December 2009

Three Cheers For China's Enlightened Wog-Murdering Policy, Says Daily Mail

The entire British media was united today in condemning China's refusal to grant a stay of execution to Akmal Shaikh on the grounds of mental incapacity and translation problems during his trial. Apart, of course, from the Daily Mail, which gave a rousing three cheers to the Chinese authorities for ridding the world of one more evil drug-trafficking wog with bipolar personality disorder.

"You trendy metropolitan liberal junkies make me want to puke," wrote professional ranter Leo McKinstry, in an article which even the Mail's unpleasant editor Paul Dacre might have thought slightly at variance with public sentiment. "This pathetic excuse for a man was carrying four kilos of HEROIN - which, in case you hadn't noticed, stoners, is an illegal drug. Oh, but I forgot - everyone in Britain except moral, upstanding me is probably snorting the vile poison up their hideously-perforated nostrils at this very moment. I hope you all die! Er... where was I?"

Once he had calmed down enough to continue, Mr McKinstry went on to point out that, as if his horrible wog name wasn't a big enough clue, anybody could tell from the colour of Shaikh's skin that he was clearly about as British as a camel's hump, no matter what rubbish might be written in his toytown European passport.

"If the Chinese government - who, slitty-eyed commies though they may be, are apparently not nearly as blind as our druggie-loving government - were to foolishly allow themselves to be swayed by a global wave of misguided, muddle-headed protests, this sinister Paki monster would have been free to join al Qaeda tomorrow and blow up the world by Friday," he continued, warming to his theme. "As for mental illness, don't make me laugh. It's just another hand-wringing liberal excuse for sheer, unmitigated malice on the part of the so-called sufferer. Bipolar disorder? There's no such thing. Are you listening to me, Stephen Fry, you pseudo-intellectual Jew-boy shirtlifter?"

Mr McKinstry finished his zeitgeist-free essay by calling on cannabis-addled ministers to take a leaf out of China's book.

"There is nothing barbaric about the death penalty," he concluded. "The real barbarism lies in refusing to punish criminals."

In response, a spokesman for the government told the Nev Filter: "State-sanctioned murder is deeply repugnant to all civilised people, especially when applied to the incurably deranged. Therefore we suppress our baser instincts and tolerate Mr McKinstry and his toxic poison - abhorrent though it may be to our sensibilities - even if it means that feeble-minded addicts are free to purchase the Daily Mail without prescription on the streets of Britain."

Mandelson Urges Parents Not To Let Boomerangs Come Back

Parents whose children return home after graduating should show 'tough love' and slam the door in their faces, according to none-of-my-business secretary Peter Mandelson.

"Admit it, mums and dads - after eighteen years of enforced celibacy, you've spent the last three years fucking like rabbits all over again, haven't you?" Lord Mandelson tells parents in the 'Parent Motivators' guide, published today by the Department For Business, Innovation and Skills. "Do you really want to go back to how it was before, with the little shits reclaiming their bedrooms for another decade or two? Of course you don't. Tell them there's plenty of jobs at Tesco, and show them the door."

After three or four years of learning how to drink at university, the so-called 'boomerang' children are swarming back to their parental nests, where bed, board and laundry services are freely provided - allowing them to spend their entire JSA on console games and taking part in all-night drug-fuelled orgies at the local Oceana.

"Increase their motivation by bricking up their bedrooms, toys and all, and moving them into the garden shed," advised parenting expert Mandelson. "Then you can carry on romping around the house, indulging your middle-aged role-playing sex fantasies to your heart's content."

Scratching his head, shadow skills secretary David Willetts, asked: "Excuse me, but what in the name of crikey has this got to do with sorting out the economy?"

Monday 28 December 2009

Truancy Highest On Scum-Infested Sink Estates: Shock Report

Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove today called for the entire government to resign in shame, after the shocking publication of official figures showing that school absenteeism was at its highest in areas teeming with scumkind.

"This is entirely the fault of the Labour Party," accused Mr Gove. "Scum children have been terribly neglected by Ed Balls and his failed policies. For example, in some Northern shithole called Manchester - which I must admit I'd never heard of before - on any given day there are more teachers in its schools than there are children. Whatever must their parents think?"

Schools secretary Vernon Coaker, however, refuted the Tory interpretation of the data. He pointed out that the government had prioritised turning schools in deprived areas into frothy palaces of entertainment, rather than stuffy seats of learning.

"Any scumchild who mitches off school nowadays is really missing out on all the fun, daddio," he retorted. "We've got really wicked PCs with all the latest interactive edutainment tools, like Mr Paperclip. He's well wacky, bloods! He really creases me up with his wicked productivity tips."

Mr Gove promised that, under a Conservative Government, the children of families earning less than £50,000 a year would be rounded up in lorries and driven to a new generation of boarding schools surrounded by high walls, from which they would not be let out until they attained a sufficient degree of literacy to fill in a JSA claim form unaided.

The Nev Filter office temp who is covering the Christmas holiday break went out into the surrounding deprived area to canvas the opinions of the local scum. He is now three hours overdue, and it's coming out of his pay.

Faceless, Policy-Free Party Denies Similarities To Faceless, Policy-Free Party

The Liberal Democrats have been quick to pour scorn on David Cameron's claim that there are now fewer policy differences between them and the Conservatives.

"Don't make me laugh," said Lib Dem chief of staff Membership No. 30624474. "The Tories have a smiling, insincere vacuum of a man at the helm, and the voters haven't the faintest idea of their beliefs and core values, or indeed whether they even have any."

"Er... can I get back to you later?" he added.

Sunday 27 December 2009

Obama Acts On Deadly Underpants Man Threat To National Security

US President Barack Obama has ordered an urgent review of airline security after a wealthy Nigerian deliberately set fire to his underpants on a transatlantic flight, subjecting fellow-passengers to the harrowing smell of singed pubes.

23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was carried off the plane on a stretcher, screaming and clutching his smouldering knackers, after the bomb he had sewn into his trolleys failed to explode to his satisfaction. Embarrassed US homeland security officials must now explain why they allowed the former engineering student to obtain a visa after his father, a rich Nigerian banker, had warned them that his son was a dangerous fundamentalist loony.

"We're currently sifting through the contents of our spam folders, which might take a while," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. "At this stage of the investigation, we're focused on the possibility that the words 'wealthy', 'Nigerian' and 'banker' were identified by spam filters as just another invitation to divulge our bank account details to fraudsters."

If the US government turns its spam filter off, say IT experts, tens of thousands of extra staff will have to be employed to read all incoming emails - possibly creating a backlog that will cripple entire departments.

Meanwhile, long-suffering passengers at major airports all over the world face the additional inconvenience of having their underwear forcibly removed and shot by trained security staff.

General Election Must Not Descend Into Hideous Class War - Crikey No, Warns Privately-Educated Tessa Jowell

Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell today told the Sunday Telegraph that Labour's election campaign must not be fought by attacking candidates' social backgrounds, in an implicit criticism of the prime minister's recent scathing comments about David Cameron's privileged Eton background.

"You know, there really is nothing much to be gained from close scrutiny of the social class of Britain's parliamentarians," insisted the old girl of the exclusive St Margaret's School for Girls, Aberdeen. "Frankly, I think it's just jealousy. This sort of thing really only matters in the impoverished imaginations of silly little proletarian oiks with massive chips on their shoulders who have nothing to offer the British public."

"No offence, Gordon," she added. "It's not your fault you didn't have the advantage of a good, rounded education."

Justice Secretary Jack Straw, an alumnus of fee-paying Brentwood School, has already played down the idea that the privately-educated may somehow have little in common with the majority of British voters.

"Believe me, I know better than anybody what it's like to struggle to keep up in the rat-race," he insisted. "In a competitive streaming system, getting a 'Must try harder' for Latin was a clear shot across the bows which left me in no doubt that I could all too easily wind up as one of life's losers in class IIIC, at the very bottom of the heap."

58 other Labour MPs whose comfortable-perhaps-but-hardly-rich parents kindly saved the taxpayer a few bob by sending them to public schools were quick to echo Ms Jowell's egalitarian sentiments, in a joint statement sent to the Nev Filter (Old Plymothian & Mannameadian '74-'81).

Saturday 26 December 2009

Consumers Receive New Commandments

The Almighty God Retail - speaking through Its faithful acolyte, the Advertising Industry - today declared the Christmas Quartile officially over, but stressed that a similar Maximum Retail Opportunity would be launched in September 2010.

"Meanwhile, my overlords have instructed me to remind you all that another Maximum Retail Opportunity commenced this morning," said a senior Advertiser in his holy red-framed glasses. "Sadly, however, it has been observed that some Consumer Units have neglected their duties by selfishly remaining at home all day with their Revenue Generators, Development Prototypes and Obsolete Models. This must cease."

The Advertiser added that Development Prototypes at various stages of Launch Readiness were already being heavily targeted, via the new Mind Programmers they received yesterday.

"Attention, Development Prototypes of all sizes!" he announced. "Have you already attained Product Saturation with the pitifully small quantity of Entertainment Modules which came supplied with your Mind Programmer? Pester your Consumer Units, Revenue Generators and Obsolete Models to buy more! Spare no effort in issuing frequent reminders that some Entertainment Modules will destroy slightly less Disposable Income during the period covered by this brief Maximum Retail Opportunity!"

Consumer Units have also been alerted, via their own Mind Programmers, to the availability of strictly limited quantities of numerous Comfort Fixtures and Semi-Functional Domestic Substructures at notionally lower prices than at some unspecified point in time, along with an official notification that this Retail Singularity was profoundly unstable and could not possibly exist for much longer.

Revenue Generators in many Retail Areas of the world were reportedly groaning blasphemously at the prospect of having to double their productivity, in order to support the latest directive of the Great God Retail. Meanwhile, unpaired dual-function Generator/Consumer Units have already been hard at work all day, servicing the demands of obedient Consumer Units and their well-programmed Development Prototypes.

