Britain Liberated From Mumbo-Jumbo By Humanist Buses

Millions of people across the country - but especially in London, where the journalists live - have been joyfully casting off the fetters of their medieval religious indoctrination today after being told by a bus that there was probably no God.

"There I was at eight this morning, freezing my ass off, waiting for another number 11 because the first one didn't even bloody stop, and thinking, 'Please God, let the next one not be full,' and sure enough the next one shot by as well," said some shivering bloke who was too poor to own a car, so we didn't bother to ask his name. "Only this one had a poster on it saying: 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.' Those cheeky humanist bastards have certainly opened my eyes. Screw you, God."

"I wish I'd been enlightened by a bus thirty years ago," said an ageing vicar as he angrily tore off his white collar and threw it in the gutter. "If only this revelation had been publicised widely in my day, I might have had a proper career and paid for a decent house by now, with a worthwhile pension to look forward to. Bugger."

Churches, mosques, synagogues and temples across the nation stood empty, as their newly-enlightened congregations flocked instead to their local bus stations and begged the atheist buses to tell them what to think instead.

Fundamentalist Christians, however, remain largely unmoved by the buses' message of liberation from the chains of outmoded deism.

"Where did these buses come from?" demanded one wild-eyed believer. "You can't tell me that these wondrous machines are descended from ugly, tree-dwelling stagecoaches. Look at the miracle of the self-lowering front suspension. Surely that didn't just 'evolve' by random chance? I tell you, it was designed by an intelligent being."

"Brothers and sisters, your faith is being tested," he proclaimed. "I urge you to resist Satan's weasel words by shunning these godless heathen buses and travelling instead only by faithful, believing trains or righteous, God-fearing taxis. Hallelujah!"

Meanwhile, Brian Souter and Ann Gloag - the devout, anti-gay brother and sister who own the caring, charitable Christian bus company Stagecoach - warned that any of their buses found professing unspeakable atheist heresies would be cast into outer darkness (i.e. put on the hellish night-bus run) for all eternity.