Merciful Pope Kindly Locks Assailant Away Indefinitely Without Trial

The Catholic Church has benevolently decided to lock Susanna Maiolo - the woman who knocked Pope Benedict XVI to the ground - away in a mental institution, without trial, for a very long time.

Offences which take place within Vatican City are normally referred, as a matter of routine, to the Italian legal system for trial and sentencing. However, in a touching seasonal demonstration of God's infinite mercy, Vatican authorities have in this case decided to deal with the incident internally, thus sparing his Italian flock from the trouble of having to listen to the defendant explaining the reasons for her action in a court of law.

Instead, the deeply-troubled Ms Maiolo will receive the loving and attentive ministrations of the Pope's most loyal nuns, and kept well away from the troublesome influence of the temporal world until the Pope's most loyal nuns feel that she is fully cured of her terrible affliction of not regarding His Holiness as the inviolable right hand of God.

"I'll teach that bitch to fuck with me," said the Pope in his traditional Boxing Day address to the faithful. "In nomine patris, filii et spiritus sancti, Heil Hitler."

Friday 25 December 2009

Historians Criticise Half-Hearted Efforts of Today's Publicity-Seeking Nutters

A day after Pope Benedict was knocked to the ground by a mad woman with a grudge, leading historians issued a joint statement deprecatng the marked decline in standards exhibited by desperate misfits in the 21st century.

"In less than five years the world will be marking the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, which really set the benchmark for how much change can be brought about by one well-placed protester with a pet peeve," explained Simon Schama. "I think that, in a way, it's rather sad that the current generation of stroppy nutters has rather lost sight of that nowadays. Would Serbian independence and the collapse of Western imperialism ever have happened, if he'd just given Archduke Ferdinand a slap? I rather doubt it."

Colleague David Starkey agreed. "A century ago, heads of state were quaking in their riding boots, with stroppy anarchists, communists and free-love advocates lobbing explosives at them from all directions if they so much as opened the bathroom window. As a result, more constitutional powers were devolved to elected parliaments, with the vote given to many previously disenfranchised peasants who actually had some say in their lives for the first time ever. Those home-made bombs changed the world, in a way that a miniature of Milan Cathedral probably can't really hope to emulate."

"By 1980s, though, the rot was setting in," commented Michael Wood. "John Lennon might have had a few trenchant things to say about life aboard a garish cartoon submarine, but even the most ardent Beatles fan would find it hard to claim that he was a pivotal figure in the Cold War standoff between two opposing superpowers."

"Things could have perked up again when Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan were shot and wounded by narky loners," he added. "But in both cases, any potential improvements in our collective lot were foolishly thrown away for the simple want of a couple more hours' practice on a firing range. There's really no substitute for a well thought-out plan."

All of the historians were united in their contempt for the sheer feebleness of this year's token attempts to change the course of history.

"Somehow I don't think that Silvio Berlusconi will relinquish control of the Italian media and surrender himself to the authority of the courts because he was lamped with a mantelpiece ornament," sneered Niall Ferguson. "Nor is the Pope about to relax his hard line on abortion and homosexuality, or indeed harden his views on paedophilia, simply because some silly woman briefly tried to introduce him to the pleasures of the moshpit. You can replay it on YouTube until the cows come home; it's just not going to happen. Look, this is a gun, OK? If you seriously want the world to sit up and notice your imaginary grievances, it really is the tool for the job."

Breaking News: Quick-Thinking Bodyguards Save Queen From Spacehopper Maniac Lurking Outside Sandringham Church

Wednesday 23 December 2009

Mandelson Slashes University Budgets When Nobody's Looking

A huge, cloying air of smarminess covered Central London today, as Lord Mandelson spent the day smugly congratulating himself on the impeccable timing of his announcement of a swingeing £398m cut in university funding, now that all the lecturers are on holiday abroad and the students are too busy feverishly stacking supermarket shelves to notice.

"You know, I'm not normally one to blow my own trumpet - Modest Mandy, that's me to a T - but I am living proof that a proper university education brings out a person's native intelligence," oozed the Business Secretary. "Isn't it absolutely brilliant of me to make sure that this assault on the citadels of learning happens when there is absolutely no one around to kick off about it? Clever, clever Peter."

Lord Mandelson also berated the universities for their naïvety in taking at face value the government's meaningless platitudes about increasing student numbers, especially from less-privileged areas.

"All these chavs from council estates - I don't want to cast aspersions, of course, but very, very inferior types - are now swanning around our educational centres of excellence, lowering the tone terribly," smiled Lord Mandelson. "And some of them, would you believe, actually think they're as good as nice, middle-class children! Costs a pretty penny, between you and me, building all those new lecture halls on the never-never - not that the off-the-books borrowing of PFI is anything but a masterly stroke of sheer unadulterated genius from Gordon, of course, and I'm sure that in ten or twenty years time we'll all give him credit when the interest's due."

The slimy peer also urged universities to cram more three-year courses into two, in order to ensure that going to university was only financially viable for students whose parents were comfortably able to support them when they had no time to spare for a part time job.

"And, of course, nobody will have time to waste on fripperies like extra-curricular activities, such as sports, volunteering or, God forbid, their loony students' union," he beamed. "Middle-class people shouldn't fill their heads with any of that 'well-rounded-human-being' tripe. They should come out of university imbued only with a single-minded craving to make as much money as they can, by whatever means necessary, and devil take the hindmost. Sound Labour principles which my grandfather would approve of with all his heart."

Meanwhile, Herbert Morrison's mould-covered corpse has been sighted wandering the snowy streets of North London, heading in the general direction of Westminster and gurgling Lord Mandelson's name ominously.

World's Best Driver In World's Best Car Will Inject Much-Needed Element of Unpredicability Into F1, Say Incurable Optimists

Formula One legend Michael Schumacher has sensationally signed to the new Mercedes team - formerly champion constructors Braun F1 - three years after retiring because there were no more records left to break, in a move which desperate motor-racing publicists are frantically trying to portray as exciting in some way or other.

"Look, Michael Schumacher is really very, very old and decrepit," said a spokesman for Mercedes. "It's touch-and-go whether he'll be able to remember where the starter is, it's been so long since he drove a cutting-edge F1 car."

"Well, not in a proper Formula One race, as such, anyway," he admitted when it was pointed out that Schumacher has spent the intervening years as a consultant and test driver for Ferrari.

Many of the championship's current drivers are young enough to be Schumacher's children, leading the more delusional pundits to claim that the venerable old man of high-speed racing will probably crawl along at a resolute 30mph and not a mite faster, stop at every corner to examine a dog-eared AA map and eventually exit the pits from the entry lane and drive the wrong way around the track until the chase car pulls him over.

But it is the completely unpredictable pairing of Formula One's most successful driver with a world-beating chassis/engine combination which expert PR liars say will add tension and excitement to the flagging championship series.

"It would be a brave man indeed who rushed off down to the bookies and slapped a couple of grand on Schumacher running away with the 2010 title," said motorsport fan and owner Bernie Ecclestone. "Believe me, I've just tried and the odds are bloody atrocious. Even I'd soon bankrupt myself at 500-1 on."

Monday 21 December 2009

Furious French Demand To Know Why Part-French Company's French Trains Are Rubbish

With the French government angrily asking why Eurostar is complete shit (clue: it's part-owned by SNCF, and French power-station constructor Alstom designed and built its rolling stock), the deeply-embarrassed company announced it would be resuming services on Tuesday, by which time everybody's travel plans will have been comprehensively ruined.

As the useless company launched a probe to find out why it took so long to evacuate six immobilised trains (clue: it's part-owned by SNCF, and French power-station constructor Alstom designed and built its rolling stock), chief executive Richard Brown said he was "very, very sorry" that he was being made to look like a complete dick on national TV in Britain, France and Belgium. He insisted, however, that the problem was entirely due to fanatical suicide snow, and certainly nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Eurostar was part-owned by SNCF, or that its rolling stock was designed and built by French power-station constructor Alstom.

"The average pig-ignorant traveller might be tempted to think that a company which builds power stations might have grasped the basic notion that water and electricity don't mix," he told reporters today. "However, the problem seems to have been that snow somehow got inside the power units, possibly by deliberately targeting the huge ventilation gratings. When the trains passed from freezing cold air into the dank, humid environment of the tunnel, the evil snow cynically melted and got into the electrics, causing the train's fuse to blow.

"When our office staff got to work on Monday morning, somebody noticed that rather a lot of trains had apparently failed to arrive at their destinations," explained Mr Brown. "We immediately activated our emergency procedure, which was to send a temp down the tunnel on foot with a wind-up torch. When he found the broken-down trains, he returned promptly, collected some 13-amp fuses from our depot outside Paddington and strolled back down the tunnel to fix things. What's all the fuss about? The system works."

Eurostar (part-owned by SNCF) says it is working as fast as it can to fix the elementary schoolboy error in the basic design of its rolling stock (by French power-station constructor Alstom), by stuffing hundreds of bath-towels around the electric motors and installing vast banks of hairdryers - electric hairdryers - outside both ends of the Channel Tunnel.

Meanwhile, smug railway experts - who point out that Britain happened to make rather good trains, once upon a time - are waiting patiently for the French to shit themselves and gesticulate wildly once they remember that Alstom also built many of their nuclear power stations.

Guinness Factory Burns Down - English Undergraduates Inconsolate

Stand-up comedians across the UK are desperately stuffing their fists into their mouths tonight, in a politically-correct attempt to prevent themselves from making the obvious comment that springs to mind concerning the accidental torching of the Guinness plant in Dublin by inept construction workers who - perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, unwisely - used a blowlamp on felt roofing.

As news of the inferno on the banks of the Liffey spread, millions of comedy Irishmen were left desolate and contemplating suicide - most of their ranks comprising the sub-species of English undergraduate who firmly believes that marking the holy day of St Patrick by drinking themselves inside out on watered-down treacle whilst wearing a stupid great big green hat in some way inducts them into the ranks of Brian Boru's heroic descendants.

Meanwhile, the native population of Ireland consoled themselves with plentiful supplies of the Emerald Isle's traditional tipple - namely, a few drops of chemical cider at the bottom of a glass containing most of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Sunday 20 December 2009

Season's grumpiest greetings from The Nev Filter

Brown Pondering Berlusconi's Post-Assault Rise In Popularity

With Silvio Berlusconi's personal popularity soaring after he was smacked in the mouth with a cathedral, Britain's loathsome prime minister is said to be studying a range of possible bizarre assault scenarios in the months remaining before he is finally forced to call a general election.

Many worried Labour MPs, convinced that their marginal seats will be transformed for decades into unassailable Tory strongholds, have filled Gordon Brown's inbox with helpful suggestions for a poll-boosting rearrangement of the PM's gloomy features, including:

- being strapped securely to a post underneath the London Eye, each of whose cabins has been fitted with giant spring-loaded Dr Martens;

- a weekly televised battering live on Newsnight, in which Jeremy Paxman's forthright questioning style is augmented by Emu with a housebrick clenched in his beak;

- Prime Minister's Decking Time, in which Mr Brown is forced into stocks on the floor of the Commons debating chamber with backbenchers queueing up to pelt him with obscene garden gnomes;

- a Christmas Top of the Pops special, with the hapless PM in the centre of a moshpit seething with over-enthusiastic Rage Against The Machine fans whose elbows have been specially sharpened for the occasion, culminating in a well-aimed stage-dive by a rhinoceros with an anvil strapped to its back;

- an unescorted walk through any city centre in Britain.

Veteran political observers, however, insist that nothing short of a Hellraiser-style sundering by thousands of sharp hooks embedded deep within Mr Brown's pallid, podgy flesh would be capable of delivering the massive swing required for the legion of the damned who now make up 99% of the British electorate to reward Labour with a fourth term in office.

9 Out Of 10 Parents Think Coco Pops Are Some Kind Of Food

A chilling survey published today by the British Heart Foundation shows that nine out of ten breeders are such gullible fucktards that simply carving the words 'Nutritional Information' into a kilo of lard would convince them that it was a perfectly safe substance to cram into the faces of their children morning, noon and night.

"Regrettably, it seems you can print anything - or indeed nothing - after the inscription, 'Nutritional Information'," observed a despairing BHF boffin with a proper qualification. "Most parents in Britain are so pitifully dense that they couldn't tell a vitamin from a saturated fat if you hit them repeatedly in the face with a huge, grunting porker - or, for that matter, one of their own globular spawn, which is much the same thing these days."

Other magic words which instantly disengage any remaining brain cells from ringing alarm bells on sugary cholesterol in a packet include 'wholegrain', 'enriched', 'calcium' and 'unleaded'.

"I'm afraid it's got to the stage where parents would happily tip the entire contents of a 500g box of salt into their child's gaping gullet, as long as the packaging reassured them that it contained 'no added salt'," the spokesman went on sadly. "As a rational scientist I'm not a religious man - but in the face of such staggering idiocy, Christ on a bike is all I can think of."

A grinning, fork-tailed minor demon from the Kellogg's Circle of Hell refuted the scientists' claims by pointing out that one tiny Coco Pops Cereal And Milk Bar "actually contains less than two teaspoons of sugar per bar" - prompting millions of Pavlov-conditioned parents to rush out immediately to buy a multipack of the sickly-sweet crap sticks for their bloated brood.

"While you're down Lidl's, don't forget to grab a couple of sacks of raw cane sugar," it roared, with a maniacal cackle. "Mixed into a bucket of Coca-Cola, it like rilly helps your litto man or princess to develop a healthy brain muscle, or whatever."

"And remember, mums - raw cane sugar contains no added colouring, salt or monosodium glutamate," added the diabolical thing, "Which means it's like rilly, rilly good for your litto darlin's girth - oops, I mean growth."

Saturday 19 December 2009

Desecration of Holocaust Site Considerably Less Newsworthy Than Predictably Inept English Reaction To Seasonal Weather

The appalling theft of the notorious 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign over the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp - possibly stolen to order for a sick neo-Nazi collector - went unnoticed in England, as people sat huddled around their televisions for warmth and shivered at unceasing reports of yet more trains, roads and airports descending into utter chaos at the first hint of winter.

"I went outside and crapped in my pants at the terrifying sight of a sprinkling of deadly snow on the garden," said banker Rob Blind from his sauna-like bedroom, where he lay huddled under three duvets. "So some ironmongery has been pinched in Poland. I reckon it was probably gypsies. What's so special about this Auschwitz place anyway?"

Polish Workers Ask What All The Fuss Is About

As the native English shivered in their flimsy Primark rags and begged for God to make the bad thing stop, the country's Polish migrants went to work wearing an extra woolly jumper and observed that the streets were unusually free from traffic.

"I wait for bus - bus not arrive, so I run," gasped office temp Jolanta Kaczmarek, standing patiently in three inches of snow. "I here now, but office closed. Is English bank holiday?"

Meanwhile, construction worker Wojciech Czarnecki was busy mixing cement on an otherwise-deserted building site.

"Is slightly chilly, no?" he said as he hauled another sack from his chain-shod van. "Foreman to give big anger when get to site, find others all oversleep. My lovely new cements set soon. Is terrible waste, yes?"

Meanwhile, the native people of the south east were huddling around their roaring fan heaters with the central heating on full blast, shivering in cotton-and-polyester summer clothing and sobbing uncontrollably. Outside, the streets were littered with snowdrifts up to ten centimetres deep, and tits which had been frozen off lay where they fell - to be picked up by teams of Eastern Europeans, who said they would send them home to their wives, sisters and daughters.

"My sister in Budapest very sad, say she never afford expensive plastic surgeries," explained László Borbély, stuffing a fine pair of abandoned breasts into a carrier bag. "These magnificent English charlies make for her very nice Christmas present."

Friday 18 December 2009

Entire Nation Tunes In To Hear Live Abdication Broadcast

The United Kingdom is in constitutional disarray today, after the abdication of King Wogan I this morning created a vacuum at the heart of the broadcasting system which has left millions questioning the very future of radio in the modern era.

King Wogan has ruled the airwaves ever since the day Marconi sent his first crackling message, and people today simply cannot imagine burning toast or sitting in a traffic jam without his reassuring presence to ease them gently into another tedious day of pointless, devaluing toil for some other bastard's benefit.

During the formal abdication ceremony this morning, prime minister Gordon Brown solemnly broke off from single-handedly saving the world in Copenhagen to express his deep appreciation of the manner in which King Wogan has selflessly carried out his ceremonial duties day after day for over a hundred years.

"I listen to Tony Wigan on the TV every morning as I spoon gruel into my mouth," he reassured the grieving nation. "His self-effacing witty banter always fills me with mirth NB for fuck's sake make an effort to sound cheerful Gordon don't read this bit out obviously A.C."

At the end of the emotional ritual, King Wogan ceremonially handed over to Ken Bruce - who immediately sought to convince a doubt-filled Britain that, one day, history might conceivably judge irritating has-been oddball Prince Chris Evans to be a worthy heir to the BBC crown.

Diehard traditionalists, however, are pinning their hopes on the miraculous return of King Wogan in Britain's direst hour of need, possibly some time in February when he has finished counting all the money he has made from the BBC for hosting Children In Need and the weak, unpopular King Evans has divided the listening nation into warring tribal factions.

Snow Proving Terribly Inconvenient To Media Types Again

Less than a year after snowfalls brought tragic inconvenience to journalists across the trendier parts of London, the entire south east has once again been buried under a numbing blizzard of non-stories explaining at some length and in considerable detail how terrifying it can be to see one's Jimmy Choos ruined as they sink into a couple of inches of grey slush while closing the garage door.

Newsrooms across the bit of the nation which matters were soon thick with unfolding stories of individual heroism.

"Thank God for me and others like me who bravely ignored Guardian readers' complaints about our 4x4s," said Daily Politics host Andrew Neill as he strode into Television Centre this morning. "I just saved Andrew Marr from freezing to death in his wanky Peugeot convertible, the jug-eared little twerp."

The flurry of self-absorbed doomsaying is expected to continue well into the weekend, easing off gradually by Monday as journalists begin to notice that the world has not actually fallen apart after all. The rest of the week will see the nation blanketed in ill-informed fog about global warming fed by a stormy front emanating from frosty, damp Copenhagen, which has been deeply unsettling for several days now.

Thursday 17 December 2009

Chief Medical Officer Breaks Link Between That Nice Cabernet Sauvignon You Like With Your Dinner and End of Civilisation

Britain's social problems were solved at a stroke today by the outgoing Chief Killjoy, Sir Liam Donaldson.

Britain's top stroppy doctor delivered a devastating diatribe against irresponsible parents who recklessly allow their children to cotton on to the fact that there exists a mysterious substance called alcohol, which may actually be quite pleasant if drunk in moderate quantities.

"Children who find out about this vile chemical abomination invariably grow up into the kind of tragic sub-human wreckage for whom home is a urine-soaked bench in the bus station," hectored Sir Liam in all the proper newspapers which nice people like us read. "And I'm not talking about the council estate rat-people, Middle England - their foul whelps are already hooked on the pure crystal meth that flows from their prostitute mothers' needle-pocked breasts. I'm talking about you - you there, the chap reading this on the 0810 to Charing Cross - yes, you! You disgust me with your corrupt Stowells of Chelsea wine collection and your perverted bottle of single-malt Scotch. The mere presence of this unpardonable toxic waste in your household has condemned your carefully-conceived offspring to a short, wasted life shambling in and out of the prison system. Proud of yourself? God, you make me sick. I want to hurt you badly."

Meanwhile, readers of the Sun and the Mirror were anxiously dragging their fingers along a version of Sir Liam's advice specially tailored for what little remains of their pickled brains.

"You will raise a tribe of uncontrollable little SHITS who will certainly turn round and HACK you to BITS over some silly bloody toy, BECAUSE YOU DRINK," he wrote in big letters. "And you WILL have kids, because you're too sodding THICK to use a CONDOM. The only way to save your wretched life once you start dropping sprogs is this: STOP DRINKING until the ungrateful little buggers eventually fuck off."

Within 12 hours of Sir Liam's sour prognosis, Britain's teen pregnancy rate is reported to have plummeted from 95% to zero. The country's chavscum are said to be signing up in droves to be neutered or spayed by specially-deployed teams of vets, while decent middle-class people like you and me are hastily adding bleach, paraquat and creosote to the contents of our wine cellars and administering the deadly cocktail to the family pet in a desperate collective effort to convince our sons and daughters that alcohol is not, as they had previously been led to believe, rather agreeable with a Sunday roast, but in fact agonisingly fatal even in the tiniest doses.

Traumatised Joshuas and Emilys are now confidently expected to live for at least 150 enjoyment-free years. Meanwhile, the dwindling numbers of Cody-Lees and Sammi-Jos will soon be rounded up by the authorities and placed in an underwater holding tank somewhere off the coast of Cornwall, until their stunted Morlok race mercifully dies out for good.

"I can retire with a clear conscience," said Sir Liam this evening. "My work here is done."

"Unless I can think of some way to cure the nation of sugar, " he added. "And television. And comfortable furniture."

Monday 14 December 2009

Italy Returns To Dark Days of Political Violence, But On A Small Scale


Tensions are running high in Italy, one day after prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was assaulted with a plaster miniature of Milan Cathedral, as all sides rush to arm themselves with a variety of authentically-detailed models.

Opposition parties are said to have stockpiles of die-cast cars and poseable action figures at the ready, while Italy's armed forces are frantically assembling Airfix kits of tanks, fighter-bombers and warships to defend the state against anarchy. Meanwhile, the Pope has appealed for calm, offering to withdraw all stocks of plaster cathedrals and saints until peace is restored.

Mr Berlusconi - who is no stranger to receiving stunning blows from beautifully-proportioned models - remains in hospital under observation, with a broken nose, two smashed teeth, a severely bruised ego, and a massive dent in his pride.

"We are fighting a losing battle to save Mr Berlusconi's lost face," admitted a haggard newsreader from one of the six major TV networks owned or controlled by the media mogul-turned-politician.

Milanese police sources say that the assailant, Massimo Tartaglia, has a ten-year history of mental illness which - according to a spokesman, Ispettore Superiore Selvaggio - may shortly be coming to an end, although they will not know for sure until he has been scraped off the walls of his cell.

As the world took stock of the latest development in Italian politics, British PM Gordon Brown was the first leader to offer Mr Berlusconi his support.

"I urge Mr Berlusconi and all Western heads of state to join me in my war on the mentally ill, which I declared a year ago by scrapping Incapacity Benefit," he told reporters this morning.

Meanwhile, back in Italy, many fear a return to the political violence which blighted the Southern European nation for decades - even if it is on a small scale, like 1/72nd or N gauge.

"I will dread hearing the terrible crack of a firework, and opening my door to see a scene of finely-detailed carnage on my doorstep, with a shattered Scalextric car surrounded by the dismembered limbs of Action Man, Rorschach from Watchmen or Barbie and Ken," squealed hysterical Milanese resident Giuseppe Pasquale this afternoon. "I am ready to flee at a moment's notice - thanks to this agile, robust little radio-controlled dune buggy I bought this morning."

Tuesday 8 December 2009

138 Million More Pigs Using Heathrow Every Year Won't Affect Environment, Say Climate Change Experts

Europe's prime ministers and presidents are said to be planning to surround Gordon Brown with 'wanker' hand gestures when they all get together next week for the usual media photo opportunity at the Copenhagen climate summit, on hearing that Britain would be going ahead with plans to add a third runway to Heathrow Airport just as Mr Brown was telling the rest of Europe to cut down on its carbon emissions.

The British government's Committee On Climate Change today announced that adding an extra 50% capacity to Europe's busiest airport would not harm the country's carbon targets at all. The independent committee was set up to advise the government on climate policy, and includes internationally-recognised authorities of the calibre of Lord Airbus, Mr Ryan Air and American environmental campaigner Bo E. Ing.

"The ignorant layman might think that several hundred more flights a day, each spewing out burnt hydrocarbons by the tonne, might have some detrimental effect on Britain's pollution levels," said Lord Airbus. "But it will be entirely feasible to compensate for this small increase in the nation's carbon footprint, for example by merely turning off all domestic electricity and gas supplies."

"And banning cars," he added.

"The committee recognises that the necessary adjustments might meet with resistance from some quarters," he explained, "But it's not our fault if selfish individuals want heat and light as well as citybreak weekends and two weeks in Florida. We were asked to come up with an excuse for allowing Heathrow to swallow up even more of the south east, and that's exactly what we've done."

Meanwhile, European leaders are somewhat miffed with the British PM for lecturing them on the need to cut their greenhouse emissions, whilst blithely increasing his own.

"Eet ees not unlike a man wiz diarrhoea getting on ze bus, dropping 'is trousers and pebbledashing 'is fellow passengers wiz ze terrible stinky shit, zen telling zem zey could really use a bath," said French PM Nicolas Sarkozy angrily.

German chancellor Angela Merkel agreed, promising: "Ven ze hypocritical bastard Brown stands up to spout his usual hot air, ze room vill be filled mit ze sound of all ze other delegates coughing 'Wanker!' into ze microphones."

Meanwhile, President Obama is reported to be tickled pink that, for once, the circled-finger-and-thumb of blame will not be waved at the United States. White House sources indicate that he has been busy practicing the gesture himself, with the aid of a portrait of his predecessor in the Oval office.

Monday 7 December 2009

'All My Medals Are Genuine,' Insists Remembrance Day Marcher Who Isn't

Roger Day, the 61-year-old man who marched in a Remembrance Day parade wearing medals covering a period from the Battle of Waterloo to the Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150AD insisted today that, as a bona fide member of the SAS, he was absolutely entitled to each medal and had the receipts to prove it.

"I could tell you how I managed to fight in World War Two, despite being born three years after it ended," Mr Day told a Sun reporter, as he polished his genuine Swiss Army penknife. "But then, of course, I'd have to kill you."

"I strangled a man with my own pubes once," he added darkly.

Mr Day denied that, instead of a regimental tie, he marched wearing a gaudy monstrosity from Marks and Spencer.

"The abstract swirl of colours denotes that famous unit of Kitchener's army, the Artists' Rifles," he insisted, whilst cleaning his authentic First World War cycling mask. "It was a privilege to serve in the trenches alongside men of the calibre of 'Sharky' Hirst, 'Stinker' Emin and 'Banksy' Banksy."

Britain's greatest war hero also denied that he fled the march after being challenged about his 21 medals by a real veteran.

"I saw the parade out to its bitter, bloody end," he claimed, while he stripped and reassembled his plastic BB gun. "Then I went for a victory drink with my old SAS pal, Andy McNab. Of course, he'll deny it, even if you torture him by telling him his books are shite. It's all part of our training."

MrMcNab did indeed refute all knowledge of Mr Day, saying: "This is an insult to the brave men and women who have served in our armed forces. Roger Day is not the first to do this sort of thing. And unfortunately he will not be the last."

"Well, there you are, just as I told you. What more proof do you need?" crowed Mr Day triumphantly. Before the reporter could ask him the colour of the boat shed at Hereford Barracks, however, Mr Day leapt into his metallic-camouflaged 7th Armoured Division Mahindra Jeep and drove off to pick up his wife, the Celtic warrior queen Boudicca.

Depression Victims To Be Dragged Back To Depressing Jobs

The government today launched an exciting new mental health initiative, which aims to force people suffering from depression back to the godawful jobs that caused their depression in the first place.

"Each Jobcentre will pick a junior member of staff they don't like much, and give him or her a big, colourful badge describing them as a 'mental health co-ordinator'," said Health Secretary Andy Fuckham. "Their role will be to work with employers, at a local level, to encourage their stressed-out staff back to work by sending private detectives to spy on them and report any moments during the day when the skivers are not actively crying, banging their heads against a wall or decorating their arms with a Stanley knife."

When the depressed worker is hauled back, employers will be taught to smack them on the back of the head whenever they find them staring hopelessly into space, while their fellow employees will be encouraged to help them overcome their mental trauma by telling them to "Smile, you miserable bugger, it might never happen", 'Oh, for Christ's sake pull yourself together" and "You think you've got problems? The heel came off one of my favourite shoes yesterday, but you don't see me making a song and dance about it."

"One in six people has a mental health problem nowadays," said Mr Fuckham. "So our policy is also going to focus on prevention, by tackling the things that cause depression in the first place. In about six months, for example, we will be calling a general election. That should make a lot of people happy, at least for a while."

Sunday 6 December 2009

Survey Shows Nobody Is To Blame For Anything

Almost half of the British public believe that nothing is their fault and you can't pin it on them, according to a Sunday Telegraph poll taken on the eve of the Copenhagen conference on climate change.

While 58% said they believed climate change to be one of the most serious issues facing the world and 23% claiming it to be the most important, 48% of those surveyed said they did not believe it to be man-made. Instead they selected a range of culprits, including solar wonkiness, bovine farting competitions, lazy trees not doing their job properly and the actions of a jealous, vengeful God.

"Whatever is causing this impeding catastrophe, it certainly isn't my Merc ML550 4MATIC belching out four tonnes of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide a year," said Telegraph reader Rob Blind. "Nor is it anything to do with the two tonnes of carbon generated by my annual holidays to Thailand and the Seychelles and quarterly citybreaks around Europe. And it definitely has no connection whatsoever to the 47 million tonnes of carbon spewed out by UK power stations so we can all keep our houses as hot as a sauna all year round."

"There's absolutely no connection to the fact that all of the luxury consumer goods I get bored with every two years are shipped halfway around the world because we don't make anything in Britain any more, either," he added. "So don't try to nail me on that, matey."

Mr Blind went on to explain that it was a bit like trying to blame his insistence on cheap, readily available food and clothing for poverty in the third world.

"Look, this coffee says 'Fairtrade' on the label," he pointed out angrily. "That means some bloody farmer in Ethiopia is probably earning more than I do. And if you can show me a decent tennis shoe made in this country, I'll buy it. As long as it's under £80 a pair, obviously. I'm not made of money."

"My conscience is clear," he added. "Or it would be, if I had one."

Queen To Go Rambo On Paparazzi

After years of intrusive hounding by the press, the Queen has declared war on the paparazzi in a threatening note pinned to a corgi's head and circulated to all newspaper editors by a tear-streaked freelance photographer with a Canon EF 800mm f/5.6 L IS USM wedged inside his rectum.

In the note, Her Royal Highness promises that the next long-lens photographer she catches skulking around the royal estates will be flushed out, run down and crushed under the wheels of her Range Rover.

"And you can't do me for it, neither," added Her Majesty. "I'm the bloody Queen, remember? The army, navy, marines, RAF and the police have all sworn oaths of loyalty to me. If you want to see me in the dock, you'll have to come through them first. Know what I mean?"

Gloucestershire residents say that the Princess Royal has been spotted charging around the lanes near Gatcombe Park on horseback, lopping off overhanging branches with a cavalry sabre, while Prince Charles is said to be looking for authentic medieval cannon which will harmonise with the architecture of Windsor Castle

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports suggest that Princes William and Harry have already signed out an Apache helicopter gunship to cover the royal family's traditional Christmas visit to Sandringham, while Prince Andrew has been seen overflying Balmoral in a Huey with the Duke of Edinburgh leaning out of the passenger compartment with a Minigun.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman told reporters, "Nobody fucks with the Royal Family," before blowing them away with a grenade launcher.

Saturday 5 December 2009

Ingurlund Win World Cup

Jubilant football fans were still dancing in the streets today, after Ingurlund's stunning World Cup victory yesterday.

With the Ingurlund side drawn against Alaska, Sealand and Pluto in Group C of the tournament, the coveted cup is coming home to Ingurlund without the need for a single kick.

"How can we lose?" smiled team manager Fabio Capello. "The Alaskans have to float all the way to South Africa on an ice floe. The current's against them, the polar bear will be getting hungry and the ice will melt soon anyway. Even if they crossed the Atlantic safely, they'd only trip over their mukluks and die of heatstroke."

"As for Sealand - the abandoned artillery platform in the Channel which was occupied by a retired major who declared its independence in 1967 - they haven't actually had a football team since their ball went over the side in 2003 and floated away," he added. "And the Plutonian team won't reach Earth until 2012. Can I have the trophy now, please? I've cleared a place on the mantelpiece."

World Cup organisers have today sounded a note of caution, however, pointing out that the draw only covers the first round of the tournament - meaning that the victors of Group C will still have to play against other teams, some of whom are actually quite good and know what a goal looks like.

"It don't matter," yelled a drunken football fan lying in a gutter in Kentish Town. "After smashing the eskimoes, the pirate crew and the little green men, our brave boys will be so confident nuffink will stop 'em. Ingurlund! Ingurlund! Ingurlund!"

British People Unable To Speak Foreign Languages, Or For That Matter Native Language

Baroness Coussins opened an important Lords debate on modern languages yesterday, by screeching loudly whilst jumping up and down and waving a thigh bone.

Anthropologists in attendance say they believe the Baroness is attempting to communicate her concerns that the British people speak less foreign languages than any other nation, mainly because most of them have trouble getting to grips with their own native tongue.

"The British have long maintained that the bloody foreigners can jolly well learn to speak English if they wish to conduct international business," pointed out Baroness Coussins' keeper - a Pole - as he peeled her a banana. "Unfortunately for Britain, we did and we do. They didn't and they don't."

Wealthy overseas tourists on safari in Britain's concrete jungles report that the local wildlife spends much of its time grunting and strutting around with its colourful decorative hoods raised, in some form of exaggerated sexual display.

Friday 4 December 2009

UFO Unit Closed By Reptile-Dominated Military

The worldwide web is in danger of crashing today, owing to the unprecedented levels of posting, blogging, Tweeting and trolling which have followed the Ministry of Defence announcement that it is closing down its UFO investigations unit and redeploying its bored staff member to duties less detrimental to his CV.

According to the world's estimated 175 million leading self-appointed UFO experts, the unit's closure has already been irrefutably linked to the Tiger Woods crash, the shooting of Guinean military leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, a meeting held by the Nepalese cabinet on Mount Everest, the banning of a strange malodorous man from a library in Leicestershire, the recent spate of Virgin broadband outages and the death of Dambusters actor Richard Todd.

"Everything in the entire world is part of a huge alien conspiracy," said veteran troll THEYAreComing - albeit originally in capital letters - in the comments section of a clip of meerkats on YouTube. "The MoD is completely infiltrated by shape-changing lizards of the New World Order, acting on the orders of Hitler's EU. This unit was logging thousands of calls every week reporting incontrovertible UFO sightings. And that's just the ones I was making."

"What really keeps me awake at night - apart from obsessively flaming all the moronic brainwashed sheep who dare to question my brilliantly-reasoned and exhaustively-researched arguments, which are supported by all rational scientific geniuses, not least David Icke - is the knowledge that 'they' know where I live, and I could now disappear at any time," he added. "And I mean permanently, not like when my 75-year-old mother shouts up the stairs to let me know that my eggy soldiers are ready and cut just the way I like them."

A spokesman for the MoD said that, after 60 years of looking in vain for flying saucers, greys, mothership, men in black, ladies in red, death stars, cloaked Klingon birds of prey and occupants of interplanetary most extraordinary craft, the government had decided to reassess its military priorities, culminating in the reassignment of the UFO unit's staff to ironing an unspecified general's medal ribbons.

"Don't listen to that paedo retard," urged THEYAreCOMING. "He just emailed me to beg me for gay sex. And he married his sister."

Don't Let Educated People Ruin Everything, Warns PM

A baying proletarian mob has surrounded top public school Eton, armed with firebrands, after prime minister Gordon Brown yesterday urged the nation to join him in a class war on public schools.

"The Right Honourable Leader of the Opposition is an overprivileged bag of horseshit," shouted the PM yesterday. "He went to Eton, which by definition makes him an enemy of the people. I urge the British public to twat him on sight."

"Public schools are nothing more or less than toff factories, churning out an endless stream of hardline Conservative upper-class twits who scoff quail's eggs and quaff champagne in their clubs as they brag to each other about how much they hate the working classes," he continued. "Need I give examples? Oh, all right then: Tam Dalyell, Ed Balls, Tony and Hilary Benn, Tony Blair, Stephen Byers, Charles Clarke, Ann Clywd, Alistair Darling, Michael Foot, Harriet Harman, Margaret Hodge, Geoff Hoon, Tessa Jowell, Ruth Kelly, Bob Marshall-Andrews, George Orwell, James Purnell and Keith Vaz."

"Whatever you do, don't trust these toffee-nosed Tories with the running of the country just because they know how to read," urged the grammar-school oik of a prime minister. "Educated people are smarmy know-alls who love to make you feel stupid. Just look at Eggheads on BBC2. Don't you just want to smash your fist into their smug faces? Trust me, you need some ignorant, semi-literate, pig-headed man of the people who thinks he knows a lot more than he does in the driving seat."

Other overprivileged, chinless bastards who have no concept of what it is like to be you include Bear Grylls, Adam & Joe, Helena Bonham-Carter, Peter Gabriel, John McCririck, Hugh Laurie, Robyn Hitchcock, Jeremy Paxman, Adam Hart-Davis, and me.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Home Secretary Explains Mental Health Issues

The home secretary, Alan Johnston, today defended his decision to hand harmless mentally-ill UFO hunter Gary McKinnon over to the Americans without any form of extradition hearing, explaining that the Americans were very, very cross about being made to look rather stupid by some loner in his bedroom and anyway, there is no such thing as Asperger's Syndrome.

"Look, I heard all about this old Asperger's skive when I was in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions," chuckled Mr Johnston. "Some bleeding-heart do-gooder from the National Autistic Society had the front to tell me it was an autistic spectrum disorder which seriously affects a person's perceptions and their ability to interact with others, and said that these people should be counted as disabled. Well, I told him it's a convenient excuse for bone-idle nerds to fiddle with their todgers all day long and whine that they're 'special', and sent the officious little twat away with a clip round the ear for trying it on. Who do these arseholes think they are, telling me my job? I don't need a bunch of hoity-toity doctors to tell me who's disabled - I've got a pair of eyes in my head, and if a doley's got two arms, two legs and a head that isn't dribbling down a bib, the bugger's fit for anything a Jobcentre advisor can strongarm them into."

"As for this McKinnon wanker, as far as I'm concerned if he can sit there hacking into 97 US government websites looking for little green men, he's more than capable of ringing up doolally pensioners and flogging them a new set of windows," he continued. "If he wants to take the piss by claiming to be loopy, he can go piss up a rope. Tell it to the American judge."

"So what if extraditing him under a dodgy one-sided treaty to the USA to face 60 years in a hellish penitentiary has threatened his comfort zone and left him suicidal?" sneered Mr Johnston. "Right now I'm out of my comfort zone, which is a nice corner table at Just St James with some tame hack from the Mirror picking up the tab, but am I slitting my wrists?"

"Get life, loser!" he added.

Nev Filter To Charge For Feeble News-Based Satire

Unpopular current affairs-based satirical blog The Nev Filter is to charge internet users for the privilege of shrugging their shoulders at its intemperate rants, announced proprietor Neville Shite today.

"Frankly, I'm sick of busting my considerable gut scouring the world's headlines for a piss-taking angle every day - or whenever I can be arsed - and getting sod-all in return, other than a hollow feeling of having ineffectually vented my spleen," he told himself over a cup of coffee this morning. "If the John Thomas Press can charge readers for the dubious privilege of checking the whippet-racing results on the Whitby Gazette website, I reckon I should be able to get away with demanding a quid for each painstakingly-researched diatribe."

"Readers will be directed to a completely bona fide payment site based in Ukraine," he explained, "Which will invite them to submit their credit card details, and offer them genuine penis-enlargement sweets on a daily basis."

The media mongrel then went on to say that the charges would be applied retrospectively for articles already read.

"I reckon you all owe me about £500 each," Nev told his readers. "Come on, cough up. I fancy some flying lessons."

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Londoners Now 'At Shocking Levels'

London is now crammed so full of horrible, selfish bastards that non-Londoners often have to psych themselves up to travel there, according to a report published today.

"I got on the Tube this morning, and I was outraged to find other people in MY carriage," bellowed an insufferable shit from Islington, as he beat a ticket inspector senseless with a rolled-up copy of the Financial Times. "How DARE they?"

The report's authors found that many awful Londoners have developed strategies for making travel on the Underground as hellish as possible - including staring aggressively at the nearest passenger whilst rubbing their genitals, violently swinging a carrier bag containing a jagged sheet of armour plate, and spraying their armpits with stale urine.

The government also waded into the debate, pointing out that the influx of millions of foreign tourists for the 2012 Olympics should make life in London so unimaginably appalling that spending eternity in the fires of Hell would seem like a stroll in the Cotswolds.

A Transport for London spokesman said the organisation was spending billions of pounds on upgrading the network, replacing trains with approximately a quarter of a million single-seat 'Tube taxis' which can be hailed and ordered to go anywhere on the network, causing instant traffic chaos on the lines and bringing London to a standstill in seconds.

"Happy now?" he demanded. "Of course you aren't. Because you're Londoners."

Indifference Mounting For Insufferable Yachtie Pricks Seized By Iran

Britain is to tell Iran that it is more than welcome to keep five insufferable pricks and their toy sailing boat, but warn the Middle Eastern rogue state that in future it might want to restrict its hostage-taking activities to yachts without sails.

"We recognise that, as a pariah state, Iran is desperate to win friends," said a spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today. "Certainly, the detention of five self-satisfied, tanned bastards - whose lives are so peachy they can afford to swan around in some so-called 'race' nobody would otherwise have ever heard of - will win Iran plenty of new friends in the lengthening dole queues of Britain, where people are having to decide between putting the heating on for an hour or boiling the kettle for a cup of tea."

"Smugly insulated from the sufferings of their compatriots as these yachtie twerps are, though, if President Ahmedinejad really wants to get the British people waving his posters in the streets, he ought to be sending his Revolutionary Guard dinghies to put a couple of torpedoes into the floating gin palaces operated by our major financial institutions," he continued. "And, frankly, if Lord Mandelson happened to be aboard at the time, the cheering would be heard all the way to Tehran."

"Or perhaps they could mount a seaborne invasion of Sark," he added. "If Iran wants to seize the Barclay brothers, I'm sure the Admiralty has charts and tide tables that would help enormously."

Sunday 29 November 2009

Overconfident Coyote Allowed Bin Runner To Escape, Says Report

A hard-hitting Senate report concludes that a series of incompetent blunders by US Defense Secretary Wile E. Rumsfeld allowed his cheeky arch-enemy, Osama Bin Runner, to get clean away in 2001.

The report claims that when 100 US commandos had the pesky Bin Runner cornered in a remote, rocky wilderness with only one road in and out, rather than sending in more reinforcements as requested, the defense coyote instead saw fit to issue several lucrative contracts to Acme - a company with close ties to the Bush administration - for a long line of expensive technological solutions with wildly-unrealistic chances of success.

Unhindered by the Rumsfeld's ill-advised deployment of naval cannon, rocket cycles, dynamite-carrying arrows, unfeasibly quick-drying cement and grand pianos, the Bin Runner eventually escaped when the Rumsfeld rather stupidly painted a tunnel on an escarpment with a sign saying "Short Cut to Pakistan". As the confident Rumsfeld gave chase, the Bin Runner inexplicably escaped into the painting while his pursuer - predictably - ran at full tilt into the rockface, injuring himself further by setting off a small landslide.

"We now have no idea of that darned Bin Runner's whereabouts," said John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Is he in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas? Or is he hiding inside the cliff itself? We just don't know."

Wile E. Rumsfeld was unavailable for comment today, as has been plummeting to the bottom of a very deep canyon since the end of the Bush presidency. Several senators are now calling for the Obama administration to censure the former defense coyote, possibly by dropping a 1-ton anvil after him.

Answer To Hammerhead Shark Mystery Turns Out To Be The Bloody Obvious One

Scientists around the world fainted in amazement when colleagues finally revealed the answer to the greatest mystery in the universe.

"Ever since man first lowered his head into the oceans like a rilly long time ago, he has bent his every effort to solving one burning question, i.e. why would hammerhead sharks go round looking like that?" said Dr Michelle Strangelove of the Florida Sea World University.

"For years, religious leaders and mystics said God must have had His reasons, and great thinkers who questioned His infinite wisdom had an unfortunate tendency to, like, go on fire in those days," she told her baffled peers.

It was Galileo who first put forward the dangerous theory that having widely-spaced eyes might be some kind of aid to depth perception, which in turn might come in handy when trying to sneak up quickly on a tasty but agile morsel. As a result, he was confined to his house and cruelly denied a pet goldfish by the church authorities for the rest of his life.

With the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, Sir Isaac Newton suggested that hammerhead sharks might be particularly adept at catching fallen apples on their tray-like heads and serving them to their pointy-headed friends - until he climbed on the shoulders of giants during a trip to the seaside and realised the scarcity of apple trees in the marine environment.

In Victorian times, the well-known naturist Charles Darwin speculated that the shark's wide, flattened head might be jolly useful for banging Nail-Arsed Dolphins into rocks. However, a century of expeditions by the Royal Navy, the National Geographic Society and Jacques Cousteau failed to produce a single Nail-Arsed Dolphin to back up the theory, which discredited it somewhat in the eyes of the scientific establishment.

"Would you believe, at the exact same time, the development of the rifled-bore cannon was greatly increasing the range of naval gunnery, leading to the invention of the stereoscopic rangefinder," pointed out Dr Strangelove. "With hindsight it seems remarkable that nobody like made the connection. But hey - why should they? Do sharks have guns? I don't think so!"

"Nevertheless, by waving pencils in front of hammerhead sharks, our high-turnover team of grad students discovered that they do in fact have like rilly good eyesight, which they use to surge forward without warning and accurately snatch the pencil from the researcher's fingers, right up to the elbows," she explained. "Now all we need is to devise some kind of corrective glasses with an exceptionally wide bridge - and maybe some way of fitting them to the world's hammerhead shark population - and swimmers and their pencils will never need to fear a dip in the ocean again."

"Now, I'd rilly like to find out the real reason why limpets have shells," she added. "Can I have some more money, please?"

Wednesday 25 November 2009

Jesus Founded Glastonbury Festival, Claims Scotsman

The Son of God visited Britain and built a small world music stage at Glastonbury with the aid of His father, Joseph of Arimathea, according to a new film which stretches the meaning of 'documentary' further than ever before.

In the film 'And Did Those Feet', Scottish minister Dr Gormless Strachan cites a letter to the Pope, written in 597AD, in which St Augustine specifically mentions that a bald, ruddy-cheeked farmer he found lying in a ditch and reeking of fermented apple juice had told him that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a small platform in the middle of his grazing pasture was constructed by Jesus Himself, and that the teenage Christ had performed various Aramaic chants to an appreciative audience of Celts, oxen and a mystic druid selling herbal remedies from the back of a dung-cart.

"The rude yokel also doth solemnly vouchsafe that the middens dug by Our Blessed Redeemer did sorely tax the nostrils of all present," wrote St Augustine. "Except the druid, who did preach unto the gathering that the foul stench was beneficial for the roses of the field. It pleased them greatly, therefore, to tumble the heathen into the stinking ordure and thereupon to ask him to speak thus again. And the Lord was glad in His heart."

"Well, of such did he say, Thine Eminence," concluded the venerated saint. "Draw thine own conclusions."

"This letter is concrete evidence that Jesus came to Britain - and, as a lecturer in the history of architecture, I certainly know concrete when I see it," shouted Dr Strachan, who lectures at Edinburgh University although possibly not for much longer.

"If somebody was wanting to learn about the spirituality and thinking not just of the Jews but also the classical and Greek world, he would have come to Britain, which was the centre of learning at the time," exclaimed director/producer Ted Gullible. "He certainly wouldn't have learned much about Judaism from growing up in Palestine, and nor would he have picked up anything meaningful about classical values as he slowly walked the entire length of the Roman Empire over a period of several months, passing through such cesspools of ignorance as Athens and Rome."

"No, at that time all the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom in the world was being done by a manky bunch of violent piss-artists wallowing in their own filth on a boggy island just past the farthest reaches of civilisation," he insisted.

"If Fox Channel buy this, my next historical documentary will prove that a Lancaster bomber really did crash on the moon," vowed Dr Strachan. "This legend was mentioned in the Dark Ages of Thatcher by that impeccably impartial recorder of events, The Sport - and if you look closely at this precious fragment of the original document, you can just make out an 82-inch pair of tits which prove its authenticity as a source document."

"It's criminal that the MoD still refuses to send a rescue helicopter to pick up the crew," he added. "Our brave boys deserve better."

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Mandelson Invents Socialism

The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, is said by Labour Party insiders to be eagerly fleshing out the details of a radical new political theory he has just thought up, which he is calling 'socialism'.

The former European Commissioner for Trade tentatively announced the first of his theories today - suggesting, in a speech to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders which was received in hostile silence, that an industry which relentlessly churns out thousands of new cars every day, simply to create an artificial demand for vehicles which people cannot afford and do not need, might not actually be the smartest thing that mankind has ever dreamed up.

"If that evil commie pervert isn't stopped - and fast - pretty soon he won't just be suggesting that replacing your car every two years simply because you're bored with it might not be the best use of the planet's dwindling resources. There's a very real danger that he might dare to question the whole principle of rampant consumerism," growled a Ford executive. "And from there, it's only a short step to entertaining wholesale doubts about the necessity of the artificial monetary system which underpins this unrestricted capitalist system which we all take absolutely for granted."

"Mammon help us all if that happens," he added.

"Kill him," screamed a senior BMW director. "Kill him now, before he infects anyone else with this vile disease."

Meanwhile, staff at a London graveyard report that the body of Herbert Morrison, one of the stalwarts of the Labour movement and Baron Mandelson's grandfather, is revolving more slowly than at any time in the last 12 years.

Police Deny Arresting The Innocent To Add Them To Illegal Database

Police chiefs in England and Wales have angrily denied claims made in Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear? - a report published today by the Human Genetics Commission - that officers were arresting innocent citizens on the slightest of legal pretexts, simply to get as many people as possible onto the national DNA database.

"This is plainly wrong," said a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers. "If it were so, we'd be arresting the Justice Secretary - and, for that matter, ourselves - for keeping the database up and running, despite a ruling last year from the European Court of Human Rights that retaining the profiles of anybody released without charge is illegal."

"Having said that, with Christmas round the corner, people should be aware that the eating of mince pies on Christmas Day has been against the law in England since Cromwell's time," he went on. "We shall also be cracking down on those who callously stick stamps on upside down, improvise home-made devices for sliding on ice or snow, or wantonly break eggs open at the pointy end."

"And I say this to the so-called 'ladies' who openly eat chocolate on public transport, and the sociopathic taxi drivers who neglect to ask their passengers if they have smallpox," he added. "We know who you are, and where you live. These evil desperadoes can shortly expect to receive their just desserts - namely, a jab in the arm in the middle of the night."

Monday 23 November 2009

Thatcher's Portrait Immortalised In Number Ten For Future Prime Ministers To Abuse

Margaret Thatcher was today back in Number 10 Downing Street, as PM Gordon Brown's guest of honour at the unveiling of a portrait of her smug, hated visage.

Whereas portraits of two previous prime ministers, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, hang on the walls of No.10, Baroness Thatcher's detestable face breaks with tradition by being painted on a Spacehopper.

"I am more than happy to be the first British Prime Minister to be able to sit at my desk, raise my head from my hands and look upon the sour, arrogant features of that awful harridan leering back at me," said Mr Brown. "And it will give me particular pleasure to go down in history as the first British Prime Minister to rise from my desk with a howl of rage and - on behalf of generations of British citizens who will be paying the price of her petty, vindictive evisceration of the nation's industrial profits base - kick her sneering face all around the room until I fall to the floor in a state of sated exhaustion."

Baroness Thatcher did not make a speech, as she has long since retreated behind impenetrable mental walls, which she uses to block out the increasingly-obvious results of her pig-headed policy of shutting down British industries - or, if they had been nationalised on the grounds that they were too essential to the sound running of the nation to be left in the hands of greedy profiteers, flogging them off for a song to her greedy, profiteering friends.

There have already been calls from Labour politicians staring down the throat of imminent unemployment for the spacehopper portrait to be made widely available to disgruntled voters.

"This could be the cheap, feelgood gimmick that wins us another term in the trough- whoops, I mean office," said disgraced Labour MP Andrew Dismore.

Metropolitan Police Settle de Menezes Family Compensation Claim With Magnificent Sombrero

The long-running pursuit of justice for their executed relative, Jean Charles de Menezes, has finally ended after the family were offered a splendidly-oversized sombrero by Metropolitan Commissioner Sir Kim Jong-Stephenson.

"A big straw hat may not seem like much by way of compensation for the state-sanctioned murder of an innocent electrician, or for the subsequent travesty of justice in which the trigger-happy incompetents who were responsible for his death got off scot-free," said Sir Kim. "But you have to remember that the standards of life are very different in Brazil, where these nuts come from. Most Brazilians live on a knife-edge of poverty and insecurity, under a remote, isolated government that has neither the resources or inclination to provide a decent safety net for those in need of support, preferring instead to line the pockets of a small wealthy clique."

"Actually, now I come to think of it, maybe the standards of life in Brazil aren't so very different after all," he mused. "Perhaps we could run to a nice, brightly-coloured poncho as well. I'll ask the lads for a whip-round."

Sunday 22 November 2009

$350,000 Wacko Glove Ideal For This Deserving One-Armed Beggar I Know, Claims Caring HK Capitalist

Mega-wealthy Hong Kong businessman Tossman Ma says that a tawdry white glove - once the property of disturbing fantasist Wackson Jackson - which he bought today at auction for $350,000 will make a world of difference to the disabled street beggar who sits dolefully outside his corporate headquarters every day.

"Every morning, when I go to work, this poor one-armed pauper looks up mournfully and shakes his begging bowl at me," explained Mr Ma. "Unfortunately I don't carry a wallet - it would rather spoil the hang of my jacket - so it really cuts me up to have to stride past him, pretending he doesn't exist. Now, though, I can send my PA out to drop this glove into his bowl when it arrives in the post. Imagine how glad he'll be of a well-padded glove, sleeping rough on the streets on a cold night. My troubled conscience can finally rest easy. Hey, I'm just a really caring guy."

The rhinestone-studded golfing glove was famously worn by the late Wackson when he first amazed the easily pleased by sliding along backwards onstage in 1983.

"Obviously, some smelly old tramp won't have much use for a couple of dozen worthless rhinestones, so I'll have those removed and auctioned separately as genuine Wackson artifacts," beamed Mr Mad. "With a bit of luck, I should double my investment."

"Why are you all looking at me like that?" he added.

$134,000 Umbrella Stand Ideal For This Deserving Three-Legged Elephant I Know, Claims Second Caring Capitalist

A nondescript umbrella stand once owned by the late rag-trade queen Yves Saint-Laurent was sold for £134,000 to an anonymous, caring rich bastard who says he will be donating it to a deserving elephant amputee which he often hears rummaging through the bins in the service area of his exclusive residential block, hoping to find stale buns.

"Mon Dieu, my 'eart goes out to zat poor three-legged elephant," said the secret bidder. "I 'ave often thought of chucking 'eem a stale croissant from ze penthouse balcony after entertaining friends to one of my legendary banquets - mais, naturellement, a successful businessman like me 'as to ensure zat all of 'ees 'ouse'old waste ees safely compacted and shredded. For security reasons, bien sûr."

"Actuellement, zees particular item of 'allway furniture, she ees not a hollow elephant's foot as such - she is earthenware," laughed the buyer. "Mais zut alors! ze irony of an elephant trying to 'obble around wiz ze aid of ze umbrella stand! Comme c'est drôle, n'est-ce pas?"

Saturday 21 November 2009

Best Equipment In The World Ordered For British Troops


Every British soldier serving in Afghanistan will shortly be issued with their own Hallibritish Aerocockheed FU-9, the most advanced raghead-shafting machine ever built, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence this evening.

"Happy now?" he demanded.

Insurers Penalise Depressed Woman For Not Topping Herself

A clinically-depressed worker in Canada has had her sickness benefits cut by her insurers, after they accessed her Facebook page and found a photograph in which she was neither hanging by the neck from a length of electrical flex nor lying in a blood-soaked bath with her wrists slit.

"My doctor told me that the best way to deal with depression was to try to cheer myself up and think happy thoughts," protested a distraught Nathalie Blanchard, who has been on sick leave from employers IBM for a year.

"Balls," said a spokesman for insurers Manudeath. "The best way to deal with depression is to terminate your shitty life, preferably the day you receive your diagnosis. That would save us an awful lot of cash."

"We would urge any depressed policyholders not to fanny around with pathetic, namby-pamby cries for help," he added. "If you go to our website, you'll find all kinds of useful advice on how to ensure that your very first suicide bid will be a resounding success. When you feel like a total failure, that's an important goal - and it's one we're more than happy to expedite."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Facebook cheerfully confirmed that the insurers had been granted permission to bypass Ms Blanchard's privacy settings.

"Our policy is to hand over everything you post to any company that asks for it, on the off-chance that it might prevent fraud or any other illegal activity," he told reporters. "That, of course, includes claiming sickness benefits to which you are legally entitled, and for which you have paid your premiums."

"After all, we faceless, impersonal corporations have to stick together," he added.

Second Natural Disaster Hits Flood-Stricken Cumbria

As if the people of Cockermouth and Workington didn't have enough misery on their plates, Gordon Brown today travelled up to the flood-hit North West to gloat over a disaster which is unusual for not being a direct consequence of his handling of the economy.

However, some experts are already saying that Mr Brown should not be regarded as entirely blameless for the present crisis.

"Sadly, this was all too predictable," said an environmentalist this afternoon. " For years now, New Labour's policies cynically allowed far too many hopes to be built on inadequate foundations. And now it's all falling apart between Gordon's ears."

As torrential rain continued to pour down on much of waterlogged Britain, worried citizens swamped the phone lines of the emergency services, demanding to know what measures they could take to prevent a catastrophic prime ministerial visit.

"I'm afraid our experience has demonstrated that there's very little you can do in such trying circumstances, apart from piling up sandbags around the perimeter of your home and being vigilant," said a spokesman for Cumbria Police. "Short of converting an upstairs bedroom into a machine gun post, members of the public are all but helpless when a seething mass of Brown slime comes hurtling down the road towards them."

Thursday 19 November 2009

Teenagers Do The Funniest Things

Accident and emergency wards all over the UK are overflowing with teenagers who are just too stupid to live, it emerged today. Haggard doctors say they are struggling to cope with the sudden influx of thrill-seekers with less instinct for self-preservation than a suicide bomber.

"See this bucket of guts waiting to be sewn back together?" said one worn-out admissions clerk. "That's some Year 9 smart-arse who saw an episode of the Bionic Woman and reckoned it would be a bit of a laugh to run through the turbine blades of a huge air-conditioning system. Wrong."

Other idiot teen stunts include:

- strapping Acme mail-order rockets to their feet and, predictably, slamming into cliffs or falling into mile-deep canyons as a result;

- jumping off a tall building, pressing a button on their watches and not transforming into a flying creature or robot;

- dressing up in brightly-coloured biking leathers, riding their mopeds into an almighty explosion and failing to leap unscathed ten metres into the air;

- taking up ballroom dancing and putting their backs out.

"It's total carnage in here," said a blood-soaked consultant. "It's all too easy to point the finger of blame at the TV companies for their cavalier irresponsibility in warning youngsters about the dangers of extreme stupidity - but when all's said and done, there's no getting away from the fact that teenagers are complete fucktards."

"Captain Scarlet is indestructible," he warned. "You are not. Remember this. Do not try to imitate him."

Teenagers all over the country are now feared to be eagerly scouring YouTube for ill-advised, Supermarionation-related suicide tactics with which to briefly displace their intense sexual frustration.

Plymouth Seizes 'Brownest City' Crown

The god-forsaken hell-hole of Plymouth is celebrating its brown credentials today, after plummeting down the rankings of Britain's 20 largest cities for sustainability.

The Devon city was rated the nation's third most sustainable last year - before Britain's only remaining Thatcherite, council leader Vivian Pengelly, had really had a chance to turn everything to shit. However, thanks to Mrs Pengelly's acclaimed stewardship, Plymouth now ranks 14th for biodiversity and climate change, 16th for green spaces and 18th for its economy.

"A year ago, Plymouth was actually top for environmental ranking," said Forum for the Future's chief executive, Peter Madden. "Now it's 14th. If I were living in Plymouth right now, I'd be throwing my essential belongings in a wheelbarrow and getting the fuck out of that toxic cesspit before nightfall."

Campaigning local newspaper the Eerole somehow failed to find space for the think-tank's ominous findings, filled as it was with a series of heart-warming stories about Plymouth's fine, upstanding citizens - including a man in court for pushing his girlfriend through a glass panel, a pensioner who has been indecently assaulting teenage girls for 40 years, another arrest linked to Plymouth's child-molesting nursery worker, and the usual daily round-up of random drunken assaults.

"Plemoff ez thurr focken bess focken setay en thur focken werowd, y'focken cont," said Cllr Pengelly in an official press release wrapped round a fresh turd, lit and pushed through the Nev Filter's letterbox. "Kmeer eff y'wanner focken myek sommen ovvet, y'focken twaah."

"Enn oy ent eevun sowed awf they focken buses yet," she added. "20th furr traanspawt, eeyer oss focken comms!"

Angry Plymoids, meanwhile, have expressed no urgent desire to read the forum's damning report, saying they would have to learn to read first and it seemed a lot of effort just to find out what "somm focken posh wanka oo wern frumm rown 'eer" had to say. They did, however, lean out of their knackered bangers to scream incoherently at strangers, which apparently constitutes the nearest thing to serious public debate in Plymouth.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

'Queen's Speech' Delivered By Brown In Drag

PM Gordon Brown is on the run tonight, after the Queen was found tied and gagged in a Westminster broom cupboard shortly after the delivery of the Queen's Speech.

"I thought Her Majesty was looking even grumpier than usual," opposition leader David Cameron told Scotland Yard detectives. "That squinty eye seemed familiar, too, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it."

"At the time, it didn't strike me as particularly unusual that the prime minister didn't seem to be taking much of an interest in what was going on around him, either," he added. "It turns out that it was just a life-sized cardboard cut-out being held up by Alistair Darling and Harriet Harman."

When the gag was removed, the Queen wasted no time in revealing that Mr Brown had reacted very badly when she gave her opinion on the speech he had written for her, in which he outlined all of the fantasy laws he aims to inflict before he gets booted out by the electorate in six months' time.

"One laughed like a drain," she said. "One told him, 'Well, you petty, spiteful little man, you've excelled yourself this time, haven't you? This is nothing more than a blueprint for stitching up the Tories when they get in - particularly the bit about forcing the next government to halve the budget deficit by any means necessary - so they'll pick up all the flak, and you'll be smelling of roses in five years' time.' One told him one would read the bloody thing as per contract, but keeping a straight face was rather out of the question."

It transpires that a fuming Mr Brown then trussed the Queen up, donned her regalia and delivered the speech himself in a silly voice, telling parliament that he had "a bit of a cold".

The public are warned not to approach Mr Brown if they see him, as he is extremely desperate.

"Mr Brown is not physically dangerous," said a Scotland Yard spokesman. "But if he corners you, his psychological profile suggests that he'll drone on and on about how it's all everybody's fault but his own, until you lose the will to live and throw yourself under a passing bus."

In case Mr Brown is still wearing the Queen's clothes and looking for a place to blend in, police say they will be paying close attention to any drag queens attending tonight's West End performance of 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical'.

"If you were Gordon Brown, wouldn't you want to stay in disguise?" pointed out a senior detective. "After all, he's without doubt the owner of the most punchable face in Britain."

Conscience-Free Hatchet Man Selected To Ease ITV's Assisted Suicide

ITV has finally abandoned all pretence at being a TV network and appointed the godawful Archie Norman as its new - and, in all probability, final - chairman.

The former Tory party chief executive is known in business circles as a 'turnaround specialist'. Meanwhile, in the real world, he is known as 'that smug prick who comes swanning in with a big shit-eating grin, then rips the guts out of the company and legs it down the fire escape with fivers threatening to burst his trouser seams.'

Mr Norman was in charge of running down Asda before it was flogged off to Wal-Mart, and also took an axe to telecoms firm Energis before palming its bloody corpse off onto Cable and Wireless.

"It is an irresistible challenge," said the 55-year-old suit. "Most of the hard work has already been done for me with the removal of quality drama, arts programming, documentaries, children's programmes and anything else that costs more than five hundred nicker to make. All that remains for me to do is shut the few remaining regional newsrooms, then I can get on with the fun bit - namely auctioning off the primetime slots to Simon Cowell or Ant and Dec for as much lucre as I can stuff into a suitcase, before buggering off to hack some other once-great organisation to bits."

"ITV has no quality of life left," said an industry analyst. "Let's face it - ITV has had no quality at all for some time now, and a swift death would be a merciful release from suffering for all concerned. Especially the viewers."

Monday 16 November 2009

'I Want To Be The Barking MP,' Declares BNP Leader

British Nazi Party leader Nick Angriff today announced his intention to contest the East London parliamentary constituency of Barking, hoping that a large turnout of Barking racists will make him the Barking BNP member of parliament.

"We've always had a lot of support from Barking people," said Mr Angriff, who is currently a Member of the Hated European Autocracy. "I can and will represent their views like no other politician, because I understand and share their views completely. General de Gaulle famously once said that he was France. Well, my message to the electorate is simply this: I AM BARKING."

Meanwhile, rumours that the BNP's other MEP, Andrew Brons, is seeking a home in the Shetland village of Twatt were denied by a party spokesman.

"That's typical of the blatant media distortion and lies which are carefully orchestrated to make the BNP look ridiculous and stupid," he complained. "He's going to the other one, way out in the Orkneys."

"The BNP is really only interested in representing the more extreme of the UK's Twatts," he added.

Home Office Commends ID Cards To Piss Artists

ID cards will be the best way to ensure that you get completely shit-faced, according to junior Home Office minister Meg Sillier.

Speaking ahead of a trial card launch in Manchester later this month, Ms Sillier suggested that the controversial scheme would enable piss-artists to keep successfully ordering drink after drink in a staggering pub crawl through the city's bars, nightclubs and A&E departments.

"At the moment, you have to carry your driving licence or passport with you when you go out on the piss," she pointed out. "Sure, they'll prove your age - but only the ID card has a field to display your favourite tipple, which will of course come in very handy when you reach the incoherent mumbling stage."

The Home Office pointed out that there was certainly no implied threat that, sooner or later, everybody in Britain would have to pay for an ID card and submit themselves to constant government surveillance if they wanted to purchase the smallest quantity of alcohol, or indeed anything at all.

"Whatever gives you that idea?" demanded a government newspokesman. "You clearly need re-educating about the constant state of war that this country is facing."

Sunday 15 November 2009

Brown Apologises To Australians For Founding of Australia

Gordon Brown, apparently overcome by a fit of remorse for things which were nothing to do with him, has today issued a slew of apologies to the rest of the world.

Top of the list of things the prime minister regretted was the transportation of petty criminals to the penal colony of Botany Bay, which led to the founding of Australia.

"I'm really, really sorry that the draconian laws of my predecessors indirectly condemned you to be born citizens of a sunny, progressive nation blessed with untold mineral wealth," sobbed Mr Brown, on his knees outside 10 Downing Street. "If only I could go back in time and change things, you might all be living in Britain."

Mr Brown then pulled out a crumpled list from his back pocket, rending his garments and gnashing his teeth in despair as he read out a tragic litany of cruelty for which he wasn't responsible.

"My conscience compels me to declare my sincere personal repentance for the following," wailed the PM. "The erroneous claims made concerning the flotation capability of the Titanic. The relief of Ladysmith. The 'bodyline' tactics that forever blighted the name of English cricket. The horrific burning of the Temple of Claudius at Camelodunum by the evil queen Boudicca in 60AD. The Triumph TR7. The occupation of Iceland in 1940. The extinction of the dodo. Tommy Steele. The War of Jenkins' Ear. Carry On Columbus. And many, many more."

"I will surely burn in hell for all the things I didn't have any part of," he added, as he scourged himself with a knotted whip in front of cheering crowds.

"This is all very commendable, I'm sure," said a shopper in Bermondsey this morning, on hearing the news. "But I suspect hell will freeze over before Gordon Brown apologises for something he actually did, like forcing everyone in Britain to pay for his staggeringly inept mismanagement of the economy for the rest of our lives."